Proud mom of LGBTQ+ child defeats Antonin Scalia’s daughter in school board election

The mother of an LGBTQ+ student beat the daughter of the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in a contentious Virginia school board race.  

With 62 percent of Tuesday’s vote, Allison Spillman, a mother of five, beat Scalia’s daughter, Meg Bryce, in the race for an at-large seat on the Albemarle County School Board following a campaign in which Spillman and local Democrats linked Bryce to an extremist conservative agenda.

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The anti-LGBTQ+ group’s candidates lost big in at least four states.

While Virginia school board elections are officially nonpartisan, Spillman was endorsed by the local Democratic party. Last week, the Albemarle County Republican Committee endorsed Bryce. However, according to The Daily Progress, she declined the endorsement and the committee removed it from its website within 24 hours.

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“I have intentionally stayed away from any party endorsements because I feel they are inconsistent with the ‘non-partisan’ designation of school board races,” said Bryce, who campaigned on raising the district’s test scores.

But Spillman, who described one of her five children as “a proud member of LGBTQ community,” managed to link Bryce to Scalia’s conservative, anti-LGBTQ+ legacy, as well as nationwide efforts to inject a far-right agenda onto local school boards.

Some of Bryce’s supporters hoped that she would remove “politics” and “sexuality” from classrooms. Bryce, whose own four children all attend private schools, told Charlottesville’s CBS 19 last week that her late father’s legacy was “a blessing and a curse.”

In an interview with CBS 19 last week, Spillman said she worried about extremism on local school boards. “It is a possibility here in Albemarle County and our community is beautifully diverse and our kids deserve to see themselves reflected in the materials that are being taught and then the books that are in our libraries,” she said.

Bryce called the suggestion that she might use her position on the school board to ban books “a blatant lie.”

“I have never advocated for banning books,” she told CBS 19.

But voters didn’t buy it. One Spillman voter told The Daily Progress that he wanted to “keep crazy out of the school board.” Another cited fears about book banning, which has largely targeted works by Black and LGBTQ+ authors.

“We live in a democracy,” Cathy Palombi said. “We should be able to read what we want.”