The Florida school board that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis all but hand-picked has lost its conservative majority after this week’s elections. The Sarasota County School Board found itself at the epicenter of fights over some of the state’s more controversial policies surrounding book bans and COVID-19 pandemic mask mandates.
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Democrat-backed candidates flipped two of the board’s seats and another race is headed toward a runoff. But no matter who wins the Nov. 3 runoff election, the board — which is nonpartisan — will have a Democratic-leaning majority thanks to the two wins.
Democrats take the lead
Three of the board’s sitting Republican members chose not to run for re-election earlier this year.
The two more progressive candidates vying for their seats, former teachers Megan Tennimon and Beth Mayberry, won their elections by more than 10 percentage points against Republican-backed candidates. They ran on issues like school funding, academic achievement and helping kids in under-served areas, according to WUSF.
Current school board members Tom Edwards and Liz Barker also lean progressive. With the additions of Tennimon and Mayberry, progressives will have majority control over the five-member board for at least the next two years.
“I really think at the end of the day, regardless of political affiliation, our community was just tired of the culture wars, the political theater and being the center of national attention for all the wrong reasons,” Tennimon told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
Another candidate endorsed by the local Democratic Party, Jimmy Glover, won the majority of votes in his race against two Republicans, but since none of them crossed the 50% threshold required to win, it will go to a runoff election against Republican Heidi Brandt in November.
If Glover wins, the board will be completely Democrat-backed. He would also be the first person of color to serve on the board, Sarasota County Democratic Party chair David Dean told The Washington Post.
The issues
The Sarasota school board has made national news for its stances on certain issues, like a ban on teaching students about sexual orientation and gender identity. There was also a sex scandal involving the board’s head, Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, whose husband was also accused of sexual assault but never charged.
Ziegler also supported initiatives to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and to investigate how much undocumented students were costing the district, WUSF reports.
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