CHICAGO – Florida Democrats in Chicago for the DNC are categorizing Tuesday night’s primary election as a big win for Democrats, particularly when it comes to education.
On Wednesday morning, as Florida Democrats gathered for their daily breakfast party, Chair of the Florida Democratic Party Nikki Fried addressed the primary races and focused on school boards.
“We saw a complete change of our school boards all across the state,” Fried said. “We saw wins in South Florida, Central Florida, North Florida.”
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For decades, school board races have been outside of the spotlight, getting less attention from voters. But that has changed in the past few years with the creation of groups like Moms for Liberty, along with debates over parents’ rights on issues like DEI in schools, COVID lockdowns and book bans.
“All over the state of Florida, Moms for Liberty went down in flames,” Fried said.
Fried said voters rebuked that agenda in Tuesday’s primary.
“A majority of them lost last night and Ron Desantis endorsed 23 school board races. They only won about five or six of them. That is a tremendous shift,” she said.
But there are other aspects of education being discussed that Northeast Florida is dealing with.
Crystal Etienne with the Democratic Public Education Caucus points to Jacksonville as an example of public schools being targeted by charter schools and private schools, which could force numerous public schools to close.
“Public education is under attack,” Etienne said. “They are actively trying to defund public education to put money in the hands of the for-profit management companies and private schools. It’s welfare for the wealthy. We’re paying for private school students for parents that can already pay. Four billion dollars have gone to private schools in the past year. They’re building these charter schools that suck out our children then send them back when they don’t want them anymore.”
Democrats are also saying they feel strongly about the results from Tuesday’s primary in St. Johns County.
News4JAX met up with Robin Dion, the former county Democratic Party Chair and Michelle Jennings, a party activist who moved to St. Johns County a few years ago.
Dion recognizes St. Johns County is heavily Republican but she was watching the senate race between Tom Leek and David Shoar closely. The Donald Trump-endorsed Shoar lost the race.
“The extremist David Shoar who was running for Senate District 7 was defeated and that’s very good news,” she said. “We need to be moving away from extremism in St. Johns County.”
While the county has historically been a Republican stronghold with ties to both former President Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis, she feels there’s a political shift happening in the county.
She said that was shown in county commission races that knocked out some incumbents. Clay Murphy unseated incumbent Roy Alaimo and Ann Taylor unseated longtime commissioner Henry Dean.
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“There is a very just active effort to slow the growth in St. Johns County and the incumbents in St. Johns County were voted out. I think it’s great. You’re going to have development but it needs to be controlled,” she said.