This year's Wake County school board races attracted more money, advertising and coverage than ever before. They also were swayed by such nontraditional forces as a small student advocacy group and Big Comedy.

The seeds were sown beginning with the rapid march toward change launched by the newly elected Republican-majority board with its first meeting in December 2009. A large, diverse cast of change agents worked largely behind the scenes to bring about the results, a new Democratic majority to take office next month.

"It was a confluence of all these different factors and forces," said Mack Paul, chairman of the Wake County Democratic Party. "So much of what happened yesterday and last month was a direct result of what happened between December of '09 and March of (2010)."

Based on interviews and records, here are 10 of the people who became change agents in this fall's elections:

Ron Margiotta, Wake County school board chairman. Once the lone conservative voice on the board, Margiotta is typically a genial, even courtly type. But his no-opposition-welcome approach to the Democratic minority and a string of confrontations with demonstrators gave opponents a chance to portray him, along with Vice Chairman John Tedesco, as out-of-touch outsiders, fairly or not.

Dean Debnam, head of Public Policy Polling and a major funder of Democratic campaigns. Debnam is the head of the N.C. Futures Action Fund, which donated $105,000 to Common Sense Matters, a liberal group that spent at least $55,000 on mailers attacking Republican challenger Heather Losurdo.

Monserrat Alvarez, student activist. The Athens High School graduate, 19, was bused from Southeast Raleigh to suburban schools in lower grades. She is a member of NC HEAT, a left-leaning youth organization that spoke out repeatedly, even getting arrested to push diversity-based assignment. The group criticized major GOP donors Art Pope and Bob Luddy, painting them as agents of resegregation. "It's either paranoia, propaganda or misinformation on their part," Pope responded.

The Rev. William Barber, state president of the NAACP. Barber was twice arrested at school board meetings, evoking the very sort of echoes of the Jim Crow South that Republicans insisted had no relevance. Barber also took NAACP complaints to federal civil rights investigators and accreditation agency AdvancED about the new board's actions. Republicans portrayed Barber as emblematic of a failed policy of forced busing.

Stephen Colbert, comic, host of "The Colbert Report," a talk show on Comedy Central. A January sketch titled "Disintegration," which mocked the Wake board's approach to diversity. Labels such as "Readin', 'Ritin', and Resegregatin' " joined stories in The Washington Post and The New York Times to convince many movers and shakers that only change could restore Wake's reputation.

Art Pope, businessman. A key funder of GOP efforts in the 2009 election, Pope gave more money this year. He said he wanted voters to have full information about the candidates. But Democrats made hay of his ties to powerful conservatives and his role as a national director of the Americans for Prosperity, a group funded by brothers Charles and David Koch, who have made a fortune in the energy business.

Harvey Schmitt, executive director of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. Along with the nonpartisan Wake Education Partnership, the chamber hired Massachusetts consultant Michael Alves to produce an assignment plan when the board's own efforts faltered. The plan gave the board a breather as city powers-that-be tried to find an alternative to the chaotic, contentious path members were on.

Tony Tata, superintendent of Wake County schools. Tata faced opposition from some Democrats when the board majority picked him for the job late last year. His ties to Republican politics and praise of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin worried some on the left, but he quickly became a calming influence, taking on the assignment puzzle and adopting elements of Alves' proposal. The GOP vowed that a new majority would fire Tata or cause him to quit, but neither Tata nor the new members expect that to happen.

Debra Goldman, school board member. Elected in fall 2009 as part of the GOP majority, Goldman mostly took the party line until a showdown with Tedesco in October 2010. She voted against his zone-based assignment plan. That increased the public's sense of unpredictability on the board, and led Republicans to work for a "Goldman-proof" majority.

Mack Paul, head of the Wake County Democratic Party. The GOP caught Democrats napping in 2009. This year, they brought lawyers, big strategic names and money. Paul and a group of deep-pocketed residents, who won't be revealed until public campaign filings are released in early 2012, sought to reverse the trend. The result: five full-time veterans of state and national campaigns who oversaw strategy and high-tech communications, along with the work of hundreds of volunteers. In the end, the Republicans' volunteer-based campaign couldn't prevail.

Staff writer T. Keung Hui contributed to this report.