Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board candidate faces questions about GOP ties, donations
 "Meredith Pruitt")
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Party affiliation, deep-pocket donors and a request for “bullet voting” are drawing attention to one Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board candidate running for office.
Meredith Pruitt, a registered Republican, is running against four Democrats and one unaffiliated candidate for three seats on the seven-member, nonpartisan city school board.
In a recent campaign email, she asked supporters to forgo voting for three members and instead to “consider a single vote for me.” So-called “bullet voting” is a tactic that “will give me a distinct advantage in winning a seat on the BOE,” the email said.
The rarity of a Republican running for office in heavily Democratic Orange County, combined with her resume of having worked for once-embattled UNC System President Margaret Spellings and other top Republicans, has raised questions about Pruitt’s political motives for some voters.
In an interview, Pruitt said she has no agenda in seeking office and wants to offer voters a conversation.
Pruitt’s campaign finance report showed she has far outpaced her rivals in fundraising, with $14,079 by late September, including several large contributions from out-of-state and major Republican Party donors.
It’s an atypical amount of money for a school board race. Riza Jenkins had the next highest total at $2,044, with no donation over $100, reports showed, followed by George Griffin, who was largely self-funded with $1,218. Two candidates Ryan Jackson and Mike Sharp did not file a campaign report, indicating they had raised less than $1,000.
The donations further stoked rumors that Pruitt might be among a wave of conservative Republicans running for local school boards because of larger cultural conflicts, including over COVID-19 vaccines, masking, and diversity and social-emotional learning curricula.
School board member Lisa Kaylie, who is stepping down in December, said it would not surprise her to see more conservative runs for Orange County’s school boards, especially in next year’s election. Pruitt’s fundraising “raises a big red flag for me,” she said.
“I just look at it and think, well, this person hasn’t ever been involved in our schools before and now they have a significant amount of money donated to them and a lot of it is from out of state, so it does seem to be an interesting decision for her to be making and for her donors to be making,” Kaylie said.
Professional ties, Republican bosses
In the last 20 years, Pruitt has worked for several top public relations and lobbying firms, including Burson-Marsteller, Powell Tate, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and The Podesta Group (later PodestaMattoon).
The latter was founded by Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta, who later became part of a Justice Department probe into whether top Washington lobbyists violated foreign lobbying rules by working on ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s Ukrainian campaign.
In 2006, Pruitt became communications adviser and chief of staff to Spellings, then the Education Secretary for President George W. Bush. Spellings hired Pruitt again in 2016 as chief of staff and senior vice president of UNC System communications and marketing.
When Spellings left three years later, Pruitt moved to her current job as UNC Health vice president for strategic initiatives and academic business development. She maintained ties with Spellings, who officiated later that year when Pruitt wed her husband Jonathan Pruitt, who also had worked for Spellings. He now is chief operating officer for the UNC System.
Those professional experiences and connections are key to her fundraising success, Pruitt told The News & Observer. She doesn’t have political motives, her candidacy is not coordinated, and she’s not going to “charterize the schools,” Pruit said.
To voters, she said, “Let’s have a conversation.”
“I just wish — in a place that we purport to be inclusive — that we would want to promote [the] First Amendment, free speech and diversity of viewpoints,” Pruitt said. “I’ve been very surprised at the amount of backlash because I’m a registered Republican. I think people make assumptions that are unfair and hurtful.”
Who are the donors, where do they live
A September campaign reported showed roughly a third of Pruitt’s donors live out of town or out of state. Her North Carolina donors are largely Republican, but there also are unaffiliated voters and at least one Democrat.
Pruitt and her relatives donated $4,810, and people with a Chapel Hill address donated $4,995. Five donors gave $500 or more:
▪ Spellings: Gave $500 to the campaign.
▪ Lindsay Kelly: Lives in Chapel Hill and is press secretary with Teach for America. Kelly, who contributed $500, is married to Andrew Kelly, UNC System senior vice president for strategy and policy, who has worked with Pruitt.
