It’s been a long year for Tumwater, a politically purple town with 24,852 people and three craft breweries that’s become a pawn in a political chess match over transgender rights.

And the whole year, it’s never gotten far from the paint. It began with a high school basketball game. It was February, and the girls’ JV Tumwater High School Thunderbirds basketball team was playing the Shelton High School Highclimbers.

Fifteen-year-old Thunderbird Frances Staudt was warming up when she noticed a girl on the other team was trans. She later told KOMO that she feared the girl would injure her during the game, and complained. But in Washington, trans girls and boys have played with, and against, cis girls and boys for nearly two decades. The trans girl could play, no matter how much Frances complained. She sat out in protest. So did one of her teammates. They still won, 33-16.

Frances said the situation “put her on the spot in the whole gym.” She said she looked over at the trans girl and said, “You are a man.” That was her First Amendment right, she later told KOMO.

The President and Republican Party were behind her. The day before, Trump had signed an executive order banning trans girls and women from playing sports against cis girls and women. Not that there are very many, or that there’s credible scientific evidence proving athletic advantage. But Washington State and the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), the state’s governing body for high school sports, were not on Staudt’s side. The Washington Law Against Discrimination protects transgender people in places of public accommodation, which include school athletic programs, and the WIAA was the first state athletic association in the nation to adopt a trans-inclusive policy.

The WIAA slapped Frances with an ethics violation for calling her opponent a man. This was a catalyst.

First came a civil rights complaint filed on Staudt’s behalf by a right-wing nonprofit called the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, or FAIR. Cofounded by Bari Weiss, the “anti-woke” opinion columnist now running CBS news, FAIR’s purpose is to dismantle diversity efforts, like when it sued the Washington State Housing Finance Commission over a homebuyer assistance program for nonwhite people, or when it sued Arkansas for reserving one board seat on a medical board for someone “of a minority race.” The complaint led the Department of Education to investigate the Tumwater School District over alleged Title IX violations. Last April, the Biden Administration expanded Title IX, a 1972 law against sex discrimination in education, to cover anti-gay and anti-trans discrimination. The legal rationale is simple: Discrimination against a gay or trans person is a perception that someone is not performing their sex or gender the right way. Trump promised to do away with the change during the campaign, and a federal judge struck it down in early 2025.

Three weeks later, on February 27, the Tumwater School Board held a vote. The WIAA was considering rolling back its trans athlete policy. Back in December, 14 out of 294 Washington school districts had voted to amend these WIAA rules, but not in Tumwater, where the board had not taken up the vote. But then the executive order and the basketball game happened. A resolution to support those amendments passed three to one.

School board member Melissa Beard cast the lone vote against the measure. Nationwide, conservatives have created panic over trans people to mobilize their base, get elected to public office, and warp curriculum. Republican lawmakers in 28 states have effectively banned trans kids from playing sports, even in places where there had never been issues, or even evidence that trans kids were competing.

Conservatives are attempting to use trans kids as a political wedge here, too. The Let’s Go Washington’s ballot initiative campaign targets queer and trans kids under the banners of protecting “parents’ rights” and “fairness” in girls’ sports. Extremist Moms for Liberty candidates have won several school board elections statewide. Beard’s lonely vote was evidence that not all elected officials would speak out against bigoted policy.

Months later, she had a new political challenger. It was Aimee Staudt, Frances’s mother.

Tumwater is situated in one of the only legislative districts in Thurston County with Democratic representatives—Rep. Beth Doglio and Rep. Lisa Parshley—but like its blue neighbors Lacey and Olympia, the conservative politics of nearby rural towns often encroach on the small city.

Those conservative politics prompted the vote to change WIAA’s trans athlete policy. When the vote came, Melissa Beard sat on the dais and reread what she was going to say. “I was like, ‘Yeah, this is it. Tumwater may not be ready for this. You may lose the election,’” Beard told herself. “And I was okay with that, because I was willing to go down on this issue. It was that important that people knew where I stood.”

Every seat in the room was taken, a few by people wearing “Protect Trans Kids” shirts. Standing in the back, teens with dyed hair held a trans flag.

Even though the room was packed with people who agreed with her, Beard knew her vote could cost her the election this November.

But she knew she was right.

Beard says that when board members are sworn in, they take an oath to “uphold the constitution and the laws of the United States and the state of Washington.” Trans people are a protected class in Washington. Supporting the measure would go against state antidiscrimination law and violate her oath, she says.

She said exactly that from the dais to the crowded room. “I’m concerned that this resolution communicates that we do not see these students as an equal part of our community,” Beard said. The crowd cheered.

