KATY, Texas — The Katy Independent School District is set to elect three new school board members on Saturday. Early voting for the May 6 election wraps up on Tuesday, but as the race enters its final days, conservative political action committees, or PACs, are spending serious cash on misleading mailers and text messages to get their preferred candidates across the finish line.
It's the new norm in Texas school board races.
Education-centered PACs have exploded across Texas. In 2014, there were only an estimated three registered through the State Ethics Commission. Nine years later, that number is 34, and at least one of them has their eyes on Katy ISD.
"There's a level of intensity that we haven't seen in recent years," KHOU political analyst Bob Stein said.
Across the country, drama is playing out at school board meetings. It's plaguing school districts as they tussle with racism, LGBTQ issues and book bans. The hot-button issues lead to a newfound interest in who gets elected to the school board.
Shana Peterson is running for Position 5 on the Katy ISD School Board of Trustees.
"I'd heard the campaign will get messy, and I thought it's a local, non-paying job, non-partisan," Peterson said. "I always committed to running a clean campaign."
But last week, it got messy and partisan when Peterson was attacked by the conservative PAC Texans for Educational Freedom.
"These flyers have gone out to everybody in Katy," Peterson said.
The mailers have Peterson's face right next to a picture of President Joe Biden labeling her as a "far-left choice" for the school board.
"This is clearly slander," Peterson said. "It's indicating that I'm not a Republican and that I'm for things that I'm not for."
Bruce Bradford, a self-described conservative-moderate who's voted Republican for years, is running for Position 3. His face was on the same flyer, this time next to a photo of Beto O'Rourke.
"I thought have I been transported to Washington D.C. because these are the kinds of things on these flyers that we would see in the last presidential election," Bradford said.
Bradford said misleading text messages are showing up on voters' phones, too.
"Some of the dirty side of politics have raised their ugly heads," Bradford said.
Stein said it's a clear effort to prop up more extreme candidates.
"I don't think there's a single identified Democrat on the ballot," Stein said. "What I think you're seeing are Republicans falling over themselves trying to be anti-woke, anti-critical race theory."
Texans for Educational Freedom was formed in 2021. The PAC spent nearly half a million dollars in the last two years backing local candidates in Conroe, Cy-Fair, Klein, Humble and Spring-Branch ISDs.
"The PACS are driving not only the recruitment of candidates, it's also mobilizing voters," Stein said.
Whether efforts in Katy ISD will work this time remains to be seen, but candidates are urging voters to do their research and not rely on a partisan flyer before heading to the ballot box.
"It's not about this," Peterson said. "It's not about Republicans or Democrats or Trump or Biden, it's about students and our staff and our community."
KHOU 11 News reached out to both candidates running against Peterson and Bradford to talk about PACs and the role they're playing in this campaign, but we did not hear back.