If anybody needs a reminder, why not to vote for Lynda O’Conner on November 7th, 2023 here it is. While she was always something of a RINO, she has become excessively worse over the last several years. Remember this when you vote.
Rich Hoffman
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
One thing you never want to do, and I think I am excessively fair to the people around me. Even if I disagree, I give people a lot of latitude in how they live their personal lives. You never want to make me an accomplice to moral depravity, which is precisely what Lakota school board member Lynda O’Conner had done with me in how she handed Darbi Boddy, a fellow school board member and other members of the Lakota staff during the year of 2022. I can deal with disagreements over topics and people who think ultimately differently than I do. But don’t ever think that threatening me in any way possible to hide bad behavior will have some profitable outcome. And that happened on an August afternoon while I was with my family in St. Ignace, Michigan, after spending a long day on Mackinac Island, getting ice cream and trying to enjoy a charming day. I was reminded of just how bad the Lakota situation has been, and still is through an interview with Eric Deters and Darbi’s attorney Robert Croskery. I have a history with both people, so it captured my interest when I saw that they had done an interview together. And in so doing, it reminded me of that August day, and specifically my entire relationship with Lynda O’Conner up to that point, which I would have said was a friend. Early in the process before there were ever tag-alongs, I was trying to help Lynda get a majority vote on the school board because I liked her and felt sorry for her situation, this was before there were any other people who invested in Darbi’s political efforts when it was early, and people were trying to save the world.
I don’t get involved in such things quickly; getting me on someone’s schedule for anything is hard. I’m a very busy person and in these last few years, I have traveled a lot, including that referenced time in St. Ignace where I was on a family trip in our RVs and my phone was lighting up with all this panic from the police report I suggested the Butler County Sheriff’s department look at before anybody jumped to crazy conclusions about the previous superintendent at Lakota schools. I’m not the one who was involved in all the bad behavior, but once I know that such horrendous things are happening in my community, it’s my business. I’ve lived in Butler County longer than most people have been alive, certainly longer than the Skippy types who are always whispering in the ear of Lynda O’Conner from the Rinos for Lakota groups that she would tell me about. But what was obvious to me early in the process as all these forces decided they were going to “get Darbi” much the way those same types of people in politics are trying to “get Trump” you realize that the efforts at personal destruction are to hide the horrendously bad and immoral lifestyles of a lot of people in the Lakota school system. And they feel entitled to destroy the lives of anybody they choose to preserve their lust for moral depravity. I already think public schools are horrible for children, but when there is evidence that the adults are advocating for moral corruption with taxpayer money, making me part of the process, fury is going to be the natural reaction, and everyone should understand that going in, especially Lynda O’Conner who is the current school board president running for re-election. The dirty tricks that have come from her and efforts at personal destruction have been unforgivable. To what degree was obvious in hearing Darbi’s attorney once again on the Bulldog Show with Eric Deters.
So there we were; I had my kids and grandkids in St. Ignace getting ice cream on an excellent double-decker bus converted to a restaurant with a nice view of Lake Huron and Mackinac Island. The word was coming to me as we were distributing those ice creams to the kids, and they were all fighting for my attention in healthy ways, that legal action was headed in my direction by a bunch of scandalous characters who were emerging from that police report as having done some evil activity. And I was not OK with that. That’s when I got a call from Darbi’s attorney, Robert Croskery, which I took reluctantly. At that point, I was tired of talking to lawyers, which interfered with my travel. A few calls were fine, but this was nonstop for several days. So, by the time Robert called, I had my guard up, figuring that it would be a careful conversation in legalese. I was not enthusiastic about talking to him. But by the time we were finished, I realized just how good some people can be, and Robert was undoubtedly one of them. Darbi was, too. Many good people were getting pushed around and bullied over actions that Lynda O’Conner was directly responsible for, and I wasn’t going to turn my back on any of them. Even if I only wanted to read the police report and eat some ice cream with my grandchildren on a nice day in upper Michigan.
And the ridiculousness has continued, but it hasn’t been Darbi that was the problem; it has been an effort led by Lynda O’Conner to hide truly moral depravity behind legal action Lakota thought it could hide behind to intimidate private people into shutting up about it. Once I returned from this trip and read the contents of what the police had reported about their investigation, which was very much watered down to protect the Lakota people, I was infuriated that Lynda could have read the same report and then chosen to be the spokesperson for moral depravity in our community—many of the losers surrounding her, who were advising her very badly I understood. The swingers, cheaters, and personal scum bags who will do anything for the free babysitting service Lakota offers neurotic, lazy parents too busy to care for their children felt entitled to bizarre liberal lifestyles they expected the taxpayers to fund. And I was not OK with it. So, I have supported the only school board member who has been honest with me during all this, Darbi Boddy. As Lynda has been a friend, I will not maintain friendships with people who chose to be spokesmen for moral depravity in my community or anywhere. For the swingers and casual drug users who decide to participate in destructive social lifestyles, that’s a personal choice until you drag me into it. And once I find out about it, I’m then involved. But don’t ever think that I will be intimidated into turning away from that awful behavior, masking itself as some altruistic conservative movement, all this “greater good stuff.” Don’t hire derelict employees; get rid of them when you find out how bad they are. And don’t ever try to make me part of the story. I’m glad that people like Robert Croskery are out there defending good people like Darbi Boddy. And I like seeing that people who supported Darbi are willing to stand up to moral depravity when it certainly wasn’t to their social advantage to do so. But I wouldn’t say I like seeing what Lynda O’Conner has been willing to do when faced with such vast moral depravity. Rather than reject it, she became one of its strongest advocates. And to the way I see things, that is reprehensible.
