School board elections used to rarely make national news. Of course, it matters who runs the school district that your kids go to — and that your tax dollars pay for — but in recent years conservative groups have made school board races into political battlegrounds.

ProPublica reporter Jeremy Schwartz recently took a deep dive into one such election in rural Texas, where Courtney Gore campaigned as a GOP hard-liner. She won, but while she served her term, she became alarmed by her party’s extremism. Now, she’s part of a group of disillusioned local Republicans pushing back against a far-right faction of the party.

Here & Now‘s Deepa Fernandes speaks with Schwartz and Gore.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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