Gay teacher who ran for school board seat was targeted by Moms for Liberty. He overcame & won.

“If a poster boy for everything [right-wing groups] hate about teaching and teachers and marginalized communities can win by 12 points… then I got to think that other folks can tap into that same energy.”

Daniel Gutman
Photo: Campaign website

When a seat on the Urbandale School Board in Iowa opened unexpectedly last March, gay elementary school teacher Daniel Gutmann was in.

The 45-year-old special education teacher had a crack at the same seat in the Des Moines suburb in the fall, when he placed fourth in a race for three open seats. This time, the election would be a clear choice between Gutmann – an openly gay elementary school teacher, a member of the teacher’s union, a Democrat, and an outspoken progressive – and his Republican opponent – a social conservative backed by “parental rights” advocates.

Gutmann knew he’d be a magnet for controversy in a state where Donald Trump won by 10 points.

“We absolutely need to confront this kind of, you know, division and the negativity and the falsehoods and hate,” Gutmann told politics news site Iowa Starting Line. “But we just have to do it in a way that, you know, we’d be comfortable with our grandmother listening to the conversation, or one of our favorite schoolteachers.”

Gutmann was up against Republican Steve Avis, an IRS CPA who had the support of high-profile Iowa Republicans in the state including state Sen. Brad Zaun (R). In March, Zaun co-sponsored Senate Study Bill 2198, a proposal to enable parents to sue schools or educators who distribute books or materials that parents deem obscene.

While that bill would die in committee, in the same legislative session Iowa passed a ban on transgender women and girls from competing in school sports, signed into law by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds in March.

Gutmann said his strategy was to…

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