Rich Hoffman
It has not been very pleasant. I have been traveling a lot across the world, and at each airport stop once arriving back into cell phone coverage, I have been flooded with text messages and calls wondering why I still defend the Lakota school board member Darbi Boddy and do not have the same kind of sympathy with current school board president, Lynda O” Conner, and member Isaac Adi. I understand the concerns, but neither Lynda nor Isaac are conservatives, and you know what I always say. I love all Republicans until they show me that they aren’t. There isn’t a situation where Lynda and Isaac give the illusion of a conservative school board. At the point I’m at now, I’d instead remove the illusion and let the Democrats have it so we can hang them on all the problems later. Playing this game with Lynda and Isaac is lying to ourselves, and I see no point in doing it. All it does is cause further brand damage to the Butler County Republican Party brand. My view on these silly disputes is that they are small-minded, who in their right mind cares about power on the school board except for people who don’t bring much value to anything else in their lives. Watching what Lynda has been willing to do to achieve such silly power has disappointed me. The school board is a part-time gig at best. It should never generate the kind of political games from Lynda’s camp, and I cannot support her or those propping her up. I have given them a chance. I’ve worked with Lynda, and that picture Isaac Adi has with Jim Jorden is one that I took. I have tried to help all of these people. But only one hasn’t lied to me, at least that I know of yet. And that is Darbi Boddy. The rest of them have been horrendous, and if that’s the best we get, we might as well vote for Democrats.
I’ve heard a thousand times, that Darbi lied to everyone during the vetting process, and represented herself as a calm, collective, friendly person willing to play ball. I’ve heard from even friends of hers that Darbi engages in personal outbursts and is very aggressive. I had experience with Darbi before she was elected, and I have had several complex discussions with her since; I can say that she has always been honest, even very Christian, much more so than I initially thought. She has values and she defends them. And she has never been crazy or violent around me, and maybe she had a right to be. I always liked Darbi Boddy, but I like her much more now after two years in office than I did the year leading up to the election where she and Isaac ran together as an endorsed Republican Party ticket. Darbi has been my favorite among all the people I have dealt with on the Lakota school board over the last decades. I don’t think she misrepresented herself during the fundraising and campaign stage. I think what happened was that Lynda used her to get the vote for the school board president position then quickly turned against her when the mask debates were getting heavy during Darbi’s first month after being sworn in. And that betrayal hurt her, and it has only gotten worse since, not because of Darbi, but the behavior of the other school board members.
You might have heard in the news that Isaac Adi won his restraining order against Darbi Boddy in court, where Lynda was nearby blowing on the fire to help it burn. Lynda is the one who lied and misrepresented what she was up to. Isaac indeed misrepresented himself to me and I am excessively disappointed in him. Darbi has not disappointed me. Lynda has. Isaac has. And the rest of the characters fall somewhere along those lines. My policy in all things in life is that I’ll give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but once I find out you’ve lied to me, it’s over. And it’s over forever. There is no forgiveness. So that is why I still support Darbi Boddy but am very much against Isaac Adi and Lynda O’Conner. Everyone knows that I do not like Julie Shaffer, one of the other school board candidates. Despising her is a more accurate term. I would vote for her before I would Lynda O’Conner because I think Julie is more honest, and at least I know what kind of Democrat radical I am dealing with. They all register as Republicans, but their actions always tell the truth about them. After watching that mess, which likely will be overturned on appeal, the protective order against Darbi from Isaac because his little feelings have been hurt by how aggressive she is, I’m willing to call it a day on the whole election for the Lakota school board. Think how absurd all this is; Sheriff Jones is threatening to arrest Darbi to help his buddies on the school board when he can’t even arrest all the people showing an interest in abusing children which caused all this trouble to begin with. All those who have helped Lynda will have to learn a hard lesson. Don’t call me because I will tell you I told you so. Out of all these characters the only one who has consistently told me the truth has been Darbi, which is why I still support her and have nice things to say about her. She has been very respectful to me, my wife, and conservative politics. And that is supposed to be what we are all fighting for.
Hey, everyone only has themselves to blame. Around 20 great young people wanted to run for political office, and the Republican party could have gotten younger with fresh people with long shelf lives. What will Lynda do? Give Butler County 4 more years, of what? And will Isaac be the future of the Butler County Republican Party? He’s getting restraining orders against women! People like Darbi make people want to go out and vote Republican, and several people like her would be good. However, the Party decided to pick controlled assets they felt more comfortable with rather than people who would make the party better and represent the voters of Butler County. Lynda and her gang have played the game of personal destruction and the damage left in the wake is her fault, and those who helped her along—trying to talk me into throwing Darbi in as an equal failure would be dishonest. I think Darbi has every right to be upset at everyone who has been terrible to her. People of value often find that their feelings get hurt, and she’s disappointed in other people. Not the other way around. With all that, it should be pretty simple why I support Darbi Boddy. I would love to see a school board with four more like her. But that won’t be the case this time around; Lynda is the one who went against the plan and misrepresented to everyone what she wanted. And I’m not OK with that. Darbi, in my experience, was a good person who was easy to work with until she was sabotaged with an effort a few months into her term to be removed from office. And that kind of personal sabotage is just another form of election fraud. The voters picked Darbi. Lynda and others have worked to undo that election, and that is the worst of the worst in my book. And why Darbi is not in the same boat as Lynda and Isaac. And why I support her and not them.
