‘The fever is breaking’: DeSantis-backed school board candidates fall short in Florida
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Governor Ron DeSantis campaign to expand his conservative education agenda In Florida, schools didn’t go quite the way he wanted on Tuesday.
Of the 23 school board candidates that DeSantis endorsed Preliminary results from this cycle show that more people lost their election campaigns than won.
Unofficial vote counts show that 11 candidates endorsed by the governor lost on Tuesday, including several incumbents in conservative counties. Meanwhile, six of DeSantis’ favored candidates won their races and six were poised to advance to a November runoff after no one in their race reached 50 percent of the vote. Those runoffs could still go in DeSantis’ favor.
DeSantis acknowledged in an interview with reporters Wednesday that efforts to make school boards more conservative were more successful two years ago, but said progress is still being made.
“Some of them that fell short, that’s something they can build on for future election cycles,” DeSantis said. “If you look at where we were four or five years ago compared to where we are now, there’s a lot more interest on the part of these school boards to protect the rights of parents.”
However, critics of the Republican governor say the results are a rejection of his education agenda.
“We’ve sent a message across the state and across the country that governors, first and foremost, should stay out of this,” said Pinellas County School Board member Eileen Long, who was re-elected Tuesday.
Long, a vocational teacher, managed to turn down a challenge from a candidate backed by DeSantis and the local chapter of Mothers for Freedom in a closely watched race in what has historically been one of the state’s largest swing counties, which includes St. Petersburg.
As in school board meetings across Florida, activists working with Moms for Liberty in Pinellas read explicit passages from books, equating certain teaching materials with pornography and denouncing teachers as “trimmers.”
“I think they’re losing their freedom of movement. I really do,” Long told The Associated Press. “People are tired of doing all the mean, nasty things that they’re doing.”
DeSantis built his national profile by leveraging culture wars and limiting what Florida schools can teach about systemic racism and gender identity. While his war on “woke up” failed to win his party’s nomination for president, but he is still waging a battle in Florida’s schools. The effort could have ramifications for public education long after he leaves office.
But that campaign appeared to fail on Tuesday.
During the 2022 elections, 83% from DeSantis’ preferred candidates advanced, helping to cement the state’s rightward turn in education. That’s compared to a 52% success rate for this election, according to preliminary counts.
Still, the governor questioned why left-leaning candidates holding seats in left-leaning communities should be hailed as a major victory.
“You have a situation now where someone on the Dem side is celebrating that they kept an area — a school board — in a blue district? Normally that would just be a fait accompli,” DeSantis said.
Tuesday’s results could be a sign that the parent rights movement is losing steam among the state’s primary voters, according to Matt Nelsen, a political scientist at the University of Miami who studies the relationship between local schools and democracy.
“I think what we’re seeing is maybe the critical race theory “There’s a fever,” Nelsen said. “Many parents want their children to have educational content that tells an inclusive account of American history.”
On Tuesday, candidates backed by DeSantis scored a handful of victories in Democratic-leaning Duval County, home to Jacksonville, where conservatives will hold a majority on the board when new members are sworn in in November. The governor’s picks also held up other races in reliably conservative parts of the state.
But there were also notable losses, including a sitting board member in Indian River County and the current board chair in Sarasota County, areas where some of Moms for Liberty’s founders live.
Meanwhile, the Florida Democratic Party endorsed far fewer school board candidates than DeSantis this cycle, but saw more advance: 9 of the party’s 11 favored candidates won their races or advanced to a runoff.
___ Kate Payne is a staff member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-reported issues.