Kaitlin Noethen at an Aug. 10 Pinellas County School Board meeting. Credit: Screengrab via Pinellas County

Right now, nearly 9,000 students and teachers in Hillsborough County Schools are isolated or in quarantine because of exposure to COVID-19. While health officials and school administrators are desperately urging people to mask up and get vaccinated, a new class of Tampa Bay school board candidates are doing the opposite, and are instead pushing anti-vaxx misinformation and QAnon conspiracy theories.

Kaitlin Noethen, who has had her microphone muted at at least one school board meeting and was kicked out of an Einstein Bagels location for yelling about mask mandates, filed to run for Pinellas County School Board District 2 on July 21.

“Pressure, fear, coercion, force, intimidation, manipulation, you're all guilty of these for the past year,” said Noethen at a recent Pinellas County School Board meeting. “This is a Satanic agenda. Freedom is the only way out of captivity. Our time here on Earth is short, your time in hell will be longer. I urge you to choose truth and righteousness. That's all I have to say, I'm going to end this was a song, because the flag still stands for freedom, and you can't take that.”

Noethen, who also goes by Kaitlin New, then begins to sing Lee Greenwood’s 1984 hit song “God Bless The U.S.A.”

Noethen’s personal Facebook account is littered with anti-vaccine posts, calls for the CDC to be defunded, anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) sentiment, claims that some medical professionals are actors, discounts to her cleaning business for people who aren’t vaccinated, and conspiracy theories tied to QAnon, the claim that former president Donald Trump is somehow fighting a secret war against an underground celebrity-run pedophile sex ring.

In a post from May 4, Noethen regurgitated a popular and verifiably false QAnon-based conspiracy theory that Bill and Melinda Gates are getting divorced to protect his assets once he’s arrested for connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Noethen added that the divorce is a distraction from “their global eugenics program that’s wildy successful” and that “Melinda is a transgender.”

In another post from July 19, she shared a post equating vaccine passports to Nazis forcing Jews to wear the yellow Star of David, writing “I did not N A Z I that coming.”

And, a few weeks later, she posted a photo of herself with Enrique Tarrio, a convicted felon, FBI informant and leader of the Proud Boys, which is an SPLC-designated hate group that was heavily involved with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. “My favorite part of being a Patriot is the people I meet along the way,” wrote Noethen. “Enrique Tarrio did nothing wrong!”

Noethen did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.

According to election documents, Noethen has raised zero dollars for her campaign. As for her opponents, Lisa Cane has raised nearly $3,000 and Brad DeCorte has raised zero.

Besides QAnon quackery and photos with known white nationalists, Noethen has also trafficked information from the anti-vaccine group the Freedom Keepers. Recently, the nationwide group’s local chapter has been heavily involved with recruiting members to show up at legislative hearings and school board meetings to argue against COVID-19 preventative measures, such as vaccines and mask mandates.

Another local anti-vaccine group, Moms for Freedom, has also been vocal at local school board meetings and is actually going as far as fundraising for, and running one of their own affiliates, Alysha “Aly Marie” Legge, as a school board candidate.

Legge, a stay-at-home mom, filed to run for the Hillsborough County School Board District 6 on April 26.

Earlier this week, as thousands of students and staff went into quarantine in Hillsborough County Legge postulated on her Facebook page that the spike in new COVID-19 cases might not be authentic.

“How do we know for sure these children were really exposed and tested positive? We know there have been suggestions from parents on social Media wanting to just claim their child is positive or exposed to watch chaos ensue. (This information was provided in the last school board meeting),” wrote Legge.

No evidence has been presented that Hillsborough County parents are faking COVID results.

In the same post, Legge also seems to suggest that people who have tested positive, but are not symptomatic, should be subjected to the “discriminatory quarantine protocol.”

“Change the discriminatory quarantine protocol so those that quarantine are symptomatic, just like with any other infection, regardless of mask or vaccine status,” wrote Legge. “Not quarantine those that are not masked, while those masked get an option,” she continued. “Not everyone exposed will fall ill or ever become symptomatic.”

Legge did not respond to multiple requests for comment from CL.

According to election documents, Legge’s campaign has raised $3,950. Her opponent, Karen Perez, has currently raised $13,000.

It's important to note that Tampa Bay’s new crop of anti-vaxx school board candidates is not unique. As NBC News reporter Ben Collins reports, since Donald Trump’s presidential defeat there’s been a large push from the QAnon community to run for local-level offices, distance themselves from the now tainted “Q” label, and lump in other conspiracy theories with anti-CRT sentiment.

“These moves signal an important evolution for the QAnon movement,” wrote Collins, “which has fractured since Trump’s defeat, with many proponents rejecting the Q label but continuing to push ideas about societal conspiracies of child abuse. For the past month, the top of the Great Awakening, a leading online QAnon forum that calls itself the ‘public face of Q,’ has featured an abridged quote attributed to [Michael] Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser and a hero to QAnon followers, who has sworn an oath to the community in the past.

‘Local action = national impact. Take responsibility for your school committees or boards. Get involved in the education of our children. Run for local, state and/or federal office,” reads the quote. “No more excuses.’”

Last June, the National Education Association also warned of conspiracy theorists infiltrating school boards.

“Across the county, conspiracy theorists and proponents of fake news are winning local elections,” wrote the union. “And their new positions give them a powerful voice in everything from local law enforcement to libraries, trash pickup to textbook purchases.”

Primaries for both Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties are Aug 23, 2022, with the general election slated for Nov. 8. To qualify for the ballot, candidates need to either collect enough signatures or pay a fee. In Hillsborough, the signature threshold is 9,344, and the fee is $1,870.92. For Pinellas, the signature threshold is 7,185 and the fee is $1,865.20.

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