The “Kids First” Hoboken Board of Education slate is disavowing the endorsement from the New Jersey project, a far-right leaning group, also asserting that they never asked for their support.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
The team, which consists of Pavel Sokolov, Donna Magen, and Cindy Wiegand, said that they did an internal investigation that concluded they never asked for NJ Project to back their team, as they did for hundreds of candidates statewide.
Last week, the “Leadership that Listens” slate took aim at the endorsement in a mail piece that began with “Across America, extremists are trying to over school boards. Now it’s happening here,” a move that drew strong reactions throughout the Mile Square City.
“We take allegations of this nature very seriously and took extra time to address them. Kids First look to continue an issue-based campaign,” Wiegand said in a statement.
NJ Project said they endorsed candidates, who did not authorize such an action, who they felt are committed to closing the gap on the learning loss created by 2020 and 2021 COVID-19 mandates, rejecting the introduction of age inappropriate sexual content in the classroom, and protecting parental authority to choose health and wellness interventions for their children, among other things, according to their website.
In the aforementioned flier, Magen was accused of being anti-mask for opposing mask mandates for children in comments made in the Facebook group “NJ Fresh Faced Schools,” a page affiliated with NJ Project.
Screenshots released by LTL last week, when they also called on Kids First to denounce the endorsement, show that Magen tagged Kids First Hoboken in the group after a post asked “who is running for BOE in your town with a child first initiative” on September 17th.
Nik Stouffer, who runs the group, replied to Magen by thanking for her for the reply and indicating they had a Zoom meeting scheduled for candidates that Sunday.
According to Kids First, Magen, an unaffiliated voter, did not attend participate in the call and had no other dialogue with Stouffer pertaining to her candidacy.
The non-partisan Hoboken BOE race, that also features two independent candidates, is on November 8th, when eight candidates will be seeking three, three-year terms on the board.