Rich Hoffman
If you ever wanted to know why Lakota schools had a terrible report card of 3.5 out of 5 when it should have been, as surrounding districts were, a perfect 5, the reason was sitting in a Butler County, Ohio courtroom on September 15th, 2023. No, it wasn’t Isaac Adi trying to get a protection order against Darbi Boddy that was the problem; it was Lynda O’Conner, who was also present, who was behind everything. Poor little Judge Lyons was there representing Isaac in such a ridiculous case. That he was deceived into doing Lynda’s “Get Darbi at all cost” obsession said everything. He’s a pretty nice guy, and wouldn’t have been there but out of obligation. The drama and destruction at Lakota fell on one person’s shoulders, Lynda O’Conner. Rather than playing politics and embarking on a campaign of personal destruction, she should have been managing the Lakota school system, which shows in the report card. And I know precisely how Judge Lyons got involved in Lynda’s business, which is essentially just the same as Jack Smith’s case against President Trump, with Smith behaving just like Lynda and Darbi being our local version of President Trump. I know because I’ve tried to help Lynda personally for years and I understand that look on Judge Lyon’s face, the “why am I here” look. Lynda, over the last week, has personally been involved in so much destruction. Her crusade against Darbi Boddy is well chronicled, but her fingerprints are all over the Jews against the West Chester Tea Party case, too, which blasted them all over the media needlessly, not caring at all who it might hurt. It was vicious politics and really unacceptable, especially since it involved long-time friends. Having disagreements with friends is one thing. Trying to destroy them is quite another. The smoke is still clearing on that one, but guess who is at the center of all that destruction? All because they didn’t endorse Lynda, and she didn’t want to do the “meet the candidate night?” So rather than going there to get asked tough questions, destroying the venue was the next best option? Those are my assumptions based on knowledge of the people involved. Give me a break. You don’t get to go out and try to personally destroy entire organizations, just as she has done with Darbi, just because they don’t do what you want them to do. Then call up all these “powerful friends” to help you do it. That is corrupt politics on steroids.
Meanwhile, the previous superintendent, who had all the trouble and put Lakota in such a bad place, was hired by Lynda, and Lynda personally managed him. Many of the legal fees that the district has suffered are because of her mismanagement of his time at Lakota; she was the school board president and had the gavel. Based on the police reports, he was much more interested in maintaining a swinger life with area Lakota parents and strangers on Craigslist than in ensuring that Lakota schools was a great district. That is probably, given the destruction in her wake, which I have personally gone way out of my way to help her avoid, was the dumbest thing she could have done. I see the public education system as just a fancy babysitting service, and I put my personal beliefs on hold to help her enormously, including when she wanted my help to get Darbi and Isaac elected. Then, what I witnessed in personal destruction up close regarding Darbi was bizarre and a serious waste of my time, which I’m pretty angry about. I didn’t want to know everything I did that made up that poor report card for Lakota, which all these same losers want to blame on disruptions caused by Darbi. Give me a break. That is like the Democrat Party saying that the world would be so much better if not for President Trump. This politics of personal destruction is a Democrat thing, culminating in that Butler County courtroom. Lynda started the fights between Isaac and Darbi. And she even managed to get an old friend in Judge Lyons drug into a mess she created.
A lot goes into public education report cards, but it comes down to one thing: the teacher’s union’s control over the education process. It states simply, “Pay us more money, and you’ll get a better report card.” All the report card people are aligned to that objective, and next year, Lakota has a teacher’s contract coming up where all these horrible employees will want raises. And if they get them, the report card will suddenly be a four or a five. The real solution to Lakota’s problems would be to have four more parents who care on the school board and to fire all the senior-level sticks in the mud who work at Lakota and hire young, fresh talent who you can get for half the pay because it’s payroll that is the problem and what they do. We don’t need a bunch of radical Joe Biden supporters teaching kids Critical Race Theory and gender neutrality at a six-figure hit to the budget. Then, ask the community to pass a tax increase when their taxes are already out of control, and the hidden inflation tax is destroying their basic lifestyles. The Lakota school board is supposed to be like Darbi Boddy has been. Not a lay down across the train tracks like Lynda O’Conner has done for over 16 years catering to the teacher’s union while playing Republican to everyone who doesn’t want their taxes to go up—but doing the exact opposite regarding actual policy.
I have spoken to hundreds of people about Lynda’s bizarre behavior toward fellow school board member Darbi Boddy, and I think it all comes down to one thing: Darbi doesn’t look like the bottom of a foot. And the irrational crusade against her isn’t over policy or presentation, but it’s over classic female rivalries. Which is pretty ridiculous when you think about what’s at stake. Many people are worried about real estate values because of the continued report cards at Lakota, which are expected to be excellent. But honestly, the real estate value fear tactic is old news now. Schools are good because of the people who invest in real estate. Schools aren’t the primary drivers; location and culture matter far more. The public schools are just places where parents can drop their kids off while parents do “busy stuff.” But in Lakota’s district, child-aged parents are a pretty small demographic. Most people living in Lakota don’t have kids in the community. So all this Lakota news is a waste of their time. It’s not just Darbi; there are several young women who do not look like the bottom of a foot and don’t have to put on layers of caked make-up to go to the mailbox who want to run for the school board. I have only seen this kind of bizarre behavior in situations where women are fighting each other over silly things, which is a pretty stupid thing for people who want to lead the district even to be concerned about. Yet Judge Lyons was getting pulled into an even more foolish story, trying to validate Isaac’s fears of being harassed by Darbi. It was like some dumb soccer game where a player is trying to draw a penalty, and a swift breeze comes along and ruffles the player’s hair, and they fall to the ground as if someone hit them. When you see that kind of thing going on, well, it’s no wonder the report card for Lakota is a measly 3.5. The situation that set up those conditions is older than when Darbi was on the board. And like everything at Lakota and all the trouble dripping off it, Lynda O’Conner is at the center. And she wants to be re-elected? She owes a lot of people an apology, at the very least, Darbi, for one. The West Chester Tea Party for another. The Butler County Courts. And literally hundreds of people who have tried to help her, only to watch her essentially turn into the Jack Smith of our community. And embarrass us all.
