Matt Cross has used his post as Rockingham County School Board chair to attack parents, students, teachers, librarians, the media and other elected officials, while the three women who made him chair sit meekly by, with their silence implying consent to his behavior.
Cross has made clear, repeatedly, that he does not care about the opinion of any of the myriad groups who oppose his combative anti-education agenda. He has said, repeatedly, that he answers to the voters.
Does he?
It’s worth looking at the votes for the three women who gave him the gavel and let him speak in their name.
District-wide Mark Obenshain won 70 percent of the vote in the 2023 election. He drew 73 percent in Rockingham County. Turnout in the county for his race was 44 percent of active registered voters. Think of those as baselines.
Turnout for Cross’s lackies on the School Board was also about 44 percent. Turnout for Cave’s district was slightly higher, but that district overlapped the state delegate district with the most strongly contested election. It would be hard to argue that anyone showed up just to vote for them. Not hard for them, but hard for a rational analyst of contested elections. The two candidates who ran in two-way races drew 66 and 61 percent, lower than Obenshain’s vote, indicating they didn’t even carry all die-hard Republicans.
Elections are decided by those who show up, regardless of what nonsense some Republicans spew about Trump’s defeat in 2020 and his popular vote loss in 2016. But once elected, leaders should represent all of their constituents. The voters Cross and his three followers cite as their entire constituency are, on average, 63 percent of 44 percent of the county’s voters. That’s 27 percent. That’s a little more than 1 in 4 people they can claim to answer to and speak for.
Cross most recently cited the voters as his only responsibility when he dismissed the highly critical letters signed by hundreds of county parents and teachers. One could argue that those hundreds represent a smaller cross-section than those who voted for the women who elected him chair. But the ballot is secret and a signature on a letter is public. Teachers can rationally fear professional retribution. Parents can rationally expect blowback against their children. One widespread story in the community says Cross fired the board’s law firm in part because a relative of one of the lawyers spoke against him at a board meeting. The possibility of retribution is real. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. “Me too, me too,” says the Rockingham County School Board.
It’s worth noting that of the 27 percent of county voters who chose Matt Cross’s contingent, some undoubtedly did turn out and vote because they believed widespread gibberish about bathrooms and libraries. But there’s no way to know how many. Regardless, did a majority of the 27 percent Cross can claim want to see him ban books, register LGBT students, attack political opponents from the chair, and fire the best education law firm in the state? They didn’t. They just voted for the people who did it.
Are any of those people having second thoughts? Hard to say. But it would be interesting to know if Ashley Burgoyne and Sarah Horst are.