File this story under “Grizzly Moms”.

How’s this for an in-kind contribution: “One time when we were in Canton, Okla., speaking to the PTO moms, they gave us a basket of homemade bread and jams and all kinds of stuff!” Jenni White, the leading activist calling for the repeal of Common Core in Oklahoma, told National Review Online. “We were in heaven!”

White has spent the past four years telling Parent Teacher Organizations and anyone else who would listen that Oklahoma should not implement Common Core, the education standards that most of the country adopted in 2010.

She hasn’t been working alone. “Our organization is made up of a board that just consists of four of us moms basically,” White says, referring to her cohorts Julia Seay, Lynn Habluetzel, and Joy Collins. “We have bankrolled the whole thing out of our poor husbands’ bank accounts.”

Ask anyone in Oklahoma politics who they think led the successful fight to repeal Common Core — Governor Mary Fallin signed the repeal into law on June 5 — and they’ll tell you that the story starts with this foursome. White served as the writer and spokeswoman for the group, which operates under the auspices of their LLC, Restore Oklahoma’s Public Education (ROPE). Together, the women have spent the past four years talking to Republican-party leaders, attending conservative conferences, and lobbying state legislators. Most of all, though, they cultivated a grassroots political movement against Common Core that overcame a bipartisan coalition ranging from the Department of Education to the Chamber of Commerce. By May 2014, a poll conducted on behalf of a Republican candidate showed that 57 percent of likely primary voters held an unfavorable view of the standards while only 9 percent had a favorable view.

In short, the four moms fought the proverbial city hall and won. “Look at Eric Cantor, seriously,” White suggested. “Some guy who had $300,000 beat him. You don’t think that kind of thing is possible when people have had enough?”

Like the immigration issue that contributed to the House majority leader’s loss last week, Common Core finds favor among political elites on both sides of the aisle and gets little affection from the conservative GOP base. White’s analogy to Cantor’s surprising defeat is also apt because the backlash against Common Core grew while the political class had its attention elsewhere.