Turning off Lynda O’Conner’s Mic: When the excuses are removed, you see what people really are

Well, of course, the criticism of Lakota School Board President Lynda O’Conner is perfectly warranted, and a couple of political PACs have formed to speak out against her.  A campaign to “turn off her mic” is perfectly justified, which is a reaction to her behavior over the last year, where she has sought to completely control public speech and criticism of her performance as a management body at Lakota.  Too often, people involved in politics forget that after all the election stuff, political people are supposed actually to do a good job.  If it’s a first-time office holder, there is usually some forgiveness for not knowing what they are doing.  But for someone who has been around for 16 years or more, such as Lynda O’Conner has, good performance is expected.  This is a political problem; getting elected is a kind of popularity contest with the ultimate social euphoria, like being elected homecoming king or queen.  The public affirmation is addicting, and it’s nice to be picked by the public to do something.  But then there is the actual problem of doing the job.  This is what is going on with Congress these days, where people are tired of lip service from the Speaker of the House role.  People are tired of broken promises and lackluster performance in their representative government. Over the years, the trend has been pointing toward increased scrutiny as more people are paying more attention to political topics than they used to, especially in public education.  There used to be an assumption that public schools were okay, that kids were getting good, respectable instructions.  Not the actual reality that they are learning centers for Hamas and abortion activism.  Now that people have had to reluctantly admit, in the post-Covid years, public schools have not been tolerant of conservative values when school board members get caught in that crossfire by default, they don’t want to get seen carrying water for liberal causes, which is precisely what Lynda O’Conner was found doing.

One of those political PACs that has come forth against her during this election of 2023, where Lynda is on the party ticket for re-election after doing the job for a very long time, has produced a video showing the primary problem. In the footage, Lynda had the mic turned off of a local advocate giving public statements. Lynda was functioning from bad legal advice from the same kind of people who caused the problem, to begin with, school administrative officers who had behaved detrimentally in public and caused great harm to the school’s reputation. To cover up that damage, Lynda became the most prominent advocate for getting rid of free speech, which is critical to the maintenance of public schools, where the taxpayers fund the entire process. A community representative, which all school board members are, does not get to limit the public’s opinions and openly keeps those beliefs quiet to preserve an idea of Lakota schools, which it did not earn. There exhibited many problems regarding abuse of power that Lynda O’Conner showed during 2022 and 2023 when much of this public drama unfolded, but the biggest problem is found in that video: how she managed public crises that Lakota administrative employees caused. That was enough to cause a lot of people who formally supported her to withdraw that support. And if Lynda wanted to do what was right for the local Republican Party, she never would have put them in this awkward position by running in the next election after all the controversy.

Of course, the problems extend well beyond the cosmetic trouble of abusing power by attempting to cut off public criticism of school board management. And this is more where I am on this topic. Lynda was given a three-vote majority and completely screwed it up with uncovered activism. Before that last election, which saw the successful campaigns of Darbi Boddy and Isaac Adi elected as endorsed Republican representatives, Lynda was given by “us” members of the community who wanted to help her what she said she wanted, which was a majority vote on the board so she wasn’t always the lone victimized voice. For context, many people would tell me about my relationship with Lynda, that she was a RINO and was a liberal. Of course, I would reply, “I will stand by Lynda until she proves otherwise.” Lynda would complain that she was the only one willing to vote for conservative ideas on the Lakota school board in a conservative district. So, some of us got together and gave her the requested help. But rather than rejoice over the matter, Lynda had been exposed as the liberal everyone warned me she was. Because now that she had the votes, she would be uncovered. She was pleased to double-talk with Julie Shaffer and Kelly Casper while having public spats with Brad Lovell to sell her conservative brand to the community. But it was all show business. When Lynda was handed the President role with a majority vote, she had no further excuses for performance, so she immediately picked a fight with Darbi Boddy over nonsense political issues and moved to separate Isaac Adi from Darbi, which has resulted in a lot of chaos meant to disguise her liberal inclinations.

Darbi Boddy became the scapegoat for Lynda’s sins as a liberal posing as a conservative to win public support between election cycles. As long as Lynda was a victim, she could always say, “Look, I’m being outvoted. I can do nothing to stop the out-of-control spending, the genderless bathrooms, and social degradation from the teacher’s union.” But once those excuses were taken away, suddenly the new reason was, “Darbi isn’t professional and is bringing harm to our efforts through negative news stories,” which, of course, Lynda and Julie leaked to their contacts to drive the narrative, all while turning off the microphone to the public so they could attempt to contain public opinion. Truthfully, the Republican Party endorsed her out of friendships, the kind of sympathy formed by the challenges of the popularity contest of elected office. And compassion that politics is changing and the public expects a decent performance from their representatives. So Lynda put them all in the wrong place, and being so politically astute, she should have known better. I don’t see any political difference between Julie Shaffer and Doug Horten, who is also running. The only school board candidate I can support in this election is Russ Loges, who seems sincere and willing to work hard. But we know what we are getting with Lynda. And I didn’t suddenly become a Julie Shaffer fan. Everyone is asking me why I haven’t put up the video on so many phones of bad behavior showing Julie in compromising positions. You can’t pay me enough to look at that trainwreck in such compromised states. I’d instead rather not think about it personally, everyone by now knows the stories. These people are disasters, and we could do a lot better as a community, and we did have options. And instead of those options working for the Republican Party healthily and productively, they are now on the outside working to expose bad behavior, which is expected from politics once the elections are over. We hope people actually to be conservative and stand for constitutional values. And Lynda hasn’t done any of those things.

Rich Hoffman