Rich Hoffman
So they have drug Judge Lyons into all this? I love the Judge, and there he was in court serving as the stooge for a failed political figure, as Lynda is calling in all the favors, hoping to turn back the tides of reality like some crazy old woman seeks the fountain of youth before the grip of old age seals her doom. These political gymnastics can’t hide the terrible report card at Lakota. Lynda was in charge, and it’s on her, which will be the subject of tomorrow. But for now, man cards are still crucial in the world, despite the attempt to use new woke rules to remove such judgments from society. Men and women still have expectations from each other that have been relevant for many thousands of years, even millions. And that was something an old friend of mine, who ran WLW radio then, used to enjoy during his Saturday radio show from 9 a.m. until 11. Back before there was ever a YouTube, through the Obama first term, I used to do a lot of talk radio all over the country, and I had a good relationship, especially with Clear Channel Radio, who ran WLW, specifically through Darryl Parks when he was the big man at the station, setting all their programming priorities. He and I had similar politics, so I was a frequent guest with him and many other Marconi award-winning personalities, and we had a good time having fun with forbidden early woke social rules. It would be woke politics that would have Clear Channel remove most of the conservative talent (Bill Cunningham is not a real conservative; he only plays one on the radio), and Parks eventually lost his title. But while he had it, we had a lot of fun and did a lot of good radio making fun of ridiculous things, such as woke policies, well before anybody even knew what they were. We would often exploit that trait on his radio show, and one of the most popular mechanisms we would employ was removing people’s man cards when they showed weak behavior in a public setting, especially men who were not standing up for traditional masculine attributes. We would talk about them on the air during his show to hundreds of thousands of people and remove their man cards as a shame for their lack of courage and strength when it was needed most.
So in that fabulous and influential tradition, we must bring back the removal of man cards when they show they do not deserve them, and that is certainly the case with Isaac Adi, the Lakota school board member who attempted to have court protection from fellow school board member, Darbi Boddy. He and Darbi were at a conference in Florida and had several arguments, which isn’t unusual. They ran for school board together and have turned out to be quite different politically. It didn’t look that way at first, but since Isaac won his seat, he has essentially become much more liberal, whereas Darbi is still the conservative mom that she ran herself as. But unlike regular politicians, Darbi didn’t say one thing and then show herself to be something else. And that is what the establishment types call a lack of “professionalism” when politicians do what they say they will do with the naive assumption that they might be able to change anything. For most politicians, you throw populist opinions to the public to get them to vote for you. Then you say other things to those who donate money to political campaigns. But when you are in executive session with other politicians, you are all friends; you talk about Bill’s cat and Sarah’s new dress, and no matter who they are, Republicans and Democrats, you enjoy a kind of silent membership to the club. Darbi was always the same person: the campaign Darbi, the fundraising Darbi, and the daily school board member. So when efforts were led by Lynda O’Conner, a supposed conservative school board member, to get control of these two new school board members a few years ago, Isaac and Darbi, only Isaac listened. Darbi remained independently conservative, and since then, Isaac and Darbi have had a very contentious relationship, and they argue frequently for obvious reasons. If it’s anybody’s fault for destroying their relationship, it’s Lynda O’Conner who did it.
But the only time they’ve been violent, that type of thing was initiated by Isaac. At least two times, I know where Isaac has punched at cameras recording him, and it was women holding those cameras. Isaac has a temper and has expressed it openly. He likes to be in control, and when he feels he’s losing control, he turns to physical aggression. I never thought it was a big deal, but under the definition of harassment that he expressed to a court on September 15th, 2023, then the smeller is the feller in this case. He’s the guy in the elevator passing gas and then looking at everyone else as if it were their fault. So it is ironic that after that Florida trip for school board business, he went to the courts to file a petition against Darbi, citing that he did not feel safe around her and that she had been “bullying” him. And that she carries a gun and he doesn’t feel “safe.” Jiminy Christmas, that is not how men talk! I understand that Darbi is tough, and she has a powerful personality. I have been to the firing range with her and her husband, and I can report that she does know how to handle herself with a gun. But what world is Isaac living in? Everyone carries a weapon, or at least they should. It’s like saying that a woman has earrings. Carrying guns is a common social enterprise, so it should not have been a big deal to Isaac. But he went to the courts to seek protection from her, which was pretty embarrassing, and he felt he needed to. The judge denied the request, as should have been understood from the start. Isaac failed to present evidence that an ex parte order is necessary for his safety and protection from imminent danger.
All that might be fine in the legal world of court talk and political discourse. And to say it’s a dysfunctional relationship doesn’t go deep enough to the true heart of the matter. What is the purpose of these frequent confrontations? It comes down to acceptance of honest public discourse, and what I find valuable about Darbi is that as a genuine representative of the community and an unpolished political figure, she is a good gauge of how people feel in the district. Yet the political trend is to be one way in public and another in private, which is an inherently dishonest position, and that understanding has led to healthy conflict. But if you are a man, you don’t run to the courts looking for protection, for the “state” to protect you. You handle your battles and don’t seek government help to resolve them. That is why Isaac Adi must lose his man card. By the woke rules of the modern world, it’s OK for men to cry and be emotional. And to be afraid of guns. But by the fundamental laws of manhood, those are all reprehensible traits that women classicly find destructive and unattractive. And I think Darbi’s primary source of disappointment, knowing her pretty well as I do, is that Isaac has shown himself to be everything but the kind and conservative person she ran with on the campaign. Darbi never wanted to be a political figure in the traditional sense. She just wanted to be on the school board to help kids get access to a better life. And she has had no desire to become what Isaac has, and that anger spills over into their conversations. The Lakota school board’s dysfunction started when Isaac attempted to remove Darbi from the school board with many other hostile people, led by Lynda O’Conner, literally the moment that Darbi gave her the critical vote to make her president. So, who in their right mind would expect Darbi to get along with them at this late date or that she’d want to join hands under a banner of peace now? She can only hope that she gets more people on the school board who are better representatives of the community to work with, and until then, she is just holding her nose, like many people are. But compromising with people without integrity is not an option, or dealing with people who have lost their man cards.