▪ John Preyer: Gave $1,000. Owns Raleigh-based Restoration Systems and is vice chairman of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, appointed in 2019 as part of a shift toward board members with Republican Party connections.
Preyer’s more controversial votes included his opposition this year to tenure for Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and two votes last year: against a policy that would remove the names of people linked to slavery or segregation from campus, and against removing the names of four white supremacists from campus buildings.
He has donated thousands to the N.C. Republican Party and candidates, including Senate leader Phil Berger Sr., his son Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr., and U.S. Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr, according to the political tracking site OpenSecrets.org. His donations also helped a few Democrats, including N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper and former Gov. Beverly Perdue, the site showed.
▪ Andrew Miracle: Pruitt’s neighbor donated $1,000. He is the grandson of Rockingham County textile magnate Dalton McMichael Sr. and a member of the McMichael Family Foundation. His uncle Dalton McMichael Jr. is a textile manufacturing company owner, the foundation’s president and a major campaign contributor to Republican candidates, including Berger.
Miracle is a registered Republican, but online searches do not show any contributions he has made to political parties or lawmakers.
▪ Lauren Maddox: Gave $1,000. The senior policy adviser for Washington-based Holland & Knight, who lives in Virginia, also worked on President Donald Trump’s post-election transition team and in senior roles for top Republican House members. Pruitt was her chief of staff when Maddox was an assistant secretary in Spellings’ Department of Education. She has made some donations to Democratic lawmakers, but is largely a donor to the Republican Party, candidates and causes, records show.
Campaign motives, ideas, strategy
Several people, including former Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board member Mia Burroughs, told The N&O they heard people express concerns about possible motives for Pruitt’s candidacy, but have not seen any proof. Burroughs, when asked for her thoughts, said she would have “concerns about somebody running for school board whose motivations are unclear.”
Pruitt said her motivation is to bring new ideas to a district that is high achieving but stuck in trying to resolve its lingering student achievement gap, particularly among Black and Hispanic students and students with disabilities.
She would take another look at the data and consult with state and national level experts, while pushing for more STEM learning opportunities, internships and mentorships, she said. Pruitt noted that her donors and those with whom she has talked on the campaign trail share her views.
“Our kids cannot read on grade level, and we are essentially failing our students, and so before we can get into conversations about digging deep into curriculum, we first need our kids on grade level and we need to teach them how to think critically, and then they think for themselves,” Pruitt said.
When asked to respond to statements by Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson about school “indoctrination” and state Republican efforts to limit what is taught about race or sex, Pruitt said she would want to hear from the community before making any decisions.
“I think our public schools have a responsibility to teach history and all its ugliness, but teaching that one sex or race is superior to another is not the right approach,” she said.
Her opponents declined to talk about Pruitt’s views but urged voters to watch the Sept. 30 online candidate forum hosted by the CHCCS PTA Council, Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP and others, and to talk to each candidate. Voters should choose the strongest supporters for students and the district, regardless of party affiliation, Griffin said.
Griffin, Jenkins and Sharp have become a de facto bloc since campaigning started, but that wasn’t the intent, they said. During the campaign, they learned there was “a common core value about education and what we were thinking would be necessary to keep the school board moving forward,” Griffin said.
Pruitt pointed to that group effort as a campaign tactic, just like her bullet-voting request. Griffin and Jenkins disagreed, saying they are only “actively supporting” each other’s campaigns.
Bullet voting is another election strategy, they said, but it also is asking voters to squander two opportunities for deciding who will make important district decisions. Voters have a duty to elect board members dedicated to educating future leaders, they said.
“It’s not anything new,” Jenkins said, “but from a community organizing side, and just understanding the importance of exercising every single vote that we have ... because so many people have fought for our right to vote, it’s critical.”
This story was originally published October 25, 2021 at 2:57 PM with the headline "Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board candidate faces questions about GOP ties, donations."
