Sonja Shaw, a Republican, is running for California Superintendent of Public Instruction in the November 2026 general election against Democrat Richard Barrera. Shaw did not attend college, previously ran a personal fitness training business and a photography business, and holds a California real estate license. She became politically active after enrolling her daughters in a charter school during the COVID-19 pandemic and organizing other parents around school board meetings, which led to her election to the Chino Valley Unified school board in 2022, where she became board president.
Shaw gained national attention in July 2023 when the Chino Valley board passed a policy requiring staff to notify parents if a student identified as transgender or changed their name or pronouns at school; when State Superintendent Tony Thurmond attended the meeting to oppose the policy, Shaw accused him of “proposing things that pervert children” before he was escorted out. California’s Attorney General sued the district over the policy, and a judge permanently blocked it; the state later enacted a law barring such forced-disclosure policies statewide. Shaw has also publicly criticized a transgender high school track athlete’s participation in competition and torn up a cease-and-desist letter during a public board meeting. She is campaigning to remove what she calls “political ideologies” from classrooms and refocus on academics.