After she said her piece, only one of the four other school board members spoke. Jill Adams, who abstained, worried out loud about Trump’s executive order. “Federal laws have supremacy over state and local items,” Adams said, saying she was caught “between a boulder and a hard surface” with this vote.

A woman in the crowd shouted, “Executive orders are not law!”

“We’re not going to do this,” Beard said. “No.”

She moved on to hear comments from the rest of the board.

Casey Taylor, Ty Kuehl, and Darby Kaikkonen said nothing. Then they voted yes.

“They were all very upset. They were all very frustrated with me,” Beard says. “I don’t know what they thought. I don’t know why they were frustrated.” She paused. “I mean, I lost the vote.”

Beard likes finding common ground. She cut her teeth as an analyst in the Washington State House of Representatives during a deadlock between Republicans and Democrats 25 years ago. She even found compromises during COVID on this board, when other members bristled at the state mask mandates and school closures she supported.

“For whatever reason, they did not want to have that conversation about this particular resolution,” Beard says.

When asked for comment, Kaikkonen sent links to comments she made at a different school board meeting two weeks after the initial vote. Kaikkonen started off by criticising the February 27 meeting for not following the board’s rules of order—criticism of Beard and how she ran the meeting. Having a crowd present that did not support the policy “created a situation” where Kaikkonen felt she could not “express my point of view… [and] be listened to in an open, fair, and impartial manner.”

“This issue is impossible,” Kaikkonen said about trans kids playing sports. “[It’s] a stalemate, a game of tic-tac-toe in which there’s no winner.” She supports the transgender community, Kaikkonen says, but she also supports women. By way of explanation, Kaikkon told a story.

“I started swimming competitively when I was 8 years old,” she said. She detailed her whole swimming career, at one point holding up her collegiate All-American award for breast stroke.

A week later, Kaikkonen was fired from her job at the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Superintendent of Public Education and Kaikkonen’s boss at OSPI Chris Reykdal has been vocally supportive of trans kids competing in school sports. In a lawsuit, Kaikkonen alleged her firing was retaliation for her vote. The Office says it filed a motion to dismiss the case because Kaikkonen’s “legal claims all lacked legal merit.” The US District Court in Tacoma dismissed the case in early November.

The other board members did not respond to The Stranger’s request for comment.

Two months after the vote, the rest of the board asked Beard to resign as board president, and she did. Beard explained she’d planned to rotate the presidency throughout the year, so this was a good opportunity to do so. But it seems as if she just wanted the issue to go away so she could keep working with her fellow board members.

“I will always put organization over self,” Beard says. “So rather than make them extend any of this pain, they asked me to resign, and I said, ‘Fine, I’ll just resign.’ Can we just get past this?”

Aimee Staudt saw an opportunity. Four days after Beard filed to run for a third term, Staudt filed to run against her. Beard didn’t think it was personal. They lived in the same district. She assumed Staudt would have run anyway.

As an experienced campaigner, Beard normally reaches out to her opponents before the race heats up. But she didn’t do that with Staudt. (“I just didn’t get the sense that she was in it for what’s best for the district,” Beard says.)

Staudt did not respond to our request for an interview.

She also didn’t run much of a campaign. She raised just $1,063. Staudt didn’t spend any money on mailers herself, but was included on a $5,100 mailer campaign from Sarah Overbay, a candidate for the District 1 school board position. Those mailers praised Overbay, Staudt, and other more conservative candidates. On the back, the mailers went negative on their opponents, claiming Beard and the other progressive school board candidates running only cared about “gender politics,” which ironically seemed to be Staudt’s sole issue.

That became clear during a candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters, the only forum she attended. Staudt—who didn’t even have a campaign website—said she was running to “use common sense and put education first again.” Schools were wasting too much time on political and social agendas and not enough time on teaching students how to read, she said. She called for transparency, to give families a choice and to make sure schools partnered with parents instead of trying to replace them. Her talking points emphasizing a need for parental power and control are textbook for right-wing candidates.

Beard worried about her chances of beating Staudt. She stressed over the possibility of her campaign becoming a national talking point. And for good reason.

In the last month before the November election, anti-trans politics flared up in Tumwater once more.

A sore loser, hedge fund manager Brian Heywood is again funding a signature-gathering campaign for his anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-public-education ballot measures.

Heywood’s campaign, Let’s Go Washington (LGW), is gunning for two initiatives on next year’s November ballot.

The first would reinstate the parents’ bill of rights that already passed as an initiative last year. But, much to Heywood & co.’s chagrin, the Legislature mostly nullified it during this year’s session. So, LGW is trying to volley it back.

