There’s a lot to say about the recent Lakota school board election, and I want to start by congratulating Ben Nguyen on his historic win. At just 18 years old, he’s now the youngest person ever elected to the Lakota Board of Education, and he achieved this with a clear, conservative message that resonated with voters in Butler County. Nguyen earned 18.61% of the vote, joining incumbent Kelley Casper and newcomer Alex Argo on the five-member board. His victory wasn’t just symbolic—it was a direct response to the district’s failed $506 million levy, which voters rejected by a 61% margin. That levy, which would have demolished nine buildings and built four new ones, was a bloated attempt to reinvent the district with taxpayer money. Nguyen’s campaign stood firmly against it, and his win signals that the community is tired of being asked to fund ideological experiments disguised as infrastructure upgrades. However, there is much more to all this. The questions that arose during this campaign and election season, in general, concern my support of Lakota schools, which school board member Doug Horton brought up in a video he posted just before the election. In short, if Lakota management wants to know what it would take to get my support, I would say to them to stop destroying the kind of school board members that I support. And I would be a lot less critical. But when the school board pushes away good people and lobbies to keep the kind of people who glaze over sex scandals, horrendous Democrat strategies in the school to teach young people, and ask for tax increases, especially the most expensive in the history of Ohio, then I’m going to be very critical, and I will provide that criticism in voluminous detail so much so, that the anti tax movement in Butler County will continue to grow, as it has over these years since 2013, and even earlier.
Ben Nguyen is a start, not a solution to what I would call a detrimental school board full of liberal losers. The real problem is systemic. For years, we’ve seen conservative school board members pushed out by coordinated efforts from union-backed liberals and their media allies. Darbi Boddy is a prime example. Elected in 2021, she was removed in 2024 after a civil protection order filed by fellow board member Isaac Adi—once her political ally—barred her from attending meetings for over 90 days. The board declared her absence “insufficient,” and just like that, she was gone. Her removal wasn’t about functionality—it was a matter of political theater. Boddy had challenged DEI programs, opposed transgender policies, and criticized the district’s hiring practices. That made her a target. The board censured her, demanded her resignation, and ultimately replaced her with Christina French, a longtime district insider. It’s a pattern: elect a conservative, stir up controversy, isolate them, and replace them with someone more “manageable.” I know all the characters of that conservative board very well, and I know what was done to pit them against each other, and when a school system plays that game, and expects to get away with it, well, they have another thing coming. I’m not in the business of putting up with that, and I never will be. I was in the district long before many of these people were even born, and I will be around long after they all leave to buy condos in Florida to escape the high taxes they leave behind. Darbi is just one example of this kind of radical school board behavior; therefore, when asked what it would take to win my support for Lakota schools, the answer is easy. Don’t run off school board members whom I support. Radicalism can go both ways, ladies and gentlemen.
This is why I’ve been so critical of Lakota Schools over the years. It’s not that I hate education—I would say my track record shows where my heart is; there are few people anywhere who love education more than I do. I respect people who read books and work to sharpen and utilize their intelligence. I do not trust institutionalized education because it’s often populated by less-than-great individuals, which is reflected directly in the product. And with public schools, I don’t respect the system that’s been built on a century-old foundation of progressive ideology. Public schools, as they exist today, are more about managing perception than delivering results. When you fill school boards with people like Julie Shaffer and Kelley Casper—both endorsed by the Butler County Democrat Party—you get a culture of spending, secrecy, and suppression. They don’t want scrutiny because scrutiny threatens their funding. They don’t wish to be judged because judgment exposes their failures. And when scandals happen—whether it’s inappropriate teacher behavior, administrative misconduct, or ideological overreach—they bury it. That’s why I created my own media platform: to report what they won’t. If you want to know what’s really going on in Lakota, you won’t find it in the district’s press releases. You’ll find it in the stories they try to silence.
So here’s the deal: I’ll support Lakota when Lakota supports the community. That means electing people like Ben Nguyen—people who understand the value of education without being beholden to the liberal establishment. It means rejecting levies that ask for hundreds of millions without accountability. It means standing up for parents, taxpayers, and students—not just the union’s comfort level of lazy labor desires, such as short workdays, fewer students to teach, summers off, and high pay for doing very little. I’ve seen good people try to make a difference on the board, only to be run off by political manipulation; it’s all well-documented. I’m encouraged that Nguyen, with his sharp mind and diplomatic personality, can navigate those waters and bring real change. If we can recruit two or three more like him, we might finally see a board that genuinely reflects the community’s values. But given the election cycles, it’s going to take a while unless we push off some of these losers the way they have pushed away our conservatives, like Darbi, and Todd Parnell—even Lynda O’Connor. And with Lynda, I know exactly how that game unfolded; she became so deeply involved in the liberal Lakota movement that she essentially had to adopt its values to attend the meetings. I don’t think strong personalities like Ben Nguyen will be pushed away, because he has that extra gear that is so needed in these kinds of controversial political environments. He, like Vivek Ramaswamy, who will be Ohio’s next governor, is part of a new generation that will play these old political games better than they have been played in the past. We have tried to play it straight with these current school board members, and all they have given us are Antifa like union tactics of left-wing radicalism, and many people in the district simply aren’t going to put up with it. I’m certainly not going to, under any conditions. And until there are more options on the school board, I’ll continue to call it as I see it. If you want me to stop criticizing Lakota, stop putting bad people in charge. Put in people I can respect. But asking, even demanding respect when Lakota hasn’t earned it, is a ridiculous proposition that only losers would even think of. And until there are more people like Ben Nguyen involved in Lakota schools, I will criticize them extensively because they deserve it.
Rich Hoffman

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