It has been interesting to watch the trajectory of two school board officeholders who essentially started at the same place but took two different paths upon being elected to satisfy the parameters of accomplishment. Obviously, there is more to the conflict this past week between Isaac Adi and Darbi Boddy on the Lakota school board, where the police investigated a condition of assault, where Isaac, yet again under pressure, lashed out at someone trying to record his public behavior. Darbi is a tough young lady who can handle conflicts just fine. But what’s interesting is how RINOs are created because once elected, Isaac went into an appeasement mode of the very kind of people he was supposed to be engaging with, whereas Darbi has stayed faithful to her campaign promises. I talked to Darbi about all this while we were both at a March for Children rally in downtown Hamilton, Ohio. Darbi never advertised herself as anything but a fighter for children’s rights, whereas the same was expected from Isaac. But once elected, what was witnessed was an instant barrage of influencers who often inject themselves into the newly elected person’s life, and the temptation to appease these new faces is powerful, and most people never develop resistance to it. When I see these clips of Isaac Adi acting violently toward people who put cameras on him to record aggressive behavior, I see that conflict in his actions. Isaac is not alone in this problem. Being authentic has a freedom of its own which was quite apparent when I was able to talk to Darbi on camera about her first few years as a school board member at Lakota. You can see freedom of conscience in her because she has stayed true to herself. But others have not, and that often leads to the kind of obvious frustrations on the face of Isaac Adi in the footage of him lashing out at Darbi.

I worked with both Isaac and Darbi during their campaigns because many of us wanted to help Lynda O’Conner have conservative votes to work with on the Lakota school board. We felt sorry for Lynda and tried to help her. Isaac and Darbi essentially ran together as a package during the campaign, and they won their elections easily. But as soon as the election was over, Lynda started talking about controlling the school board members in ways that didn’t sound very Republican. And immediately, the OSBA (Ohio School Board Association) started to do its work; it’s like a club. They invite new school board members into the warm embrace of friendship, and it doesn’t take much for that type of romance to entice lonely people or people with a natural personality to want to please others. Admittingly, that was a concern I had about Isaac during the campaign; he was so friendly and so outgoing that I was concerned that he would find the desire to appease the other school board members too lucrative when conflict was the best approach. One thing that we did talk about that didn’t make it on camera was Darbi’s support network, with Kelly Kohls at the National Leadership Council (NSBLC), which offers an alternative to the support of the more labor-union-controlled OSBA. Lynda O’Conner and I have talked specifically about the OSBA; she thinks it’s a good organization. I think along the lines of Darbi and Kelly on the matter. But the obvious results are in the influences that led to Darbi doing what voters expected on the Lakota school board and Isaac looking to appease all these new friends, which is the game of politics that happens at every level.

As I explained to Darbi, I am proud of her, as many are. I’ve been doing this kind of thing, supporting candidates in many ways, for many years, and most of the time, it results in a dud. It’s like going to the fireworks store for the Fourth of July and buying a bunch of fireworks that never blow up. You have great expectations, but they just fizzle out when you light the fuse. Whereas with Darbi, she has exploded in all the right ways that were very satisfying and surprising. Every now and then, your hopes and expectations are met, which is the case with Darbi. She was not seduced by all the forces that have taken public education in the wrong direction, and that has been great to see. The ratio for me is about 10 to 1. Of every ten candidates I have worked with over the years, you occasionally get one Darbi. Of course, I knew when such an honest person like Darbi, who simply wanted to do an excellent job as a school board member, confronted a system with so much bad behavior in it, and that bad behavior was hidden from the public through friendships that were designed to conceal it; then there would be conflict. I get emails from people all over the country from people who are political moderates who are jealous that they don’t have someone like Darbi Boddy on their school board. I am very proud of her and would love to have three or four more like her, people who could resist the temptations of group consensus at the expense of voter responsibility.

We don’t elect people into politics to get along, which is becoming more evident in national politics. We don’t expect physical altercations either, but one of the problems that lead to so much corruption is the appeasement of peers, which is at the heart of the problem at every level. At Lakota, at the fundamental community level, we can see two people who started in the same place and quickly went in entirely different directions. From both perspectives, they had good intentions, yet during our talk, Darbi hit the nail on the head; much of the evil that starts in the world of politics doesn’t come from some pitch-forked devil; it’s often the friendly face who wants to buy you dinner and treat you like a king or princess. Of course, they expect something in return. But it’s often hard to see because it feels good to be liked. Some people will do anything to be liked; once others know that about you, they own you. And at that point, elected representatives often go bad when they fall in love with being loved because, just like a manipulative spouse, once they start jerking around your feelings, you lose the authenticity of why people voted for you in the first place. And at the heart of the conflict between Darbi and Isaac, two people who ran for office together and had been friends, is this villain of appeasement. The lucrative nature of being accepted in the warm embrace of friendship within institutional confinement is a nector all its own. And thankfully, in our community, Darbi didn’t fall for it, much to the frustration of those who wanted to seduce her into it. That’s why people tell me they are jealous of us in Lakota because they see the clear value in elected representatives like Darbi Boddy. The controversy only comes from those who want to steer her in a different direction. But she has stayed with the voters authentically, and people appreciate that, as they do with all people who do so. And with Isaac, it’s frustrating when you can’t please everyone, and that comes out in these outbursts caught on camera twice now. As Darbi said to me, she gets tired of how people talk behind closed doors and speak in public. That duality is the source of the problem because an honest person would be the same in any format. 

Rich Hoffman