“We don’t co-parent with the government,” Heywood said in a statement first reported by the Washington State Standard. “No government employee can care about or love your child like you do.”

What Heywood really wants is to do away with student privacy and control public education. The Parents Bill of Rights initiative allows parents to “examine” curriculum decisions and school policies, something they already had the right to do, while granting access to their child’s mental health and counseling records. The rule could force teachers and guidance counselors to out LGBTQ kids to their parents, which could be dangerous for those living in unaccepting homes. In an emailed statement, LGW wrote that the initiative would strengthen “communications between parents and school.”

Heywood’s second initiative would ban transgender athletes from playing girls’ sports. The initiative would require athletes to have a doctor certify their sex before they can participate in girls sports. This could require a genital examination.

As Seattle Police Department detective Beth Wareing said at a WA Families for Freedom press conference in November—a campaign to kill Heywood’s initiatives—genital examinations “would increase the risk of sexual abuse for girls participating in sports.”

The LGW campaign seems unbothered by the criticism. Campaign spokesperson Hallie Herzberg called the risk of sexual abuse a lie. “The opposition is proving again how little they care about females in sports,” she said. And the campaign is asking people to literally rally around them inside schools. It’s held five so far, with eight more planned between now and January 2, when LGW plans to turn in its signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office.

In late September, days before she jetted off to Washington, DC, for Trump’s antifa roundtable, right-wing commentator Brandi Kruse promoted LGW’s signature-gathering event at Tumwater Middle School. Kruse has no official or financial association with LGW, but volunteered to speak at the event, a “Super Signer Kick-Off” for its anti-trans initiatives.

Board member Beard thought holding the event in Tumwater was bizarre and opportunistic. Liza Rankin, Seattle Public Schools board director and member of the Washington State School Directors Association, also thought it intentional and “a little bit weird.”

Holding the rallies at schools can show voters that the initiatives are “about children,” so they can say, “If you love children, you’ll come to this thing,” Rankin explains. But it could also be setting up a confrontation.

The Tumwater rally was planned for October 4, a month ahead of the Beard vs. Staudt race. Kruse spent the days leading up to the event drumming up attention for the rally. When The Stranger asked why, she told us “radical gender ideology belongs in the dustbin of American politics.”

The week before the planned rally, her tweets turned angry. Tumwater School District had denied the event permit.

“In Washington state, schools will grant facility use permits for grown men in panties to dance for little children. But want to hold an event to support parental rights? Sorry, no can do!” Kruse tweeted, citing a drag event at a school.

Kruse tweeted that the school district “caved to left-wing activists.” Kruse said it was the only LGW event denied a permit.

Schools are sensitive places for politicking. State law doesn’t allow any campaigning involving public resources. Public schools count as a public resource. However, because the LGW initiatives aren’t yet on the ballot, it creates a gray area.

“If they aren’t allowed to do it, they can throw a tantrum,” Rankin says. “What they want is to say they’re being politically persecuted. They want the narrative that ‘We’re just standing up for parents… and it’s the liberal lawmakers who are being mean to us.’”

LGW denies that. “We aren’t looking for a freedom of speech fight,” Herzberg said. The public schools offer a space for people to “turn in their petitions without being harassed, attacked, or stolen from,” Herzberg said.

The reasons were more mundane, according to records obtained by The Stranger. LGW’s campaign submitted a permit application three days before the planned event. Tumwater School District requires that applications for permitted events be submitted seven days prior to the event.

“Due to the short timeline, the request wasn’t approved,” a spokesperson with the district said. “It’s our understanding that they met outside of the fencing at Tumwater Middle School on the date they requested use of the building.”

At the event, Staudt’s daughter, Frances, spoke about her experience and about the lack of fairness in girl’s sports. Kruse amplified it online. From the internet attention, the issue seemed big, but only a few dozen people had shown up to the rally.

That could explain the election results in Tumwater.

Beard defeated Staudt with 61 percent of the vote. Beard thinks voters valued her experience, and her record, more than this one issue.

They also valued progressive Julie Watts over Sarah Overbay, the conservative who sent out those negative mailers, in a race for an open seat. On her campaign website, Watts wrote, “Our district is caught in unnecessary political fights—like banning transgender athletes—instead of focusing on what matters. These aren’t abstract debates; they’re about real kids who just want to belong.

“When a school board tells students they don’t deserve inclusion, it’s heartbreaking,” the website read.

But Tumwater is still purple. Incumbent Kuehl, who voted to change WIAA’s policy, and newcomer Rob Warner, who said at a forum that he would not rescind the policy, made it through.

That split feels apt for Tumwater, Beard says.