Rich Hoffman
Of course, we are going to have this fight in Butler County, Ohio. It’s happening globally, nationally, statewide, and regionally. Look what Ken Paxten is going through with the Bush political machine in Texas right now. We find the same kind of problem regarding issues on the Lakota school board: populism as opposed to machine politics. The main reason I can’t support Lynda O’Conner for the school board is due to her performance, which has been rooted in machine politics that has stood against the kind of reforms education needs. She has her role in the nasty storm that is about to hit, and rather than trying to destroy fellow school board member Darbi Boddy personally, she should have been preparing the community for what’s about to happen. I know many people are getting caught up in the Rs and the Ds, even though school board people are supposed to be nonpartisan. We know from experience that such a concept is far from the truth. And based on partisanship, I don’t see any difference between Lynda O’Conner, Julie Shaffer, or Doug Horton. They all would fit nicely in Kathy Wyenandt’s living room as like-minded Democrats. Lynda has called herself a conservative, and she has a network that leans in that direction, but her behavior has been more on the side of Kathy Wyenandt’s pro-government school posse of progressive insurgents and far from small government and fiscally conservative values of the GOP. All the intimidating phone calls, going through people’s garbage, messing with their utilities, or property ownership with useless bureaucracy attempting to show power over the anti-Lynda forces can’t change what she has done. She has told me what I wanted to hear in the past, yet she has behaved in the opposite direction, and those are not traits that can be endorsed. She brought us Darbi Boddy, then immediately, as soon as she was sworn in, turned on Darbi in excessively unhealthy ways, not showing good leadership at all. And now Lakota has a lot of problems looming on the horizon, and because of the time she has been on the board and what she has chosen to do with her time over the last two years, any rational mind would be crazy to endorse her. I was hoping she wouldn’t run and that she would point her interests in a different direction, such as a trustee position. But she has done the worst thing possible: running again when strategically it makes no sense, so now we must have a difficult conversation.
I’ve heard it all before: We must have Republicans on the school board, and these conversations have occurred in name only. Like some sports player who wears any team’s jersey, they are told to play against, without true loyalty to any team. The brand damage associated with Lynda will be very damaging in the months and years to come. I was at an event recently where some very smart political people were talking, and one of these particular people was right about this “perfect storm” that is about to hit. But we disagree on what role Lynda should play in it as an endorsed candidate of the Republican Party. I would advise that the GOP doesn’t touch this one with a 50-foot pole and let the Democrats choke on it because the storm is an act of their creation, and Lakota can do nothing to avoid it. I’m not against the GOP endorsing candidates. A GOP endorsement is powerful enough to do as it has in the past, but with two more good Republicans on the school board; otherwise, we’ll end up with union stooges. But for one of those two endorsements to be Lynda is a problem because the candidate might as well be one of the many liberals of Butler County who know they would never otherwise get elected to anything unless they were affiliated with the Republican Party.
The time to deal with this story would have been over the last few years when Lynda picked a fight with Darbi over, essentially, political power, and now the kicking the can down the road is leading to catastrophic circumstances. Obviously, it would have been better for Lynda not to be near a school board when these things hit the fan. But nobody listened, so the brand damage is going to be devastating. Nobody will be able to say I didn’t warn them. The best thing to do would be to throw this election to the Democrats. That doesn’t change any positive support for Russ Loges, who I think will be a great school board member. Darbi could use help, and Isaac can decide whatever he wants to do. But a teacher’s contract is coming, and they will want more money. There is a facilities plan that looks like it will legitimately cost a billion dollars over the next 20 years. Of course, that is attractive to people in construction, but it’s a vast, expensive commitment to a school system that is changing rapidly with school choice options that will become more dominant soon. This isn’t something that just occurred; the school board has been discussing this facility plan since Brad Lovell was president of the school board, and Lynda was looking for help dealing with him. It’s been a long time; meanwhile, Lakota has burned through its surplus and worked up the community toward a tax increase. The problem is that property value assessments are increasing significantly due to state auditor complications. So, the amount of taxation from those increased property value assessments will be significant. Not the environment that makes for a healthy community passing tax increases to support a government school. Then, of course, the national political challenges with inflation, supply chain issues at the grocery, and general temperament have brought pain to everyday people. These next few years are going to be rough.
I would have advised Lynda to ride off into the sunset after 16 years. Instead of digging in and picking a fight with Darbi Boddy because she didn’t fall under the control of the school board president like other members did in the past. And now there is a whole political faction within the Republican Party that is very angry at Lynda. And with all the intimidation techniques employed, it has only dug them in deeper. And they will continue to make their voices heard. Instead of working to solve those genuine problems, we have significant fractures that will be very destructive. Things would have been different if anybody was willing to play a little chess. The blame for this would be much better placed where it belongs, around the neck of Julie Shaffer or Doug Horton. But if Lynda is the endorsed candidate, it will likely end up around her neck, which isn’t good for her. And everyone supporting her will end up with eggs on their faces during a crisis period that will need a lot of leadership. This happens when you mix political philosophies in the way things have been done at Lakota. It is far better to have apparent political disagreements and to let the losing side be obvious than to let a GOP member burn at the stake with everyone else. And that is what kicking the can down the road financially for over twenty years will cost, which won’t be good for anybody. Lakota is not a quarter of a billion-dollar business with Lynda running it. It’s instead a quarter of a billion-dollar lottery ticket for the unions that have the power to distribute that pile of money collected by property tax owners that is spent on liberal political issues. And as all that hits the fan, it would have been best to have distance politically from the destruction that will follow. That is why I won’t support Lynda O’Conner for the Lakota school board. I would have supported her for trustee or some other position. But not for this mess, which occurred on her watch, actions she did not provide the leadership necessary when it was needed most.
Rich Hoffman
For clarity, the West Chester Tea Party has not, and will not endorse Lynda O’Conner for the Lakota School Board. There has been some rattling around from several people that they would, but they have told me personally that those rumors were untrue and they do not support her. And neither do I. We all have long friendships with Lynda and other candidates who these days call themselves Republicans but have drifted way to the political left. But friendships or past relationships don’t make a good candidate. Whether or not they represent our values to earn a vote is the issue at hand. Too often, endorsements are given out because of friendships, not actual performance. Lynda O’Conner has been the school board president for a while now, and she has attended Tea Party meetings in West Chester for over a decade and has formed relationships with many of us over the years. However, based on her performance and what she did to Darbi Boddy as she begged us all to give her a conservative school board, the moment she had it, she essentially turned into the progressive governor that Ohio had, John Kasich, and betrayed us openly, even recklessly. I tend to move on when I experience people like that. I’ll give them a chance once, and once they show who they are, I don’t get too kinked up about it. It’s always worth a try to give someone a chance. Then, once they show who they are, you make decisions and move on. Knowing she has betrayed many people in the Liberty movement within the Lakota school district and is running again, she is seeking endorsements for the upcoming election. I had some reason to believe the rumors that the West Chester Tea Party might endorse Lynda, but quickly, they set the record straight and wanted to make sure they screamed from the mountaintops that they would not support Lynda O’Connor for the Lakota School Board and based on what they have learned about her, they never would.
