a new coalition of conservative groups that's pushing for more parental oversight in schools is setting its sights on New Jersey's gubernatorial race Starting with the GOP primary working to get one of the more right-leaning Republican candidates elected and in turn have their agenda on parental rights school and vaccine choice carried out at the highest level of government Senior correspondent Brenda Flanigan reports I know there's there's a lot of strong emotions involved in the primary right now within the Republican primary Battle scarred veterans of Trenton's culture wars over parents rights gender policies and medical freedoms want to recruit Republican voters and drive them to the primary polls So five groups with deep red roots recently joined forces as the New Jersey Parental Rights Coalition and created their own forum They fired a litmus test of questions at three top GOP candidates for governor Jack Chidarelli Bill Spadia and Senator John Bramnik probing them for MAGA fidelity and hoping to stoke party loyalty While we don't endorse any specific candidate we wanted to make sure that we had um we could provide the best possible answers Over the last eight years we've seen in New Jersey our parental rights um slowly take a backseat to certain um ideologies being pushed and implemented into the system A lot's at stake Jersey voters elect perhaps the nation's most powerful governor who appoints both the state attorney general and education commissioner with the potential to upend the status quo As expected the three candidates concurred on many issues On vaccine mandates Chidarelli and Spadia were both a hard no We are going to have the because I said so exemption If mom wants to exempt a kid from a vaccine they will have the power to do that Brnik however reserve the right to consider vaccine mandates I think the reaction to this is religious exemption choice all good unless we saw a situation that got out of control and it called for some sort of executive action All three support a parental notification policy for students and would overturn the current rule 5756 that preserves a transgender students privacy out of concern for their safety Our children are best served when parents and school districts are working in partnership not in secret And this is a really really offensive policy that I truly believe an overall majority of New Jerseyians do not support Each candidate got a half hour to extol his agenda with Bramnik a veteran Trenton lawmaker breaking more moderate This marks Chitterelli's third run for governor and he's morphed from being a Trump apologist to courting the president's endorsement Spadia is a MAGA talk radio fire brand who joined the parents rights movement early on They're all looking to lead this volatile party So I do hope that the Republican party is able to reconcile some of their relational differences and some of their inner party factions that are going on right now because there's so much at stake in this election The governor's office could be ripe for a party change in the GOP's hopeful it can recapture Donald Trump's significant momentum from last November when pocketbook issues nominally top voter concerns So yes the economy is is definitely an issue that impacts all of us But these other issues have been around for quite some time They have been the undercurrent in these last few elections And the coalition thinks its parental rights agenda holds a clandestine attraction for Democrats too We have Democrats um Democrat parents on all areas of the political spectrum talking about these issues but afraid to come out and say it because they don't want to be perceived as you know being on the right The primaries on June 10th November's outcome will be widely viewed as a referendum on Trump 2.0 I'm Brenda Flanigan NJ Spotlight News