just days ago the conservative group moms for Liberty held a summit in Philadelphia with speakers ranging from former president Donald Trump to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis the parental rights group wants to flip School boards across the country and elect far-right candidates including here in New Jersey when it launched during the pandemic moms for Liberty was billed as a Grassroots organization but they've become a national player in Republican politics backed by big money and connections within the GOP Associated Press reporter Ali Swenson covered the summit and says the group is setting up for a political Clash she joins me now Ali welcome to the show you're reporting on moms for Liberty is interesting because it really talks about this broader picture which is sort of what the co-founder said that they were going for from the get-go what is their grand plan here what are their sites set on right so moms for Liberty has spent the last two years targeting School Board races and inflaming school board meetings Nationwide and looking ahead to 2024 it plans to expand that effort and use its pack to get involved in not only School Board races but also state level education races including things like State Board of Education and state superintendent how successful have they been so far in getting their you know candidates elected the group has had mixed success so in 2022 it endorsed about 500 candidates and got just over half of those elected but earlier this year in Wisconsin we saw that just under a third of its endorsed candidates were elected it's interesting though because we've really seen them become a national player I mean on the main stage within the Republican party what type of connections do they have that have enabled them to get access to and sort of create this pipeline of candidates for these you know School Board elections moms for Liberty has very close connections within the Republican Party both conservative organizations as well as lawmakers so it's connected with a few conservative organizations including the training organization the Leadership Institute um the conservative Heritage Foundation and it's also closely aligned with some Republican lawmakers including Ron DeSantis Florida's governor and so I'm guessing that also gives them access to big donors absolutely and we've seen you know they have limited uh visibility on their donors so far they are a 501c4 organization so they don't have to disclose their funders but uh we did see that um a major conservative donor did contribute to one of their political action committees and that was Julie fanchelli whose family owns Publix and who helped contribute to the funding of the spot stop the steel rally on January 6th according to Congressional documents so why did they start with school boards these are typically sleepy braces they have now become quite contentious and really some of the uh has set up some of the biggest clashes especially here in New Jersey where you have such strong divide between the far left and far right why start there sure uh moms for Liberty is really focused on parental rights and education they say that they want parents to be able to fundamentally direct the rights um sorry the education of their children and the best way to make an impact on that at a local level is in the school board so disputing certain things that your kids are learning in their local community um you know arguing that policies at school related to masking or transgender accommodations should be different and we've seen they've been able to actually make some changes on the local level there what type of role do you see this group playing talking about the 2024 election and largely on the state and National level well certainly we're already seeing that Republican candidates for the presidency are interested in courting moms for Liberty five presidential candidates came out to the group's annual Summit over the weekend uh so clearly they're an important constituency for these candidates but on the state and local level we're also going to see moms for Liberty funneling Monday money and uh endorsements into state and local education races to try to influence education infrastructure Ali Swenson with the Associated Press Ali thanks so much [Music] [Music]