EDUCATION
Numbers suggest murky future for Moms for Liberty
New chapters are forming, but not where it matters most for 2024
There’s been a lot hay made lately about Moms for Liberty — the group formed in 2021 to oppose school mask mandates and other pandemic precautions. Jennifer Schuessler at the New York Times called them “a force in Republican politics” and Chris Lehmann at The Nation likened the group to the Tea Party.
There are good reasons to take Moms for Liberty seriously.
As Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider explain on their podcast, it’s re-positioned itself over the last 12 months as the voice of anti-teacher vitriol, eager to ban books at the mere mention of race or LGBTQ issues. Classics, like The Color Purple, Water for Elephants, and The Bluest Eye, were challenged by the Indian River County chapter of the organization in Florida last fall.
Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination also have taken the organization up on the offer to speak to its members, most recently at last week’s Moms for Liberty Summit in Philadelphia. At the event, Governor Rick DeSantis called Gender Queer, a memoir by nonbinary writer Maia Kobabe, “hardcore pornography.” The book has been banned by over 50 districts recently, the most of any book in the country, according to Pen America.
There’s no doubt Moms for Liberty is a thing today, but it’s much less clear where it’s heading in the future.
For one, Moms for Liberty is organized like other civic groups: chapters arrayed across the country planning local events and mobilizing school board protests. On Thursday, the chapter in Orange, NC is holding a monthly meeting. Later this month, the Douglas County, NE chapter is participating in a campaign kick off for State Board of Education candidate, Lisa Schonhoff.
And, it’s just this structure that lead Jonathan Weisman at the New York Times to claim Moms for Liberty “draws power from its diffusion — 275 chapters in 45 states with nearly 115,000 members.” As Weisman points out, though, we have to take Moms for Liberty at its word on its size.
Based on what it shares publicly, there’s no doubt Moms for Liberty is growing. If we focus here just on the number of chapters in the country, the organization seems to have grown 50% in the last two years, from 152 chapters in 2021 to 280 today (my count is 5 higher than Weisman’s). In 2021, 17 states had no chapters at all, while today that has fallen to just 7 states.
The growth, however, hasn’t been evenly spread throughout the country. Four states — South Carolina, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida — account for a third (44) of the new chapters over the last two years. This suggests that the political power is considerable and expanding in some states, but nearly absent and even waning in others.
Or, consider that, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada — a GOP strategists’ wish list for the 2024 presidential election and 3 of the 4 toss up states according to Larry Sabato’s 2024 forecast— all have fewer chapters today than just two years ago.
If we look deeper at the chapter numbers, the apparent political power is even more questionable. The chapter formed in 2021 in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa, no longer seems to be operating today. It’s neighbor, Pima, still has a chapter, but that county has one-fourth the population.
Similarly, in Texas, though the total number of counties with a chapter increased from 7 to 9, Moms for Liberty lost the chapter in the state’s largest county, Harris. In fact, only 1 of the largest 5 counties in that state, Denton, has a chapter operating today.
Moving northward to Colorado, between 2021 and 2023, Jefferson County, the fourth largest country in the state, dropped its chapter. Today, just 1 of the largest 5 counties in that state, El Paso, has a chapter.
To be sure, chapters likely vary greatly in membership, so it’s hard to draw any solid conclusions based on chapter numbers alone. Nonetheless, it’s equally hard to conclude that Moms for Liberty is a political juggernaut with the opportunity to change the direction of the 2024 election, like the Tea Party did in 2010. Despite the media coverage and attention of national political leaders, the numbers right now just don’t bear that out.
Also, recall, the Tea Party peaked quickly then faded out just as fast. By 2014, Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights showed that the Tea Party Patriots had already lost 90% of its chapters. Of course, Burghart also pointed out that Tea Party Patriots wasn’t merely a local phenomenon. National donors saw in the Tea Party a vehicle for other ambitions and poured money into national operations.
Similarly, Moms for Liberty has attracted the attention of financial backers, many with similar ties to other conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute. Uneven chapter growth may, then, mean little to the ultimate political fortunes of the organization. How Moms for Liberty advances the interests of its wealthiest supporters and their favored presidential candidate may, in the end, determine whether it’s a political player in 2024.
