Texas education board candidate known for conspiracy posts
Mary Lou Bruner is also the front-runner in a Republican primary runoff Tuesday for a seat on the influential state education board — a nomination the 69-year-old nearly clinched outright despite a lengthy social media history of posting about conspiracy theories and fringe screeds.
Bruner has called climate change a hoax concocted by Karl Marx and suggested that the federal health care overhaul is a part of a government plot to reduce the U.S. population, according to since-deleted Facebook posts captured by the Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning watchdog of the state education board.
"If she wins it would be embarrassing for the state of Texas because it would again make us look like an educational backwater," said Dan Quinn, spokesman for Texas Freedom Network.
An influential tea party group this month withdrew their endorsement after Bruner rattled off a series of inaccurate statements during a meeting with school superintendents, including that half of Texas' schoolchildren are in special education programs.