More eyebrow-raising details are emerging about Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee in North Carolina's K-12 school superintendent race.
According to a recent report by Media Matters for America (MMFA), Morrow has touted her past work for the political action committee (PAC) Liberty First Grassroots, which is a far-right advocacy group that's embraced numerous conspiracy theories. Some of the group's most spurious claims are that school shootings are "false flag" attacks staged by the US government, that the US government secretly played a role in the orchestration of the 9/11 terror attacks, that wealthy celebrities drink the blood of children and that former President Barack Obama is a grandson of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler through his mother.
The PAC — whom Morrow used to work for as a spokesperson — has given Morrow a "100%" endorsement, calling her "the light on the hill."
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MMFA also found documented examples of Liberty First Grassroots PAC endorsing other fringe conspiracy theories like QAnon, Pizzagate (in which a Washington, DC pizzeria was accused of running a child sex trafficking ring out of its nonexistent basement), that Obama was "a political science project by psychopaths" with a "Hitler blood line" and even the belief that public schools are part of a "plan set up by the Illuminati to mold the brains of our children." The group has also endorsed the chemtrails/contrails conspiracy theory, as well as the conspiracy that Obama is secretly a member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
"[Morrow] has been involved with LFG for years and has served as the group’s spokesperson. A 2021 LFG statement described her as 'a long time Conservative Activist Team member' and someone who has been 'quoted by the media many times,'" MMFA's Payton Armstrong and Eric Hananoki wrote. "Morrow has credited LFG with being an integral part of her political journey, telling an interviewer that she first connected with the group surrounding the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, who became a Supreme Court justice in 2017."
In one social media post from 2019, Liberty First Grassroots wrote that LGBTQ marriage was part of the "New World Order" conspiracy, whose adherents believe that "a shadowy elite force is trying to implement a totalitarian world government."
"This is where we are headed... if we let the Left continue," the group wrote on Facebook, sharing an image of a book whose author predicted that the state would raise children instead of parents and that practitioners of all religions would be imprisoned.
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Morrow has not distanced herself from the group despite its views. In an interview last month with the Raleigh News & Observer, when asked about past "notable government or civic involvement," Morrow cited her work as "spokesperson for Liberty First Grassroots" as an example. When she unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the Wake County Board of Education in 2022, she also mentioned the group when referencing past political experience.
Even after winning the Republican primary for K-12 schools superintendent, Morrow did not distance herself from her past comments that Obama should be publicly executed by firing squad on live TV. When CNN reporter Shimon Prokupecz confronted Morrow outside of a campaign event last week and asked her if she still stood by her comments, she instead pivoted to campaign talking points and told Prokupecz to "keep your eyes on your own paper."
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