Last Thursday, Emily Gasoi made a strange announcement.

The Ward 1 candidate for the D.C. State Board of Education tweeted that someone had used fake email addresses to impersonate her campaign on local listservs, posting racially charged messages that later appeared in the comments section of DCist’s voter guide.

“These accounts are NOT affiliated with our campaign,” she wrote in an emphatic statement on her website. “The messages being sent from these accounts are NOT coming from me or any of my campaign members or supporters.”

The messages touted the longtime teacher and progressive education advocate as obviously “most entitled” to a school board seat—a white savior with fancy advanced degrees who “understands what black families need.”

At the same time, the postings trashed Gasoi’s black opponent, Capital One banker and Achievement Prep Public Charter School board chair Jason Andrean, saying he pushed “policy that will hurt black families” with a campaign that “attacks white families.” They even went as far as urging voters to back “the candidate who is a loving teacher and mother, not someone who only cares about his daughter every other weekend.”

Gasoi immediately disavowed this rhetoric as “completely outrageous,” and suspects that a Ward 1 resident who has been outspoken against her on social media is behind it.

Andrean insisted he had nothing to do with the posts, and told DCist he doesn’t think his supporters were involved, “given how awful it made me sound.”

The third candidate in their race, former D.C. Teach for America teacher Callie Kozlak, said she only found out about them when DCist asked for comment Monday night.

Yet the mysterious emails are just the latest unusual development in this obscure non-partisan race. It’s been a contest marked by unusually high campaign spending, endorsements from some of the nation’s leading education policy players, and tense confrontations on social media.

All of this for a seat on the D.C. State Board of Education, a position with nominal power at best. Since the mayor’s office took control of public schools in D.C. in 2007, the board’s main role has been giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to policies written by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education.

“The candidates have all been cordial to one another,” Andrean told DCist. “There are some people on social media who have not been.”

It’s beginning to take a toll on Gasoi. “This past week was really difficult,” she said on Sunday night in Mount Pleasant.

Gasoi was walking home after canvassing nearby neighborhoods. She explained her frustration with a handful of community members who had criticized her online.

“Several people involved in [Andrean’s] campaign have talked about me as having a ‘pedigree’,” she said. “The fact that I have a doctorate in education somehow makes me elitist …. I think it’s sexist and appalling, actually. Really depressing.”

The dynamic here is complicated. Gasoi says she doesn’t believe an advanced degree is a prerequisite to serving on the board. But, like many candidates in political races, she does argue her opponents are unqualified, wondering aloud why they’re even running.

She calls Andrean “a banker with no education experience,” despite his service on the board of a charter school and, previously, the D.C. chapter of Democrats for Education Reform. Asked about Kozlak, Gasoi diminished her teaching experience, saying, “After you teach for two years, you cannot call yourself a teacher … After two years, you are still a teacher in training.”

Kozlak told DCist she finds that contention “extremely insulting. I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into teaching … Is that the kind of tone that’s going to help you build relationships on the board?”

Kozlak isn’t alone in questioning Gasoi’s tone in this campaign. Last week, even before the allegedly fake emails surfaced, Black Lives Matter DC asked her to explain a statement she made to a community member that she and her fellow candidate “are not equal.”

Gasoi ultimately said this was “a poor choice of words,”, but later told DCist the community member in question “took that ‘not all equal’ out of context and sent it to a lot of people, saying I was racist, including Black Lives Matter DC.” She says her campaign has been harassed online by a few Andrean supporters since the summer.

There are a number of useful distinctions when it comes to the candidates’ education backgrounds and ideologies.

Gasoi is a critic of “overemphasis on standardized testing” and opposes the further proliferation of privately run charter schools. She also wants more authority for the D.C. State Board of Education, citing a lack of accountability and transparency under mayoral control.

She is endorsed by progressive groups like the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America, Democracy for America, Jews United for Justice, and the Washington Teachers Union. She also has the backing of national education policy players like the scholar Diane Ravitch and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who recently tweeted about Gasoi’s “really important race.” She even scored a nod from local popsicle shop Pleasant Pops.

Central to Gasoi’s case against Andrean is her assumption that he “carries the agenda” of the Democrats for Education Reform, a business-backed pro-charter school group often at odds with the teachers union in policy fights. The group endorsed Andrean’s campaign, but the candidate says he’s “never signed up for an organization’s ideas to go out and peddle them.”

“This notion that what I want to do is turn everything into a charter is ridiculous,” he told DCist. “I do support choice—not just a handful of good charter schools, but also good traditional public schools.” He supports continued mayoral control of D.C. schools, and is fine with the state board’s current degree of power.

Andrean is also endorsed by The Washington Post and LGBTQ Victory Fund, which says he “will become a vital LGBTQ voice and the first openly gay person of color elected to the D.C. State Board of Education.”

For her part, Kozlak says she’s the “middle ground” between Gasoi and Andrean—“an independent voice” finding the right balance between neighborhood schools and a system of “school choice.” She too supports the current structure of mayoral control over schools, though favors more power for the state board to write policy, rather than just approve or disapprove it. Having worked at the U.S. Department of Education and in education policy at UnidosUS, she argues her combination of classroom experience and policy chops will serve her well on the board.

As The Washington Post reported earlier this month, this year’s State Board of Education races have been unusually expensive. The Ward 1 race has the highest campaign spending of them all, bringing in almost $115,000. By mid-October, Andrean had raised more than $65,000, Gasoi has brought in at least $30,694, and Kozlak has amassed $16,140.

In the end, the vitriol in this race seems to be less about the candidates or their contributors so much as overzealous supporters taking matters into their own hands. “I do not encourage any of my supporters or anyone in my campaign to engage in nasty discourse,” Andrean said.

On her walk home Sunday, Gasoi said she doesn’t have hard feelings against her opponents. “I would hang out with Jason,” she told DCist. “We’ve been through this crazy thing together.”