Custis switches parties in Woodbridge School Board race

A new Republican is running for the Prince William County School Board in Woodbridge, but he’s not a new candidate.

Jaylen Custis, the recent Forest Park High School graduate running to unseat incumbent Loree Williams in the Woodbridge District, says he’s leaving the Democratic party and accepting the Republican endorsement in the race.

School Board races are nonpartisan, but most candidates run with the endorsement of local political parties. Williams, one of the most progressive members of the board, has the endorsement of county Democrats. Shantell Rock, the chair of the county’s Racial and Social Justice Commission and former head of the county’s Moms Demand Action chapter, is also running for the Woodbridge seat.

Custis, who told InsideNoVa that he’d previously been a member of the local Democratic party, sought the Democratic endorsement but was told he would be eliminated from consideration after meeting with the local chapter of the conservative parents group Moms for Liberty in the spring.

As he’s gotten older, the 19-year-old Custis says he’s also found that he’s more aligned with Republicans on several policy issues.

“One of the main issues of why … it’s time for me to go is the LGBTQ issue,” Custis told InsideNoVa. “The transgender issues inside our schools, I strongly believe … that that stuff should stay at home and not inside our schools.”

Custis said he supported the Virginia Department of Education’s new model policies regarding transgender students issued under Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, though he said they would not be a priority for him on the School Board.

Mainly, Custis said, he’s running on a message of making schools more secure and improving the school division’s infrastructure.

“The Republican party did not tell me to change any of my views, and that’s what I liked about them, actually,” he said, “because … the Democrats said, ‘Hey, watch how you say this. Don’t do that.’”

Williams is running for her third term on the School Board, having first been elected in 2015. She ran unopposed in both of her elections in 2015 and 2019.

Jared Foretek covers the Manassas area and regional news across Northern Virginia. Reach him at jforetek@insidenova.com