Temecula Valley Unified School District board President Joseph Komrosky listens to a speaker at the Tuesday, June 11, 2024, meeting. It appears that a recall election against him has been successful. (File photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A promise to be boring might not seem like a winning political message.
But it appears to be one, at least in Temecula, where supporters of recalling school board President Joseph Komrosky suggested making board meetings “boring again” after a year of controversy and division.
Komrosky, one of three Christian conservatives elected in Temecula in 2022, is set to lose his seat on the Temecula Valley Unified School District board. The latest results — posted Friday evening, June 14 — in the June 4 recall election show him losing by 213 votes — 51% to 49% — with 88 ballots to be counted in his bid to stay in office.
Komrosky’s apparent ouster comes about two months after voters in Orange recalled two conservative board members who voted in favor of a policy requiring parents to be told if their child identifies as transgender.
The recall push goes beyond Southern California.
A trustee of a public school district outside Sacramento who made anti-trans remarks was recalled in March, while two trustees pushing a conservative agenda in a rural Alameda County district face a July recall election.
Recent recalls of conservatives “highlight a growing public frustration with the efforts of radical conservatives to foment conflict through exclusionary policies,” John Rogers, a UCLA education professor who’s studied conservative activism in public schools, said via email.
That said, “Christian Nationalism remains a potent force in the political landscape,” Rogers added, “with recent national polls indicating that a majority of Republicans embrace or are sympathetic to the view that ‘God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.’”
Komrosky’s apparent recall would further unravel a conservative majority that took office in 2022 after an organized effort by Christian conservatives to win seats on southwest Riverside County school boards.
It appears that out of the three elected in Temecula, only one — Jen Wiersma — will be in office by the end of June. Conservative Danny Gonzalez resigned in December.
Progressive activists such as Temecula’s Julie Geary supported Komrosky’s ouster. But Geary, who co-founded the political action committee that spearheaded the recall, said Komrosky’s defeat “isn’t a win for progressives, but this is a win against extremism.”
“People started to take a look at their city leaders in city council and school board and said ‘Are these the values of my community?’” said Geary, whose One Temecula Valley PAC got the recall on the ballot.
“I think this really was a collective effort of the community saying, ’No, we do not support these extremist values.’”
Komrosky did not respond to requests for comment.
Pastor Tim Thompson, of 412 Church Temecula Valley and who helped elect Komrosky and opposed the recall, said the recall was threatened the day Komrosky took office and was political rather than a response to his performance.
“To be clear, Dr. Komrosky won his seat by a large margin and fulfilled each of his campaign promises in less than a year,” Thompson wrote in a statement. “Those who spearheaded the effort to recall him did so on false pretenses to continue to advance their efforts to cut parents out of the decision making for their children’s lives, and to continue the sexualization of children in our public school system.”
Against a backdrop of parent frustration over pandemic mandates and a California Republican focus on winning school board seats, Thompson and his Inland Empire Family PAC launched a grassroots campaign in 2022 to elect like-minded candidates to school boards in Temecula, Murrieta and Lake Elsinore.
Five of the family PAC’s seven endorsed candidates won their elections, with Komrosky, Wiersma and Gonzalez winning a board majority with three of the Temecula board’s five seats. Right after being sworn in, the trio banned the teaching of critical race theory, a term used by conservatives to attack certain lessons about race and U.S. history.
In 3-2 votes, the conservative bloc passed a transgender notification policy mirroring Orange’s, banned the LGBTQ pride flag and other non-U.S. and state flags from being displayed in classrooms, restricted what they considered to be obscene and pornographic learning materials and banned new cell towers on district property though scientists saying the towers posed no health risk.
The conservative majority also publicly feuded with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom over a social studies curriculum with materials that referred to LGBTQ civil rights leader Harvey Milk, whom Komrosky and Gonzalez called a “pedophile.”
The board eventually adopted the curriculum after Newsom threatened to send textbooks to Temecula and fine the school district.
The conservatives’ actions drew backlash from teachers, parents, students and others who said the board sought to impose a right-wing extremist agenda and dismantle public education in a district with a strong academic reputation that draws families to Temecula.
High school students walked out in protest over the critical race theory ban and the transgender policy. Meanwhile, once-sedate school board meetings became raucous cultural war battles with cheering, booing, protest signs and Komrosky ejecting audience members — a practice that led to a lawsuit.
That wasn’t the only legal challenge stemming from the board’s actions. Legal bills formed a cornerstone of the recall supporters’ message. They argued that Komrosky and his allies were wasting taxpayer dollars on lawyers to fight battles unrelated to the nuts-and-bolts of running a school district.
“We want people that are going to work on behalf of our students,” said One Temecula Valley PAC co-founder Jeff Pack.
“That’s what they (those who voted yes on the recall) want. They don’t want somebody standing up there complaining about ‘wokes’ or conservatives. They just want people to get back to the business of the school district and help kids in our community.”
The PAC’s message — “Make Temecula Boring Again” — means moving away from partisan politics and grandstanding and back to the business of the school district, Pack said.
“That’s the biggest key,” he said. “Our message was (that) this is not a partisan issue,” Pack said.
The recall’s opponents defended Komrosky as an advocate for parents’ rights who kept his campaign promises of protecting children and freeing public schools of left-wing indoctrination.
A May family PAC fundraiser in Temecula headlined by Eric Trump included Komrosky, who received a hero’s welcome from attendees when his name was announced. Opponents also accused the Temecula teachers’ union of orchestrating the recall to usurp parental rights.
To win, the recall had to appeal to GOP and independent voters in a traditionally conservative city.
About 44% of voters in Komrosky’s Trustee Area 4 are registered Republicans, followed by Democrats at 27% and no-party-preference voters at 19%.
“Temecula honestly always had a conservative-leaning school board,” Geary said. “But we haven’t had these extremist policies.”
With the recall all but over, both sides are organizing for the next round.
Thompson has said his PAC plans to sponsor candidates for more school board seats, while Komrosky this week said he’ll try to regain his old job.
Gonzalez’s seat, along with those of Allison Barclay and Steven Schwartz — frequent opponents of the conservative agenda — are on the November ballot, and it’s possible the board may ask voters to fill Komrosky’s seat.
Thompson wrote that recall backers “say the recall result sends a message that extremism is not welcome in local government. They are correct. It isn’t. And the I.E. Family PAC will work harder than ever to take all four open seats in Temecula this November.”
Geary said her PAC has a network of more than 400 volunteers trained in public outreach and collecting data for use in future elections. Besides Temecula’s school board, she said the PAC also is focused on ousting outspoken conservative Jessica Alexander from the Temecula City Council.
Komrosky’s recall “was initiated by people that are very passionate about this. So they are naturally the ones that are going to turn out in droves because they started it,” said Brandy Meeker, who supports Komrosky and is president of Temecula Valley Republican Women.
“Our more conservative side (is) left to respond to that and when you’re playing defense versus offense, sometimes it’s a little harder to catch up.”
