Florida was supposed to be where “woke goes to die,” as Gov. Ron DeSantis is fond of saying. But last week he suffered a humiliating defeat, as only six of the 23 school board candidates he endorsed won in races across the state. Eleven were defeated outright, while a half-dozen more races remain undecided.
A columnist for The Florida Times-Union of Jacksonville put the matter succinctly: “DeSantis is out of juice.” The guy compared by some pundits to Ronald Reagan only a couple of years ago found his Waterloo in … the Tampa burbs.
Those results came as Democrats gathered in Chicago to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris for president. The eyes of the nation weren’t on Tallahassee, in other words, yet the Florida school board outcomes — as minor as they may seem — say something significant about our national politics, about the profound thirst of most Americans for a pragmatic politics that doesn’t cater to the fringe or play on our resentments.
The guy compared by some pundits to Ronald Reagan only a couple of years ago found his Waterloo in … the Tampa burbs.
As one social media user put it, “Florida wants moderates not MAGA.” With former President Donald Trump continuing to struggle to define Harris and starting to show significant slippage in some polls, the same may be true of the country at large. The striking number of Republicans who spoke at the Democratic convention is more evidence of that trend.
According to The Associated Press, 83% of DeSantis school board nominees won in 2022. This time around, he will be lucky to break 50% after runoffs in November.
The governor’s supporters will surely blame “the woke mind virus,” but that’s just an excuse for the failed attempt to install right-wing ideologues in and around Tampa (Pinellas and Hillsborough counties), among other parts of the state. In South Florida’s Broward County, two DeSantis appointees were ousted. One of his school board candidates lost in a district that every Republican presidential candidate since John McCain in 2008 has won, according to Andrew Pantazi, editor of the scrappy Jacksonville outlet The Tributary.
Faced with this defeat at the hands of voters, DeSantis simply appointed one of the Broward losers to the state Board of Education.
The candidates DeSantis endorsed were also boosted by Moms for Liberty, a sophisticated Christian nationalist outfit disguised as a kaffeeklatsch of well-meaning suburban ladies worried about their children reading Anne Frank’s diary. They successfully pushed to ban an illustrated version of that book, among many others: Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and Judy Blume’s “Forever,” to name just two flagrant examples.
DeSantis calls this “freedom.”
Punishing the Disney Corp. for speaking out in favor of LGBTQ rights was “freedom,” too. Removing elected prosecutors because he disagrees with their positions on abortion rights? DeSantis did that in the name of freedom, too. Because only he understands the true nature of the threat: “groomer” teachers and drag queens trying to “convert” children, George Soros-funded prosecutors opening up the prisons and letting criminals run wild, the corporate media (except Fox News) brainwashing you into believing the sea level around Miami is rising because of some liberal fantasy called “climate change.”
Floridians told DeSantis that they aren’t stupid. They don’t need his heavy hand in choosing local educators — or prosecutors. And they certainly don’t want to be bullied by Moms of Liberty, which wants Americans to read “The Making of America,” a deranged tract that effectively glorifies slavery. It asks parents to take a pledge in favor of a “moral upbringing” for children. (Its co-founder Bridget Ziegler and her husband, Christian — a former Florida GOP chair — are embroiled in numerous scandals, including one involving an alleged ménage à trois.) Floridians told DeSantis that they aren’t stupid. DeSantis rose to prominence with his opposition to coronavirus lockdowns and business closures. In the fall of 2020, he fought to open schools across the state, even as many Democrats argued it was unsafe to do so. DeSantis turned out to be correct, and he began to earn national attention. As so often happens to be the case, the seductions of fame, the whispers about a presidential run, proved impossible to resist. To stay in the news, DeSantis had to keep making news, which he did by taking ever more extreme positions: on vaccines, masks, education, corporations, climate change, race. But his brief foray into presidential politics was a debacle of historic proportions, which began with a bungled social media rollout and ended amid speculation about whether the governor wore high heels (yes, he does). The same conventional wisdom that had compared DeSantis to Reagan argued that he lost because Trump took up so much room. And that was true to an extent. But it was clear — as it was once again in last Tuesday’s results — that the American people have no interest in his joyless, ideological style of politics. Still, the guy keeps trying, as if the problem were that he isn’t cruel and vindictive enough. DeSantis recently proposed to open Florida parks to development. Because, you know, Florida doesn’t have enough golf courses or strip malls. The plan met with what the AP described as “widespread opposition across the political spectrum,” and it appears to be already falling apart, with a key backer pulling out. It was classic DeSantis, equal parts mean and inept. Whatever the people of Florida voted for when they elected him, they did not vote for this.
Alexander Nazaryan
Alexander Nazaryan writes about politics, culture and science. 
