These locally elected officials posted or openly supported QAnon conspiracy theories. Here’s what happened after they took office

By Mallory Simon, Sara Sidner, Julia Jones and Jason Kravarik

Grand Blanc, Michigan(CNN)A normally orderly school board meeting in this small city began with an unusual warning that there should be no clapping or shouting. But things soon became so contentious that the meeting was brought to a halt for a 10-minute cooling-off period. 

The tension had been building for weeks. Hours before the meeting, a group of students, retired teachers, and parents held a small demonstration at the high school, expressing their discontent with just one person: school board member Amy Facchinello.

Depending on who you ask, she’s either a QAnon sympathizer who poses a threat to the truth, and therefore to the education of the town’s children, or a hard-working woman being attacked for her partisan views.

Students and protestors opposing Facchinello are asking her to step down after then-high school senior Lucas Hartwell found social media posts alluding to QAnon on her Twitter account dating back to 2017, when the QAnon conspiracy theory first entered the American lexicon. 

“It’s a platform that’s based on everything a school district should stand against, everything education should stand against,” said Hartwell. “And that’s the most upsetting part to me, that somebody who has the future of children believes these things that are so outlandish and so harmful to not just our community, not just our children, but to our nation and the world.”

Hartwell showed CNN copies of Twitter posts from Facchinello’s account, one saying, “Q ANON CONFIRMED BY TRUMP.” Another post about conservatives’ accounts being deleted with an image of a fiery “Q” says, “We the people are pissed off.” 

There are a variety of retweets and likes of posts related to the QAnon movement, which is known for its outlandish conspiracy theories.

The debate in Grand Blanc is a window on tensions escalating in cities around the country where local elections have been won by people who appear to support, or in some instances openly support, QAnon and its associated conspiracy theories. The sides disagree on whether posts espousing support for QAnon will have any impact on people in the community who see them and what example they set for students, constituents and the democratic process itself. 

Their elections have led to a divisive debate about whether it’s problematic to have these duly elected people in office if they share QAnon-related views. The debate has prompted questions about whether officials expressing such views is simply a free-speech right, a distraction from real government work, a bad example — or a real danger to the communities in which they serve. 

Cancel culture or community danger?

Facchinello arrived at the high school where the May 24 board meeting as dueling protests were taking place outside. 

Facchinello declined to sit down and discuss her views with CNN, but offered a brief explanation before walking into the meeting. She did not disavow QAnon specifically. 

When asked by CNN’s Sara Sidner about her posts, she said she didn’t remember some of the ones Hartwell had found. Others, she said, were being used as part of a “false narrative.” 

“I think it’s the false narrative to try to cancel Trump’s supporters,” says Facchinello, who was part of the Trump campaign in Grand Blanc. 

Facchinello was one of 16 Republican electors in the 2020 presidential election who cast a symbolic votefor Trump on the periphery of the official vote, in which the state’s electors voted for Joe Biden, according to state law.