Governor Ron DeSantis endorsed 24 candidates for school board statewide, six of whom won on Tuesday, another seven advanced to the runoff in November and 11 lost.
The governor responded to the results on Wednesday morning, calling his efforts to move school boards to the right an “uphill battle.”
“We’ve helped as much as we can, probably even more two years ago, but all of these candidates are working really hard. And that’s important, especially when you have a tough fight ahead of you, you have to do it,” DeSantis said during a news conference in Sarasota.
“And usually you don’t win these games the first time, but I found out as a former baseball player that if you don’t swing, you don’t hit a home run. So you have to swing and be in the game,” he said.
“They shouldn’t give up on any of these elections,” DeSantis added, referring to his intention to counteract the influence of teachers’ unions.
“This is their Super Bowl. I mean, they take the money, the membership dues, and they put it into the election campaign. And especially in a nonpartisan election, they can present their candidates one way to some voters and another to others, and that’s been the case for a long time,” the governor said.
“You’re now in a situation where someone on the Democratic side is celebrating that they held a district, a school board, in a Democratic district? I mean, normally that would just be a fait accompli.”
Partisanship
DeSantis announced his endorsements on July 19; the Florida Democratic Party released its list of candidates on July 26.
DeSantis said Tuesday’s losers have a foundation for future elections.
The governor has set up a political action committee that will lobby against amendments on the November ballot to legalize recreational marijuana and guarantee a constitutional right to abortion. He suggested those amendments may have dented his support for the school board.
“You know, we have invested a lot of resources for 2022. We weren’t necessarily able to do that because we had so much else to do,” DeSantis said.
The November election will determine whether the state continues to hold nonpartisan school board elections. Amendment 1, proposed by the Florida State Legislature, would require such elections if it receives the support of 60% of voters.
Fight the battle
Two DeSantis-backed candidates won seats on the Duval County School Board – Tony Ricardo and Melody Bolduc — while a third, Becky Nathanson, lost.
Bolduc won against Democratic-backed candidate Sarah Mannion. The other Democratic-backed candidate who lost was Jeremy Rogers, against Laurie Lawson-Cox. — a DeSantis supporter — in Leon County.
Of the other nine school board candidates in the Take Back Local campaign, endorsed by the Florida Democratic Party, two are in a runoff election and seven won the election. Of the seven winning candidates, five were incumbents.
The runoff will be between Stephanie Arguello of Seminole County and Max Tuchman of Miami-Dade. Tuchman is running against Mary Blanco, a candidate endorsed by DeSantis, and Arguello is running against incumbent Abby Sanchez, who is endorsed by the Florida Education Association.
Bryan Griffin, DeSantis’ communications director, responded on X to a Politico article titled “DeSantis’ takeover of Florida school boards is a major setback.”
“An odd headline for the morning after key DeSantis endorsements helped turn the Duval (Jax) school board into a 5-2 conservative majority… (sic) and a DeSantis endorsement won in deep blue Leon… and a DeSantis endorsement is in a runoff in Miami Dade,” Griffin posted. “Now it’s just down to tough races.”
“There were MANY tough fights in historically blue districts today, but you don’t change the culture by only supporting winnable elections,” Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’ press secretary, wrote on X on Tuesday night. “The Duval County School Board’s turnaround is a win for students and parents in a historically blue district.”
Evan Power, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, wrote to X that Duval voters had changed their minds. “a historically liberal body that is red. That’s what happens when you put every possible Republican up for election!“
“Culture Wars”
In announcing his endorsement, DeSantis said his candidates were “committed to focusing on student success, parental rights and curriculum transparency.” He supported efforts to remove material he and his supporters consider offensive, including books about LGBTQ people, or divisive, such as materials discussing race relations.
Of the four candidates in Indian River and Hillsborough counties, DeSantis failed to win a single victory. His supporters won in Martin County with Marsha Powers and Brevard County with John Thomas, as well as Bill Ribble in Lee County.
The two losers in Hillsborough County, Layla Collins and Myosha Powell, ran against the Democratic-backed candidates Nadia Combs and Jessica Vaughn.
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Democrats won victories across the board in Broward County with their endorsements of Debbi Hixon, Sarah Leonardi and Rebecca Thompson. Thompson won by the narrowest margin, nearly 33%; Hixon and Leonardi won by more than 40%. Thompson’s victory unseats Torey Alston, who will be appointed by DeSantis in 2022.
Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried, who voted alongside Rogers last week, announced during an online press conference on Wednesday that “Ron DeSantis’ culture wars are over.”
“What we saw last night is that Floridians across the state are tired of division,” Fried said. “They’re tired of the culture wars. Ron DeSantis lost by a wide margin. He tried to flip school board elections, not to educate our children, but to indoctrinate them. And that ended last night. We the people took back the school boards last night, and that’s the message we’re going to carry forward from now until … November.”
