This school board race is nonpartisan. It doesn’t feel that way.

Four candidates are on the ballot for two contested seats on the Montgomery County school board. One is drawing particular attention.

Brenda Diaz, a former Montgomery County Public Schools teacher who resigned after violating the mask mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic, has drawn the ire of a super PAC. And the president of the influential teachers union has labeled her a “MAGA sheep in wolf’s clothing.”

Diaz emphatically pushes back against this label, instead positioning herself as an independent voice who will stand up for parents.

The Strong Maryland PAC, which has also targeted school board candidates running in Frederick County, is spending tens of thousands of dollars to keep Diaz off the board, flooding social media with ads that label her as too extreme for this deep-blue county.

“They’re spending against me because I dare to answer to families first, not to special interest groups,” Diaz wrote in a recent message to supporters.

The stakes are high for this Nov 3. election, which will shape a school board charged with overseeing Maryland’s largest district as it navigates a tight budget, declining enrollment and contentious decisions about campus closures.

Campaign finance reports due next week will paint a clearer picture of both the PAC’s war chest and other candidates’ financial standing.

The candidates

Diaz is running against Omar Lazo, a businessman and Montgomery College trustee, on Nov. 3 for an at-large seat.

Cassandra Sung and Sally McCarthy are facing off for the open District 3 position.

The winners will serve four-year terms on an eight-member board, which includes a student representative.

At a League of Women Voters forum this week, the candidates generally focused on their own positions. Lazo said he would think of outside-the-box solutions for complex problems, Sung highlighted her prowess with data, and McCarthy dived into her long history of advocating within the district.

Diaz painted herself as the anti-establishment candidate, saying she’d ask the hard questions and “bring painful truths to light” about the state of the district.

The closing statements delivered by Lazo and McCarthy – both candidates with well-funded campaigns and long lists of endorsements – appeared aimed at contrasting themselves with Diaz.

“The reason that I have so much support is because I am a bridge-builder,” Lazo said.

McCarthy emphasized that being a school board member is a collaborative effort.

“You need five votes to pass anything on the board,” she said. “The board role really is about building consensus. There’s no singular in the board. It’s a ‘we’ project on behalf of the citizens and our kids and our staff.”

Lightning rod

This is Diaz’s second run for a school board seat.

The Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee recently changed its rules so it could oppose school board candidates who don’t align with party values.

The reason, the group wrote in a June statement, was to allow it to counter “the far-right agenda championed by extremist and hate-group aligned candidates running in non-partisan school board races around the state.”

“The MCDCC urges Democrats and all other voters to reject Brenda Diaz as she seeks election to the Montgomery County Board of Education,” the statement continued.

The county GOP, meanwhile, threw its support behind Diaz.

“MCPS needs an independent voice,” the group wrote in an August Facebook post, encouraging people to choose her.

In 2024, Diaz lost to Natalie Zimmerman, who secured roughly 57% of the vote. Both in that race and this one, the teachers union endorsed Diaz’s opponent via its influential Apple Ballot.

As part of its campaign against Diaz, Strong Maryland highlighted a social media post in which Diaz wrote: “Instead of fully funding #MCPS, it’s time to @DOGE MCPS!”

This message could strike a nerve in Montgomery County, where many parents lost their federal jobs amid the Trump administration’s cuts.

“It’s really important that people understand that Brenda Diaz does not stand for Montgomery County values, and we have to take it seriously,” Montgomery County Education Association President David Stein said.

Diaz said she hopes voters look past the negative ads and consider her policy proposals, which include building back the School Resource Officer program. The district stopped assigning police officers, known as SROs, to campuses in 2021, replacing them with “community engagement officers,” who patrol the communities surrounding campuses.

“No, I’m not MAGA. No, I’m not a book banner,” she told The Banner after the forum. “These are all slurs that are used against me.”

Wooing voters

In June’s four-way primary, Diaz secured nearly 30% of the vote. Roughly 7,100 ballots separated her and Lazo.

After the debate, Gaithersburg resident Carol Adoum approached Diaz to ask about her position on book-banning. She’d heard somewhere that Diaz was in support of it — a stance that’d be disqualifying if she wanted Adoum’s vote.

Diaz denied that she wants to ban books. She instead talked about the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2025 decision to side with Montgomery County parents who sued for the right to opt their children out of lessons that included storybooks with LGBTQIA+ themes.

“We have to respect people’s different religious beliefs,” Diaz told Adoum.

Adoum left that conversation undecided about whether to vote for Diaz. She said she would need to do more research and investigate all the other things she’d heard about the controversial candidate.

“I want to understand more,” she said after walking away from Diaz.

The next day, though, Adoum seemed more sure.

“Probably I won’t vote for her,” she said.