12 Aug 14th- Aug 20th, 2025 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | election and may run to keep the seat. With PESD’s school board elections happening every even year, Edmiston’s seat will be up for election in November 2026. If she doesn’t seek and win reelection, her term will end in January 2027. Until then, the MAGA-aligned Edmiston will serve 5,200 students, span- ning from kindergarten to 8th grade, in a particularly liberal and diverse district. Nearly 80% of PESD students are Hispanic, 88% receive free or reduced food services and 15% are learning English as a second language. Democrat and Independent voters dominate the district, according to voter registration precinct data, with roughly 47% of voters registered as Democrats and nearly 40% labeled as “other.” Only 13% of voters in the district are Republicans. When considering an appointee, Boggs doesn’t need to consider any of that. In fact, as long as the individual lives in the district and isn’t a sex offender, she can appoint whomever she wants. Boggs has taken this power and run with it. She won her election on an explic- itly pro-Trump platform, railing against “wokeness” in schools and hammering other MAGA talking points like the need for parental choice and the dangers of “gender ideology.” Since taking office, she appears to be reserving school board appointments for fellow Trump loyalists. “She’s definitely pushing to get her own people in there, that’s for sure,” said Schiller, who is also a former president of the Arizona School Boards Association. “If you look at everyone she’s put in recently, they’re all MAGA. She’s protecting that brand.” Edmiston fits the bill. The western Pennsylvania native has a long background working in Washington, D.C., under promi- nent GOP lawmakers, including Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly, Iowa Rep. Steve King and Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert. Her LinkedIn profile, which was last updated in early 2023, says she got her bachelor’s degree at George Washington University and her law degree from Regent University, the private Christian university that televangelist Pat Robertson founded in 1977. She joined the State Freedom Caucus Network, which works to provide conser- vatives in state capitols nationwide with “resources they need to win,” as their Arizona state director more than two years ago, according to a February interview with the organization’s Substack. In that interview, Edmiston said she works with Freedom Caucus members in the Arizona Legislature daily to support them in their work to “oppose the corrupting forces of ‘consensus’ at any cost.” Those members include at least eight state lawmakers, including state Sen. Jake Hoffman and state Reps. Alex Kolodin and Joseph Chaplik. Several Arizonans are also a part of the powerful House Freedom Caucus in Congress, including Rep. Andy Biggs, who previously chaired it, and Reps. Paul Gosar and Eli Crane. New Times tried to reach Edmiston by phone and email, but she did not respond. Three days before her appointment, Edmiston told New Times she had “not heard anything definitive” about her being selected for the open board spot and declined to answer further questions about her application. PESD spokesperson Nicole Baker said the district did not provide candidate recommendations, which Boggs isn’t required to heed anyway. In an email to New Times, Boggs spokesperson Anna Oliver said the office doesn’t recruit indi- viduals to apply for the vacant positions and interviews everyone who applies through a roundtable discussion. “We don’t have a formal set of questions for interviews,” Oliver wrote. But the MAGA bent of her selections is hard to miss. Boggs has handpicked at least seven school board members so far this year, per a count by the Arizona Agenda. She placed Jeremiah Cota, who used to work for Gosar and Biggs and was the political director for the Arizona Republican Party, on the Phoenix Union High School District’s governing board. Boggs also appointed Michael Todd to the Liberty School District board — a position he previously held, though his record of “adopting a policy to prohibit boys from using girls’ bathrooms” likely gave him an edge, according to the Arizona Republic. In March, Boggs tapped Kelli Anderson for the Queen Creek Unified School District because she “stands firmly against DEI-driven policies,” per a Boggs press release. The Queen Creek Independent found now-deleted Facebook posts of Anderson at a MAGA event, including one with Jacob Chansley, better known as the QAnon Shaman. In a social media post on Aug. 4, Cota said the quiet part out loud, praising Edmiston as a “MAGA school board member.” “MAGA is winning,” he wrote, “and taking over our big city schools!” ‘Inappropriate’ questions Boggs wasn’t shy in her quest to find a MAGA appointee for PESD’s school board, as candidates learned during MAGA Takeover from p 10 Suanne Edmiston. (State Freedom Caucus) >> p 14
