Williamson County neighbors:
Jared Sullivan here. As I’ve mentioned in past emails, we have some big elections coming up. In fact, early voting starts this Friday, July 17, for the federal and state primary and the county general election.
I’ve shared my local candidate recommendations, so double-check them and then go vote! (Here’s the Democratic sample ballot; here’s the GOP; here are the polling locations.)
But first, I want to talk about one of the most competitive races — the District 10 school-board seat.
In that race, Jennifer Parker Konyn — a public-school parent who has a degree in childhood development from Vanderbilt — is running against Elliott Franklin, an IT professional from Texas and a former Moms for Liberty blogger who has SIX CHILDREN AND NOT ONE OF THEM CURRENTLY ATTENDS PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
So, why is Elliott running? That’s a darn good question. To find out, I interviewed him recently, and our conversation left little doubt that he’s an ideologue who would try to shape school policy around his far-right worldview (as much as he insists otherwise). And, if elected, he would almost certainly further politicize the WCS board and drive away serious educators and administrators, like Jason Golden.
Here are the highlights (or, perhaps, the lowlights) of our conversation.
[1] Elliott doesn’t distance himself from Moms for Liberty.
For several years, Elliott wrote blog posts for the local chapter of Moms for Liberty, a dark-money-funded extremist group that has lobbied to have books about Ruby Bridges and Martin Luther King, Jr., removed from school libraries. M4L’s deluge of absurd book-ban requests is why, in 2022, WCS forbade non-parents from requesting library books be reviewed for appropriateness. (Elliott disagrees with the policy.)
During our call, I pressed Elliott on his involvement with M4L, and he never meaningfully distanced himself from the organization. When I asked if he would participate in M4L if there were still a local chapter, he said, “I don’t know.” He added, “Am I still friends with people that were a part of it? Absolutely. Do I advocate for the exact same stuff that they advocate for? I think it’s pretty clear on the record in terms of when I speak.”
[2] Elliott is running to stop “indoctrination” in schools, though he couldn’t provide one example.
In 2022, during Elliott’s first (failed) school-board bid, he tweeted that he was running to stop the “indoctrination” of public-school children. More recently, he tweeted that he’s running because public schools are full of “decay” and “rot.”
So I asked him, What’s an example of indoctrination in Williamson County Schools?
“I don’t know that I’ve seen it in Williamson County Schools, necessarily,” he said. “But [in 2022] it was a national trend … so, like, critical race theory.” I told him that CRT was never taught in Tennessee public schools, and he agreed, explaining, “It was more of just a national trend.”
In other words, he’s running to solve a problem that he admits doesn’t exist in our schools. His baseless indoctrination concerns suggest that he’s easily swayed by inflammatory right-wing rhetoric spewed by Elon Musk and the like — not a trait I want in a school-board member.
[3] Elliott says he likes public schools, just not enough to send most of his children to one.
Elliott and his wife have six children. Five of them were either homeschooled or attended private school; only his oldest (now-grown) child graduated from Page High. The benefit of this, he told me, was that he has seen “all three angles” of education: public school, private school, and homeschool.
But one must assume that public schools were his least favorite option — because if he actually liked public schools, why didn’t he send more of his kiddos through WCS?
He tried to explain, saying that he homeschooled his younger children so that he and his wife could teach them “ethics and morals.” Which I guess means public schools preclude parents from moral instruction? That’s news to me, an actual public-school parent. (Also, my kid’s kindergarten teacher is a saint, and I would be delighted if my daughter grows up to share her morals.)
[4] Elliott said schools shouldn’t favor one ideology or worldview, except when it comes to issues he finds objectionable.
Elliott attends a fundamentalist evangelical church, but he told me that public schools should be “100,000% religion neutral,” and he said several times that he doesn’t push his views on others. So I asked whether he would commit to opposing the removal of age-appropriate library books that include gay characters (aka nothing sexual or racey, just normie gay characters). “I don’t know that I could make that commitment,” he said.
But, surely, I said, he could understand why a nice local gay couple might want age-appropriate library books with LGBTQ+ characters for their children to check out? After some stumbling around, he said he hadn’t thought about the issue along those lines, but he still didn’t concede that libraries should carry such titles.
THE UPSHOT
Elliott is a well-mannered, polite guy. He never got testy with me, and our conversation was unfailingly cordial. But his actions — M4L blogging, having no children currently in public school, his support of silly book bans — undercut his claims of being a dispassionate, civic-minded do-gooder. He’s running for a reason, even if he won’t say it outright, and he seems to have no serious commitment to upholding civil liberties or pluralism. Which is why Jennifer Parker Konyn is, without question, the D-10 candidate who deserves your vote. (If you live in D-10, please forward this email to neighbors!)
Toward the end of our conversation, Elliott told me, “Everybody has an ideology or worldview, and that’s definitely going to contribute to how you think about issues or look at issues.” I have no doubt that’s true when it comes to Elliott Franklin.
UPDATE: July 17, 2026
In case there was any doubt that Elliott is a lousy candidate, on Thursday, July 16, long-serving WCS board member Eric Welch pointed out on Facebook that Elliott has shared and reposted content supportive of Andrew Tate, the social-media personality who has been charged with rape and human trafficking in Romania. Elliott also follows Nick Fuentes, a political commentator known for promoting white nationalist and antisemitic views, including Holocaust denialism. I asked Elliott if he wanted to comment on any of this, but he didn’t reply to my text message.
In an article in the Williamson Herald, Elliott describes himself as a member of Fellowship Bible Church’s security team. I reached out to the church asking whether Elliott is still a member of that team and whether his public statements and online activity are consistent with its values, but I have not heard back.