Gov. Ron DeSantis is pushing to become an omnipresent force in Florida politics with loyalists at all levels of government who will push his agenda. He’s taken a page out of the playbook of the man whose support thrust him into political stardom four years ago, Donald Trump.
Endorsements in local races are their most effective tools in wielding power down to the most granular level of how communities are run in Florida. And that strategy is working.
In Miami-Dade County, two DeSantis-backed school board members prevailed in the Tuesday primaries. Teacher Monica Colucci ousted 24-year incumbent Marta Perez, a conservative who fell out of grace with the GOP after voting for a mask mandate last year. Of the 30 candidates DeSantis endorsed statewide, 19 won outright and six are headed to runoffs, the Herald reported.
The two county commission candidates Trump backed also performed well. Kevin Cabrera, a former Trump campaign staffer who ran on a “Miami-Dade First” platform, came out ahead in District 6 but will have a runoff in November. J.C. Bermudez won a seat in District 12 six days after getting Trump’s endorsement.
How big of a factor the former president became in that race is up for debate, as Bermudez also got the endorsement of Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a Democrat. Bermudez is the well-known mayor of Doral and ran against an unfit candidate, a former Sweetwater commissioner who was forced to leave her post after pleading guilty to perjury. Sophia Lacayo also tried to run as a Trumpian candidate, using the former president in campaign materials.
Supposed to be nonpartisan
School board and county commission races are nonpartisan, meaning candidates don’t declare their party affiliation. They used to be considered down-ballot races — few voters paid attention to them. Now Republicans see the potential for those races as proxy wars, where politicians like DeSantis and Trump can export an us-versus-them style of politics.
The end result is that local governments run the risk of becoming nonpartisan in name only.
Less than a year ago, most Floridians had never heard about critical race theory, a 40-year-old academic area of study focused on how racism is embedded in legal systems and policies. Now schools are forced to address the outrage DeSantis and Republicans have created and the perception that CRT is a widespread topic in K-12 classrooms (districts have denied it is part of curriculum). Who knows what the next made-up issue du jour will be. The more loyal allies DeSantis and Trump have at the local level, the more effectively they can keep their platform center stage.
DeSantis took unprecedented steps to insert himself into local elections this year. He asked school board candidates seeking his support to fill out a questionnaire with questions like, “Do you agree that students should be educated and not indoctrinated?” His lieutenant governor’s political committee also paid for ads in support of Colucci.
How much we can extrapolate from these victories is unclear. In Miami-Dade, DeSantis and Trump got involved in districts that lean heavily Republican. It’s no secret that Trump remains popular among GOP voters (primary voters also tend to be the most partisan). DeSantis has continued to pound on the culture war issues that received wall-to-wall coverage by conservative media outlets: critical race theory, “woke ideology” and vaccine and mask skepticism.
DeSantis hit a nerve
Make no mistake — Tuesday was a victory for DeSantis. His divisive rhetoric is a distraction from the real issues affecting public education but he’s hit a nerve with some parents and voters concerned about not having enough say over what children are learning and who oppose mask mandates.
And there are signs that his investment may have increased interest in school board races. An average of 30,000 votes were cast in those races in Miami-Dade, compared to an average of 25,000 in the primary races of the 2018 midterms, the Herald reported.
Trump, who has doled out endorsements as political chips and helped many election deniers win primaries across the country, doesn’t do anything out of the kindness of his heart. Neither does the astute DeSantis.
Endorsements, after all, don’t come for free.
