Right-wing school board candidates claim masks are 'tyranny,' 'torture'

With Fairbanks Memorial Hospital in a crisis because of unvaccinated COVID patients and dire warnings from health professionals, the Fairbanks school board will require masks for students, staff and visitors starting Monday.

The sensible decision will likely be reversed, regardless of the health emergency, if right-ring school board candidates Jeffrey Rentzel and Andrew Graham are elected Oct. 5. Both continue to make exaggerated and false claims about masks and mask “tyranny.”

Here is the full list of candidates.

Rentzel is running against incumbent Chrya Sanderson, who supported the mask mandate. Graham is running against incumbent Erin Morotti, who supported the mask mandate.

Sally Gant, another right-winger running against Morotti, is also opposed to the mask mandate.

If Rentzel or Gant and Graham are elected, the 5-2 vote on the school board would become a 3-4 vote to drop the mask mandate.

Both men are given to overheated rhetoric on this and other matters.

“Masking of anyone is torture in my eyes,” says Rentzel, a former state employee. Rentzel ran and lost a race for the assembly in 2019 and for the school board in 2020. In 2019, he said, “What I find upsetting is the school budget continues to increase.”

He claimed two years ago that “the personal rights of all the individuals in the borough are slowly being eroded away.”

Graham claims that a vote to require masks to protect the health of children and school staff is a vote against “the people of the borough,” which is obviously not true. The idea that wearing masks is “medical intervention,” as he insists, is absurd.

Graham and Rentzel, who have no experience in health care, oppose the guidance of the Centers for Disease Control.

Graham is a supply manager for the Air National Guard. He also is a part-time real estate agent at Cyclic Properties, “a collective real estate firm,” and an investor in cryptocurrency, earning $5,000 to $10,000 from that exercise. His wife is a school district teacher.

Rentzel is a retired juvenile justice officer for the state. He has a state pension of from $20,000 to $50,000 a year.

Rentzel said he is really upset about poor writing, reading and arithmetic in the schools.

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