I wouldn’t usually talk about something that happened that was confidential, but looking back on it as I have, those privileges are meant within the context of friendly trust. Yet after what happened with the previous Lakota school superintendent and the behavior against free speech that Lynda led against the incoming school board member Darbi Boddy, it’s clear what was going on, and I’m still insulted that she thought so little of me to try it. I mean, she should have known better. I spent hours and hours with Lynda O’Conner on the phone, meeting her in person, trying to help her. But from her side, all she was doing was consensus-building in the classic sense against someone she had targeted as a political rival in the community. And that didn’t become clear until the days after a specific meeting in the basement of some of our mutual Tea Party friends in May of 2022. I should know what she was up to because I have covered these modern versions of The Delphi Technique for years. It’s one of the most corrosive tools used in all public schools. After a contentious school board meeting where I spoke in favor of Darbi Boddy, it was clear Lynda was trying to run her off the school board over minor issues. Lynda had recruited Darbi to give her a majority on the board, along with Isaac Adi, and I did what I could to smooth out the edges and give credibility from the freedom movement side of things. If I were on board with the effort, it would help the conservative base.
I didn’t see a need to be overly cautious with this relationship with Lynda. She had just spent the previous decade trying to win my trust, so I figured getting a functional, conservative school board in charge of Lakota schools was worth a shot. Even that day I met with her and several other people, it became pretty clear what she was doing; I still wanted to give the effort a chance at working. But she was looking for compliance out of Darbi Boddy to some liberal view of authority that was shocking to many of us, especially the West Chester Tea Party. We all found ourselves in the basement of one of the leading members, with Isaac Adi and some school board mentor of his from Monroe schools pushing a sheet of paper in front of me, asking me what I wanted out of Lakota schools, which made me angry because of the amateur effort. It was an apparent consensus-building exercise, much like the Lakota community conversations had been trying to win over opposition to school policy for a while. And Lynda sat across from me with a smile, thinking all this was acceptable. She had surrounded me with people I had trusted, especially in the Tea Party, and she felt that the peer pressure might win me over and away from the continued support of Darbi Boddy. After all the years and everything I had written over all the time we had known each other, she thought I was that stupid.
The meeting didn’t go well. My wife and I left that day, never to speak to any of them personally again, because, within a few months, we had all the drama over the school superintendent. Everything got worse after much further erosion in the community led by Lynda’s tampering with everyone’s political sentiments and wanting to pull everyone to the left, and lawsuits became a significant issue. I had to explain to the attorney for the superintendent that if he had just apologized to Darbi Boddy for his role in trying to do what Lynda wanted, which was to remove her from the school board after many of us had spent the previous year trying to get her elected, then a lot of the trouble he found himself in wouldn’t have been such an issue. But now that people knew and learned how much Lynda knew about it all along, those were self-inflicted problems that ultimately cost a lot of money in the district. Through it all, I hadn’t talked to any of them in that basement meeting, so when I heard that the West Chester Tea Party was thinking of endorsing Lynda, it wouldn’t have surprised me after all the other people who had fallen off the wagon over the last year. But if there is anything good that did happen, as a result, they did let me know that they felt the same way about Lynda as I did and that they would not support her or any of the other candidates who have gone over to the dark side of politics. That’s certainly the case with Ann Becker, who is running for another term as trustee in West Chester. She used to be president of the Tea Party for both West Chester and Cincinnati, but she has moved well away from those good old days now, more toward the political left. Watching that kind of thing is painful, but it always happens. And when it does, you always must wonder what people believe. But happily, it is good to see that the West Chester Tea Party has not waivered, as others have, and they will not be endorsing Lynda O’Conner for the Lakota School Board. And neither will I.
Rich Hoffman
Because I, like many people involved, I must at least provide fair warning. Enjoying people is one thing; agreeing with them is an entirely different matter. This was grotesquely obvious while driving by Lakota West in West Chester, Ohio, on August 8th, 2023, where the special election was a significant focus. As far as the eye could see from the road were Vote No signs, a blatant reminder that the progressive government school there is a factory of liberal politics intent to convert confiscated wealth from property owners and to turn it into Democrat activism. And many Republican-leaning people have been suckered into the game, even to support it against conservative, traditional values. Even on issues like Issue 1, which would have made it more difficult to change the Ohio Constitution, Lakota schools are aggressive in favor of change. That’s the purpose of their existence, to change our traditional American culture into some monstrosity of liberalism. And that election day was just a reminder of that sentiment and the genuine catastrophe of the upcoming fall election in November. Lynda O’Conner is up for re-election, and many people close to the matter have been hoping that she wouldn’t run because the opposition against her is on a crusade that has not been seen at Lakota in all the years of its existence. Before things get too messy here, I would call to mind a few monumental memories of the past, such as when the Tea Party had to take a stand against John Kasich after he turned into a progressive after his loss with the state labor unions. They turned him into a progressive pretzel, and many of us worked hard to destroy him because we had to. In a few short years, you don’t see him around anymore. And many of the people who are now pushing for Lynda O’Conner to be re-elected this fall, after all that’s happened, went after Speaker of the House John Boehner and essentially knocked him out of the Republican Party because he was too much of a RINO.
