I'll never forget taking our dog for a walk at the high school during our first spring in Mars. Unbeknownst to us, it was prom night. I distinctly remember talking with my wife about how someday our then-unborn kids would be going to school dances there, too. Mars is our home.

And I'll never forget the morning when my 4-year-old son pulled the blue, far-too-large Mars baseball jersey over his head for the first time. He was practically beaming in front of the mirror when he exclaimed, “I'm a Mars Fighting Planet!” Mars is our home.

We closed on our house in Mars six years ago last week. And of all the offensive attacks my family has had to endure as I have run for school board over the last year, the one that angers me the most is the idea that we were somehow recently transplanted here to Mars for political reasons — that there's some vast conspiracy that placed me and my family here for some nefarious purpose.

Wrong.

Mars is our home.

I was a candidate for Mars Area school director this election cycle. I ran together with four other dedicated parents with diverse backgrounds. We love Mars — we love the people and the schools — but we believe that the community should never settle.

During the campaign we put forward a number of ways we thought we could do better. We always believed that our diversity of thought — we are both Democrats and Republicans from various professional backgrounds — was a strength.Unfortunately, the Butler County Republican Committee (BCRC) views that diversity of thought as a threat. A free exchange of ideas — and the potential that working across ideological lines could make a community stronger — was so foreign to them that they were willing to attack their fellow Republicans and devote precious county GOP resources to a nonpartisan school board race to snuff that kind of cooperation out.My fellow candidates became pariahs in the BCRC simply because they were willing to team up with Democrats.Both in the primary and general election, local GOP leaders pulled out all the stops — nasty letters to the editor, rumormongering, conspiracy-theory newsletters — in an election where political parties shouldn't and never have mattered. In a public conversation that should have been about the kids and the community, to them it became about party loyalty and adherence to strict ideological doctrine.Ironically, we ran on a fiscally conservative platform. We had a plan to move Mars forward without raising taxes. (The current board had raised taxes in 2017-18.)We saw ways to create more efficiencies and save some money that could then be reinvested in the kids and the classroom. My fellow candidates had backgrounds that would bring important perspective to the board: an educator, a behavioral specialist, a first responder and a chief financial officer. And my background in public policy would be helpful on a board tasked with contemplating policy decisions for the district.Until that background in public policy became the perfect straw man.Ignoring that much of my work in public policy included advocating for more state education funding to local school districts, which would alleviate local property tax burden and pressure on school districts to raise taxes, they saw an opportunity to attack and distract.

The mailings and newsletters came — both in the primary and the general election. Most were written by local county GOP committee members or via a shadowy political action committee set up right before Election Day and run by the county Controller Ben Holland and local businessman Paul Adametz. And the attacks were so over the top, they read like satire.The most recent letter, which arrived in mailboxes the day before the election, was mentioned in a recent Butler Eagle article. The letter, authored by Mr. Adametz, begins with this ominous statement: “What does Hollywood, George Soros, and the extremist socialist Democrats have to do with your children's education? One name: John Neurohr.”The letter then goes on to name alleged “donors and influencers” including George Soros, Barbra Streisand, Ashley Judd and Alyssa Milano. The letter then takes the incredible leap of logic that “these six degrees of connection, John Neurohr's employment history leads directly to George Soros, Hollywood extremist progressives, and Washington, D.C., Swamp Socialists.”And then, Mr. Adametz went even further in a Butler Eagle article about the most recent letter last week:“Adametz told the Eagle the (Butler County Republican Committee) believes Neurohr was 'planted' in Butler County to work against established Republican figures in this area — perhaps even as far up the ladder as President Donald Trump.”Adametz went on to contend that I was connected to organizations that are “definitely anti-American.” Apparently, those who simply disagree politically with Adametz are “anti-American.”Let's get this insanity out of the way: I don't know Ashley Judd, Hillary Clinton, AOC, Barbra Streisand, or any of the other celebrities mentioned in the letter that Mr. Holland and Mr. Adametz sent out. I also don't know George Soros, but — I hate to break it to the community — I don't think he cares at all about the Mars Area school director race.

Yes, I worked at the organizations mentioned. I worked at these places fighting for more public education funding, to protect the liberties of all Americans, and to protect the most vulnerable among us. But the guilt-by-association game played in the pieces sent out by the BCRC and the Mars Area Republican Club is beyond disingenuous.The word salad in these conspiracy-theory-laden pieces is out of some ultra-right-wing fever dream. It's an insult to voters, and it's dangerous. Is this what we want our local politics to become? And the end result is that we all lose because many caring, dedicated members of the community of all political persuasions will decide not to run for public office because they don't want to put their families through the stress.When my neighbor rang our doorbell with a letter in his hand the day before the election, my heart dropped before I even answered the door. I sat on my front step and read the letter and honestly all I could think about was the verbal abuse my family had to endure at polling precincts in May — and that the following day they would have to endure more.What the perpetrators don't understand is that attacks like these don't just change voting behavior — they change human behavior. The example that is set when we unleash these kinds of irresponsible, hyperbolic attacks in local nonpartisan elections is perilous.What does it say to our kids about civic engagement?And, importantly, it is just plain irresponsible to use these kinds of tactics to avoid a discussion of legitimate issues the community needs to address. In the end, that's largely what ended up happening here in Mars.Mr. Adametz told one of my fellow candidates at the polls on primary election day: “That's politics.” Well, no. That's not how it has to be. The actors in this play get to write the script.My family has been blessed to meet some of the most kind, caring people in Mars. And I will never stop fighting against those who only think of their neighbors as those who always agree with them. That's not the kind of community we should want to live in, and it's not the kind of community we should want for our kids.Because Mars is our home.John Neurohr was an unsuccessful candidate for the Mars Area School Board in Tuesday's general election.

John Neurohr