(Deroy Murdock, Headline USA) Conservative journalist and author Ryan Girdusky founded the 1776 Project Political Action Committee last May.
This “Little PAC That Could” helped elect conservatives to school boards across America last November on a startlingly modest budget of $150,000. But “modest” does not describe Girdusky’s ambitions for next November.
Amazingly enough, 1776 Project PAC is the Right’s first such endeavor. Too bad the Queens-based Girdusky did not launch this initiative 10 years ago. But better 2021 than never.
Girdusky targeted school boards, a level of government in which Wokistanis, Cancelistas and their comrades have roamed rather freely, while conservatives focused on Washington, D.C., and to a lesser extent, state capitols.
Girdusky identified 58 conservative candidates in seven states, who eagerly marched onto these cultural battlefields. After his one-man operation girded these contenders with digital ads, direct-mail circulars, and grassroots campaign materials, 42 of them prevailed.
Some crossed the finish line with margins as thin as 33 and even 25 votes. But they won—many in counties that strongly backed Joe Biden in 2020.
The 1776 Project PAC’s 72% win rate is stunning, compared to long-standing campaign outfits that scream, “Victory!” when half of their candidates triumph.
Some voters whom Girdusky steered to the polls also supported GOP/conservative candidates up ballot. Come November, Ryan’s voters could pick Right-of-center contenders in school-board races and then stick around to back GOP/conservative nominees for city council, mayor, state legislature, governor, U.S. House and U.S. Senate.
Among other places, this phenomenon appears to have taken place in Democrat-rich Passaic County, New Jersey. Ryan’s school board candidates ran against Critical Race Theory and motivated Hispanic voters to support them. The entire county shifted Right, to the benefit of Republicans elsewhere on those ballots.
Girdusky’s slate of school-board candidates in Centre County, Pennsylvania boosted overall support for conservatives, including one running for the Keystone State’s Supreme Court. In a rarity for a Rightist contender, Megan Sullivan picked up Centre County and, consequently, clinched that seat on Pennsylvania’s highest court.
Thus, Girdusky and his organization will back school-board candidates whose reverse coattails could help the GOP capture city halls, statehouses, governors’ mansions and Capitol Hill.
“The 1776 Project PAC is a political action committee designed to help school boards and communities elect sane people,” said Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson. “Ryan Girdusky is basically counterbalancing what George Soros has been doing for 30 years—influencing local elections.”
“Last year, the 1776 Project PAC elected 42 conservative candidates, in mostly suburban, school districts,” Girdusky told me. “We flipped a number of school boards from Left to Right, most noticeably Douglas County, Colorado; Center County, Pennsylvania; and Leavenworth County, Kansas.”
Girdusky—author of They’re Not Listening: How The Elites Created the National Populist Revolution—added: “These numbers might not seem significant, but they mean that hundreds of thousands of school children now have advocates for them on their local school boards who defend gifted-and-talented programs and oppose mask mandates, Critical Race Theory; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; watered-down standards, and transgender hormone therapy for pre-teens.”
As for this November, Girdusky is thinking bigger. Much, much bigger.
“Flipping 300 school boards with last year’s successful model would give millions of children the same kind of advocacy, reverse the sadly growing trends that we’ve seen in schools across the country, and engage parent groups that have received no traditional support from the GOP,” he said. “Come 2023, I hope the 1776 Project PAC will have hundreds of school boards led by conservative parents and help create the largest grassroots organization since Phyllis Schlafly activated conservative women to stop the ERA.”
Ryan Girdusky is an energetic, capable, and courageous young man with a plan. His aim to shift 300 school boards from Left to Right is astonishing, riveting, and potentially game changing. If he achieves just half of this goal, he will have made an enormous contribution to America, its embattled children, and their disregarded parents.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.