It’s an old game; we all get it. Friendships are made with people who are politically dangerous so that they can be controlled and perhaps worked against their original positions. And that certainly has been the case with the Butler County Republican Party. It’s always tempting to be invited to the cool kids’ table just so they can control you, not because they really like you. I just spoke about an excellent event with Nancy Nix where some of us have had some cantankerous hostilities toward each other. But at that event, we put a lot of that aside and had a nice evening together and enjoyed the comedians who were performing. It was a nice story. But all that is about to go sideways with Lynda O’Conner, which is fine. But the belief that friendships and private meetings would turn the resistance against her into captured assets of compliance with party sentiments was ill-advised and has only stirred up the hornet’s nest. The people involved with this next generation’s fight against the progressive objectives of Lakota schools will not be enamored with the shiny keys of friendship and gaining a seat at the table with the cool kids of power. The people I know standing against Lynda O’Conner for this upcoming election have a moral problem with her. It goes far beyond even calling her a RINO. They are not interested in Unity for the Community or coming together as a Republican party; this is all about right and wrong and standing up to the intrusions of a progressive political machine that works against conservative values in every way possible. And the passion is much greater than in those days of Governor Kasich and John Boehner. Many of the people involved in those old battles are now part of the cool kid’s club, and they like it, and they are supporting Lynda for the upcoming election and have been whispering in her ear and thinking that little secret meetings and emails of consensus building might work as it had on them in the past. I heard about some of these attempts while driving by Lakota West on that August election day, and I feel compelled to warn everyone that this is different, and there will be severe brand damage in the aftermath. This is unlike anything yet experienced in politics, which says a lot. And I don’t think many people understand.
The advice that I have been giving to people is that this is a throw-away election. If a new school board will not work with a three to two majority to eliminate excessive administrators to save runaway cost losses at the government schools, then what’s the point of any of it? Cutting 20 or 30 equity and inclusion administrative hires could save many millions of dollars, which Lakota needs to do. But there are a lot of soft-shelled tacos out there, some in the GOP who would be running as Democrats if it wasn’t Butler County who want to feel good about themselves by supporting a big government school. The trans issue has been a challenge forcing people’s real politics to emerge along those lines. I would say that because of the way everyone has treated Darbi Boddy as a school board member to let them choke on it. Let the rope go and let Lakota destroy itself; let the liberals have their way. Let them do what Biden has done to the country because then and only then will people wake up. The campaign to fight them will become more apparent when people see what they are about and can’t focus their union efforts of progressivism against someone like Darbi. And for the soft-shelled types who want to support Lakota under Lynda’s leadership, the tax levy they have in mind will change their sentiments quickly. And we’ll be back to fighting tax increases instead of legitimately trying to control the costs.
The people I have been talking to who are thinking of running and don’t think they have much of a chance, I have told them the same thing I’ve said to Lynda in the past. The union threshold is around 7000 voters. That is a baked-in number. If you want to beat them, you must get over 8000 voters, however possible. Lynda hopes to blend that a bit with GOP support, and enough RINO types are willing to cross that line because they don’t want more of a fight than what we have seen so far with Darbi on the board. Yet Lynda’s role against Darbi has woken up something new in the Lakota school district that goes far beyond typical political disagreements. Something that traditional politics has no way of dealing with. This is a battle over ethics and the essence of right and wrong, and the way Lynda handled the superintendent issue and the protection of children at Lakota is a deeply emotional issue that there is no compromise on. This isn’t like the days when the Tea Party wanted John Boehner out, and a more Tea Party type like Warren Davidson was put in, and everyone shook hands and ate a sandwich together. This is more of a civil war, casualties included. Many Lyin’ Lynda types have been waiting for this opportunity, and it’s only fair to warn everyone involved. Because I generally like everyone involved. But right and wrong are not negotiable. That’s certainly always been my position. If people wanted to be friends, okay, I’ve been willing. But I’ve never been willing to compromise right and wrong as determined by conservative, Republican politics. I’ve never been some dope-smoking libertarian. I’ve always been a traditional Republican party supporter. However, some of this new generation are perfectly willing to abandon any pretense of friendship to defend traditional, conservative values. And they are far more interested in doing what is suitable than compromising with what’s wrong to have unity in the community and an intact Republican party. And I provide that warning with sincerity for the good things in the past that have been done and the good memory of them.
Rich Hoffman
I would have never been involved in the last election for school board members if Lynda O’Conner hadn’t asked me to. My kids are grown, my grandkids are being homeschooled, and I think public education is a trash heap anyway. You should join my Thanksgiving Dinners sometime and listen to us talk about politics. My kids likely will homeschool their kids all the way through graduation, we all despise it so much, and we hate the people even more. Bible verses come to my mind a lot these days, given the amount of evil that is showing itself in the world, and this one from Isaiah 49:26 states my feelings about the matter pretty well “And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I am the LORD.” Public schools are oppressive places filled with vile, evil people, and spending one cent of my tax money on them angers me greatly. It took Lynda over seven years to earn my trust enough to have something beyond a polite conversation, and in that process, I came to think that she might be able to help the public school system in some small way, which is always worth doing. I watched some of the school board meetings where other board members would gang up on her because she was the only conservative, and I wanted to help her. So I worked with her during the 2021 election, and Isaac Adi and Darbi Boddy were found and elected to the board, and Lynda then had a conservative majority, and I hoped that Lakota would improve into something functional.
