Although at the highest level the US political system is driven by money, and lots of it, this is not true of many local political races. If you want to get elected to a City council or a School board, you do not need much money at all, just a reasonably good platform and the ability to get your supporters out to vote.
The low barriers to entry, however, create their own set of issues. In my home city of Duncanville, two aquabbling factions have been negatively impacting the functioning of the City council for years. All over Texas, school districts end up periodically mired in scandal (or, in the case of Dallas, a continuing string of dysfunctional events and scandals) because the school board members are either single-issue wackaloons (most usually Christian creationists) or just plain incompetent.
Or, maybe, in the case of Perryville MO, the elected member turns out to be a raging misogynist who thinks that it is a smart thing to make comments about women needing to be on their back with their legs spread.
What is more frightening. as one commenter in the article points out, is that the vote to censure this doofus was not unanimous. Clearly there are three members of the school board to failed to think that his verbal snark was significant enough. The people of Perryville probably need to be thinking about whether this how they want their town to continue to appear on Google search results.
