Far-right schools chief put MAGA ally on downtown Phoenix school board

In late April, embattled local elementary school board president Jessica Bueno quit.

For weeks, Bueno had resisted public pressure to step down following a Phoenix New Times report that she’d bailed out a now-convicted sex offender when he was caught in an underage sex sting. Parents — including Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes — packed meetings of the Phoenix Elementary School District governing board to rail against her. When Bueno announced her resignation, they finally got what they wanted.

But, as they say, be careful what you wish for.

Bueno’s absence left PESD’s five-person governing board one member short, and candidates quickly began applying with the Maricopa County School Superintendent to fill the vacancy. District parent Allison Gullick submitted an application two days after Bueno resigned. The next day, former Phoenix Union High School and Laveen Elementary School District board member Randy Schiller threw his hat in the ring. Adrianne Speas, another district parent and fixture at board meetings, applied. Also in the running were an Arizona State University professor with a kid in the district, a veteran school guidance counselor and the president and CEO of the Children’s Museum of Phoenix.

County school superintendent Shelli Boggs picked none of them. After Boggs began interviewing candidates in late May — and promising them a decision by June — she finally tapped a replacement on Monday. In a press release, Boggs announced she’d be installing Suanne Edmiston, a MAGA political operative and relative Arizona newcomer, until the next school board election in November 2026.

In her announcement, Boggs praised Edmiston’s “proven leadership, strong commitment to accountability and dedication to fiscal responsibility.” In an email to Phoenix New Times, her office called Edmiston, who is currently Arizona state director for the hyper-conservative State Freedom Caucus Network, the “most qualified candidate.”

Edmiston is also the only candidate who shares Boggs’ Trumpian views. Observers noticed that Boggs, who won election in 2024 on an arch-conservative platform, sat on the board opening for weeks until Edmiston applied on July 1, nearly 70 days after Bueno resigned. Several applicants for the vacancy told New Times that Boggs grilled them with politically-tinged questions about their views on diversity, equity and inclusion and their voter registration.

To them, it appeared as if Boggs was content to leave the spot unfilled until a far-right candidate miraculously popped up for the nonpartisan, unpaid board seat.

“She’s been notorious for doing this,” Gullick said of Boggs. “(Edmiston) is the only MAGA. And it seems like their whole point is to put in a MAGA person everywhere.”

‘MAGA is winning’

By picking Edmiston, it doesn’t appear Boggs did anything she’s not allowed to do.

Under Arizona law, county school superintendents can appoint district governing board members when there is an opening. That appointee serves until the next governing board 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, spanning 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 explicitly 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 prominent 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 conservatives 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 individuals 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 — 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 Monday, 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 interviews with Boggs and her team. Three candidates for the position told New Times they were also asked “inappropriate” questions in their interviews.

Francisco Pedraza, whose child attends Emerson Elementary School in the district, said he was asked over two interviews about about banning DEI in education, upholding Trump’s executive orders around DEI and making sure the school district “doesn’t turn into some kind of agenda-pushing body about woke politics or woke ideology.”

“It was super politicized,” Pedraza said. “I’m here because I have a kid in the school district and I want the board to be transparent. I was really frustrated as a constituent that the board was making decisions about closing schools.”

(Pedraza and other parents have criticized the board for a lack of transparency, including about the decision to shutter two district schools and end its contract with ASU Prep. The board also failed to notify the community when it paid $200,000 to settle a former student’s sexual harassment lawsuit.)

Schiller applied for the board seat in hopes of addressing a “trainwreck” of a governing board that struggled to complete such basic tasks as updating its agenda. His pitch to Boggs was that as a school board veteran, he was plug-and-play. “I don’t need to learn anything,” he said. “I know the rules. I know the policies. I’ve been through all this.” As weeks went by and three follow-up emails went unanswered, he realized Boggs was looking for a true believer. Schiller, a registered Independent, didn’t fit the bill.

“I’m not right enough for her,” he said. “It’s actually sad because you’re missing decent people that can make a difference.”

Multiple district parents wrote letters to Boggs recommending Gullick. In her May 20 interview for the position, Gullick fielded questions about her voter registration, which she had switched to Independent in November after losing faith in the Democratic Party. When Boggs asked her about how she’d vote on the board, Gullick replied, “Well, I’m just going to vote for whatever is in the best interest of the children.” Gullick hadn’t heard anything from the county superintendent since her interview nine weeks ago — until Monday, when Boggs sent her a rejection email.

Asking about political affiliation may be unusual — Pinal County School Superintendent Jill Broussard told New Times she doesn’t ask about party affiliation or other political questions because “it is a nonpartisan position” — but it’s not off limits. Jim Barton, an employment and government relations lawyer at Phoenix-based practice Barton Mendez Soto, said that while Boggs’ questions were “disappointing” and “sorta gross,” they are “probably above board.”

“One would be hard pressed to say it’s out of bounds to ask those questions,” Barton said, though he added that “it just shows disregard for the position” that is supposed to be, “by its nature, nonpartisan.”

Oliver, Boggs’ spokesperson, confirmed that candidates were asked these questions during interviews. Regarding questions about Trump’s executive orders, Oliver noted to New Times that PESD is a district that receives “substantial federal funding and Superintendent Boggs is concerned about risking funding by appointing someone who refuses to uphold federal laws.”

Oliver did not explain why candidates were asked about voter registration, focusing instead on Boggs’ question about whether candidates intend to run to keep the seat when the appointed term ends. “It is important to Superintendent Boggs that we remain consistent and keep governing boards healthy,” Oliver wrote.

As it happens, Boggs will soon have another PESD school board seat to fill. On July 29, one week before Edmiston’s appointment, PESD governing board member Alicia Vink announced that she’d be resigning at the following meeting. Her husband’s work is taking her out of the state.

For Schiller, that spells more trouble.

“I’m really worried with that one lady quitting,” he said, “we’re going to get two far-right MAGAs.”