So it was a painful experience to watch Lynda immediately turn on Darbi Boddy in the way that she did and turn into everything I don’t like about public schools. It was ironic to watch the Lakota school board work so hard to get rid of Darbi because they simply didn’t like her by trying to force her to resign over an accidental porn link while communicating legitimate information to the public. Then to have Lynda end up with the same problem within a year, and to have those same school board members who were working against Lynda while Brad Lovell was the board president, into defending her as a sister. We were told that when it came to Darbi, porn links on websites were bad. But when it came to Lynda, it was an accident that wasn’t a big deal. And that is the kind of thing that I don’t like about public schools, where adults who have lived bad lives try to live through their children and play a make-believe game that if only the community would spend just a few more dollars on educating children, that everything in the world would be better. And up until this year, I thought that if good people were involved in school boards, maybe things could work in public education. But I have arrived at similar conclusions as one public speaker at the most recent March 6th meeting, Jamie Minniear, did at a school board meeting. Jamie took the emotion of the year and expressed it, I think, in a way worth noting, which I found reflected my thoughts as well. It’s hard to care about people in politics, but it happens, and that pain can’t be easily contained, which is evident in Jamie’s public statements:
“Lynda-I wasn’t sure how to best communicate my thoughts to you at this point. The lack of response to my many questions over the months, combined with your greeting me at Republican meetings in recent weeks as if all is well, is what prompted me to come here tonight. So much that has happened over the last couple of years with you, in particular, has been difficult to swallow. To say you have been dishonest is an understatement-in fact, I can’t think of anything you have been transparent and honest about. This started with you not supporting parent authority during COVID, then the Matt Miller disaster where you withheld public record requests, violated the 1st amendment by disallowing public comments about Mr. Miller, and in a shocking close to the string of dishonesty, in the face of you reading the superintendents admission to 1) having a sexual fantasy conversation about 3 Lakota students, and 2) his admission to publically advertising his wife to other men for sex on Craigslist-with that alarming information in hand, you said calmly at the November 21st board meeting – “… the board of education’s highest priority is the safety of its students, these claims against Mr. Miller were found to be false by multiple agencies,” Mrs. O’Connor, I ask you, how are the claims false when they are confessed to by Mr. Miller? Then, during that same statement, you went on with a celebration of Mr. Miller by saying, “the board would like to express its full support for Mr. Miller – Mr. Miller is an is an excellent leader in our district, and he is a shining light in Ohio.” How do you, with any sense of morality and respect for Lakota and the community, lift Mr. Miller up and celebrate him like a hero with Mr. Miller’s vulgar confession in one hand and the microphone in your other? You never discussed Mr. Miller’s confession. You first tried to hide it, then ignored it. But here’s the problem. When someone withholds and ignores information, it is a suppression of truth – this is lying. You withheld and ignored Matt Miller’s gross confessions. You lied to the community. In regards to the email you sent me yesterday trying to convince me not to come tonight. You are right about scripture saying go to a brother if you have a grievance with him. But there’s a second part to the scripture. Matthew 18:15-17 If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he won’t listen, take others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. I and many others have come to you individually, as scripture says, but you’ve done and said nothing. Tonight, is the second part of scripture which is bringing it out in front of others to have an account of the issue and keep things honest. Finally, with no attempt on your part to bring clarity or honesty to what happened, I’m asking you to discontinue greeting or engaging with me in public. I’m not interested in pretending all is well.”
Matt Miller was probably the best thing to happen to Lakota; I agree with many apologists on the matter. We are a better community because of Matt Miller. But not because of his work at the school but because of the network of sexual swingers, radical liberals, tax increase supporters, and outright villainy that was uncovered; as a result, going from our sheriff’s department to our school board and all the lawyers in between. As a community, we learned a lot, but more than anything, we have been confronted with a kind of evil that has always worked in the background, and we wonder why our kids grow up destroyed and unable to function in the real world. Look at their parents. And in many ways, the Matt Miller controversies brought all this to the surface and showed people to be what they always were, which leads to always tax increases to fill the financial voids of their empty lives. This is something that went far beyond simple political matters and moved into the struggle of life and death itself and the role of goodness or evil on earth in conflict over a simple curriculum. And when we are told that there is no CRT or that highly liberal and political teachers aren’t sexually grooming kids, it’s coming from the same people who told us that Darbi was bad for accidentally linking porn on her website but that Lynda was good because she had porn on her website for two months because the domain expired and nobody noticed. Both were accidents, but one was deemed bad by the established system, by the same people, yet everything was fine when it came to Lynda. Just as they told us, there was nothing to the Matt Miller story, even as we read it with our own eyes in the police report.
Rather than get emotionally discharged over all these slaps in the face, I have been reminding people that this is an election year, and Lynda is up for consideration. Obviously, it will take more than just putting conservatives on the school board to fix anything and to make what our tax money is spent on just a little better. It’s going to take actually good people, and in my view of the world, Darbi Boddy does that. I would love to have four more on the school board like her. But this election will be different; it won’t just be about names on a Republican slate card or even a party endorsement. This is literally a fight between good and evil. People who would lie to our faces, manipulate our trust, and then carry that sentiment over into the education of children as if they were too innocent to see how the adults are really behaving. If we want to have even a bit of hope for the future of children, then the adults have to start behaving much better. And what we have seen coming from the Lakota school board over this last year has been bad, and kids are smart enough to understand why. It wasn’t Darbi Boddy who lied to the public and misrepresented herself. She is only guilty of not playing the game because she ran on a platform of not playing games. Because games are expensive and they don’t help educate children. But the hurt regarding Lynda is that many people wanted to help her do good things at Lakota, and in the end, she pushed away her supporters and was supported most by those who worked against her. And that level of betrayal is a timely enterprise because it happened when it counted most, during an election year, so people can now at least make a clear choice without a lot of friendly emotions getting in the way. We have seen the truth, and now we have an obligation to act on it. Which we will.
Regarding the 2-hour and 18-minute mark of the March 6 Lakota school board meeting video, it is easy to see what we are dealing with. When my name was brought up, several people asked me how it felt to have people laughing at me during this meeting. I replied in every instance that I was very honored to have those people feel so strongly. Those types of personalities, such as the person pictured with the “removedarbiboddy.com” shirt, are what have infested these public schools with so much terrible behavior. I thought Isaac’s reaction was interesting, especially after all the times he thanked me for all the nice words I sent in his direction. But watching him in that format and actually leading the crowd says everything anybody needs to know. There are the things that people say to get elected. Then there is what they do to stay in favor of the mob. And make no mistake about it; the mob is in charge at Lakota schools and all public schools. Wanting to be liked by the mob is how we lose people like Isaac and Lynda to them. So it is great to see someone, Darbi Boddy, sit in the middle of that mob and show such resilience. And by doing what she has, we see more people following in that lead and ultimately changing the culture at Lakota into something that those laughing will be forced to take a lot more seriously.
Rich Hoffman
The Overmanwarrior 