Extremist group tries again to bring sideshow zealotry to Fairbanks school board

Peddled by right-wing zealot Jim Minnery, the “2022 values voter guide for Fairbanks” is a handy tool to see which local government candidates in Fairbanks are willing to sign onto Minnery’s brand of extremism.

By and large, the candidates who respond to Minnery’s flim-flam are not worth electing and can’t be trusted.

As the mahatma of the Alaska Family Council, Minnery claims he wants “biblical citizenship” and has injected his Anchorage church group into local government races in Fairbanks once more.

No competent candidate should be responding to Minnery’s “Have you stopped beating your wife?” brand of questions, which have nothing to do with the real work of running the city, operating the school system or managing the borough.

His claim that school nurses drive kids to Planned Parenthood is a lie. And Critical Race Theory is not taught in Fairbanks schools.

The more time that is wasted on peripheral issues that do nothing but get people angry and yelling at each other, the less time there is to work on the mundane but essential tasks of government. But generating hatred and division is part of his mission.

That said, Minnery’s machinations are beneficial in one sense—as a handy 2022 values guide on candidates to avoid.

In the school board races, for instance, car dealer Les Nichols and Melissa Burnett show they are aligned with Minnery’s holy war.

The important questions for school board candidates are about class size, the school budget, hiring good teachers, making sure the schools are operating as they should and taking steps to give children the best chance to learn and do well in life. Adapting education to the revolution in technology is a monumental task that should worry every parent and keep school board members up at night.

The mahatma isn’t bothered by any of those things.

The two good school board candidates—Brandy Harty and Kaneisha Radgosky—did not respond to Minnery, who has no interest or stake in the quality of Fairbanks schools. It’s not as if they are afraid to answer tough questions. Both have done so in a variety of formats and presentations.

The other two candidates—Les Nichols and Melissa Burnett—demonstrated both by answering Minnery and by the way they answered, that they want to bring the right-wing fanatical sideshow to the Fairbanks school board, where it doesn’t belong.