Vandalism, negativity mar school board campaigns 1 week before elections

Early voting for the Mat-Su Borough is underway, and with just a week left for residents to cast their votes, the campaigns for the Matanuska Susitna Borough School District (MSBSD) school board are in their final days, with rhetoric and vandalism being reported by multiple candidates, ramping up the tension leading to the Nov. 7 Election Day.

Incumbent school board member Kathy McCollum has been targeted on-line, negatively criticizing her support of ‘Moms for Liberty’ a conservative political organization that advocates against school curricula that mention LGBTQIA+ rights, critical race theory, and discrimination.

Multiple on-line reports have also popped up, aimed at candidate Sydney Zuyus, who is running against McCollum for the District 3 school board seat, with many of them negatively targeting her support of LGBTQ+ groups, and one ad claiming that she ‘supports keeping sexualized books in elementary school libraries,’ a claim she vehemently denies.

“I have said on record a few times that I also don't like these books they are so eager to share screenshots of,” she wrote in a social media post.

While negative campaign ads and stories are nothing new to elections, recent damage to campaign signs have taken an ugly turn.

Candidate Diane Shibe, who is running against incumbent Ole Larson for the District 6 seat on the school board, recently reported that five of her large signs had been vandalized, tagged with “Kid Porn” spray painted over her name. At least one of her boards had been smashed and broken so badly that she could not use it again.

“They spray painted the sign at Seward-Meridian and Bogard. They also spray-painted the one on Bogard and Trunk. That one they also sawed in half the frame so it could never be set back up again,” Shibe said.

‘Ole Larson for School Board’ campaign has reported that they also had signs damaged and stolen.

“We had some large ones and many small ones being taken or smashed. One time, the day we put them up, they were being taken not an hour after. We have had approximately 50 small signs taken.”

McCollum reports that while she has not had any signs vandalized, several signs that were marking directions to a fundraiser hosted in a neighborhood had been removed.

“One large sign was completely stolen near the Trunk / Bogard roundabout,” she said.

“I’m sickened by the vandalism that has occurred to some of the signs and definitely do not condone it.”