For the 2023 school board and city council races in Madeira, a far-right PAC called “Onward Madeira” was endorsing a slate of candidates. Kim Heath and Anita Grolmes (school board), and Gibson Arling and Joe Grolmes (city council) all had extreme views. These candidates were linked to anti-democracy demonstrations and hateful social media posts, and the two school board candidates were both endorsed by Ohio Value Voters and Moms For Liberty.

This was dangerous for our community because:

• People who don’t understand democracy shouldn’t hold elected office.

• Bringing politics to our nonpartisan school board would have been bad for our children, teachers, and families.

• We didn’t want to be the next Forest Hills or Lakota—school districts that had become a media circus due to electing extremists to the school board.

• Backward ideas would drag us down, damage our community, and harm our highly-ranked, much-respected school district.

With YOUR help, Madeira United was able to get the message out about the danger facing our community.

In November 2023, the people of Madeira voted to elect common sense, non-partisan school board candidates, rejecting the Moms for Liberty candidates by a 3 to 1 margin. (Read this piece on CNN.com by one of our founders, who detailed the efforts of Madeira United.)

The people of Madeira also elected common sense candidates for city council. In fact, all of the candidates that Madeira United supported won by large margins.

Should another challenge arise in the future, rest assured that Madeira United is ready to fight again.