Religious Right, Foes Vie in School Races : Politics: Foes put an end to ‘stealth’ campaigns. They hope to curb church influence in public education.

Once again, the so-called “Christian right” has fielded candidates for many county school board posts up for grabs next month. But this time, they face organized opposition.

The victories of conservative and evangelical Christian groups in the 1990 elections galvanized teachers unions, religious leaders and community activists to back their own candidates this fall.

As a result, several San Diego County school board races next month pit candidates who emphasize teaching morality against those opposed to promoting a religious agenda in the classroom.

This year, the conservatives have changed their tactics--partly because their candidates came under fire for running “stealth campaigns” in 1990.

Then, many conservative candidates did virtually no campaigning but relied on slate mailers distributed by conservative organizations such as the California Pro Life Council, an activist anti-abortion group.

This year, by contrast, almost all candidates have submitted ballot statements and attended community forums.

The religious conservatives’ opponents say campaigning has been more open this year because they are paying closer attention to the school board races, traditionally overshadowed by statewide ballot issues and offices.

“Our principal concern was that (the conservatives in 1990) were not engaging in an open and honest election,” said Rita Collier, head of the Mainstream Voters Project, formed in the wake of the 1990 election.

“People who seemed to be invisible were elected without any press scrutiny, and we decided that if the press wasn’t going to do it, we were,” Collier said.

Collier and others say their goal is to keep the religious right’s gains to a minimum.

“It would be miraculous if they didn’t win some” races, said Poppy Dennis, executive director of the year-old Community Coalition Network, formed to oppose candidates espousing conservative values.

“And there are a lot of boards that are set up for potential majorities,” Dennis said.

Among those boards that conservatives are most likely to gain majority control, Dennis and others believe, are La Mesa-Spring Valley, Lemon Grove, Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College and Vista Unified.

Christian activists say their opponents are unfairly raising the issue of religion.

Lamar Keener, editor of the Christian Times, attributes the increased attention this year to “the far-left liberals” who are “displaying anti-Christian bigotry” in their campaign.

“They are making (religion) a big deal because they are scared,” said Keener, whose publication’s endorsements are considered influential among Christians. “It has nothing to do with whether or not a person is Christian. It has everything to do with what their personal philosophy is, which happens to be conservative.”

An increase in media attention on Keener and other religious conservatives nevertheless is leading them to scale back their expectations for victory at the polls--at least publicly.

“I really would hesitate to do any betting” on the races’ outcome, said Donald Smith, chairman of the San Diego County chapter of the Christian Coalition.

Keener said his publication endorses candidates based on telephone interviews about their beliefs. Those receiving support tend to be in favor of a voucher system allowing public money to finance private and public schools; of either teaching homosexuality as morally wrong or not teaching about it at all; and of placing stronger emphasis on abstinence in sex education courses, or ban such courses altogether.

The religious conservatives’ opponents fear that those philosophical underpinnings could lead to censorship of books, use of sex education courses to preach against abortion, and introducing the biblical doctrine of creationism into the classroom.

Religious conservatives fault schools for providing services beyond education, such as school breakfast programs for impoverished children. Candidates such as Mark Wasdahl in Lemon Grove and Jim Deyling and Sylvia Sera Sullivan in La Mesa-Spring Valley see these programs as a government intrusion into family life.

“I know that there are children who go to school hungry,” said Wasdahl, who has been endorsed by both the California Pro Life Council and The Christian Times. “But I would prefer to see the food go to the parents, because the parents are the nurturer, not Big Brother.”

Supporters of the federally funded breakfast program say that when children come to school with their stomachs on their minds, they are hard to teach.

“Let’s get this straight,” said Ted Crooks, part of an anti-fundamentalist slate running in La Mesa-Spring Valley. “Kids have been hungry for years, we have to feed them.”

Some of the conservative candidates, including Wasdahl, Deyling and Sullivan, refuse to send their children to public schools yet are running for school board.

“It is sort of curious why they want to become involved in public schools,” said Lemon Grove board incumbent Lewis Zollinger, who is running for his third term. “It seems that their agenda is to embroil the district in controversial issues that have really been long resolved, such as prayers in schools.”

Wasdahl, a transportation planner, and his wife teach their two children at home. Although the Lemon Grove district has a home-schooling program, they are not involved in it.

“We do it (at home) because we are able to really pick out a precise curriculum which matches the best learning methods that the children learn by,” Wasdahl said.

Deyling and Sullivan, two of the La Mesa-Spring Valley candidates, say that sending their children to private, Christian schools is a financial sacrifice.

“I wish we could send our kids to the nearby public school . . . but I saws the test scores . . . below average and going down . . . and with the problems with gangs,” Sullivan said.

Yet not all the organized Christian-backed candidates follow the same line. While Sullivan and Deyling, for example, support school vouchers, Wasdahl does not.

But such differences on individual issues are not reassuring to opposition groups, who tend to see the endorsement of a candidate by any Christian group as reason enough to sound a warning.

Dennis said her Community Coalition Network, while it does not endorse candidates per se, has put out flyers listing Wasdahl and other religious conservatives as “unacceptable.” She said her group is “merely trying” to provide information on candidates in reaction to those in 1990 that went unscrutinized.

Other groups that have traditionally stayed out of school board races this year have decided they need to take a position.

Teachers unions in several districts have, for the first time, endorsed candidates, and in almost all cases have supported the incumbents running against those backed by Christian groups.

Tom Conry, head of the Vista Teachers Assn., is quick to say that the incumbents running for reelection in Vista Unified--Marcia Viger Moore, Linda Rhoades and Lance Vollmer--have done well by the district’s children.

That is why the association made the endorsements even before challengers had filed against them, he said.

But when pressed, Conry said that teachers are reacting to “a movement of a small minority group of people to try and limit access to the curriculum by our children and try to put into policy ideas that are not acceptable by the majority of people within our community.”

Churches, both liberal and conservative, also are jumping into the fray, with both sides concerned about the image projected about religion.

“It is possible that people will look at this and feel that all religious groups are like the religious right, and I hope that doesn’t happen,” said the Rev. Jerry Stinson. Stinson is pastor of the Pilgrim United Church of Christ and a member of the San Dieguito Interfaith Ministerial Assn.

But Ernie Richter, pastor of Grace Community Church and a member of the evangelical North Coast Christian Ministers Assn., said he does not know of any candidates trying to instill Christianity into the classroom.

“Our concern is not to turn our school system into a Christian school system or in any way become intolerant of other positions,” Richter said. “What we are concerned about are moral or ethical issues where there isn’t a consensus in the community.”