Editor's note: This story was originally published by Suncoast Searchlight.
Despite major success shaping Florida’s education landscape in the previous election cycles, 11 Moms for Liberty-backed school board candidates have advanced to run-off elections in November, leaving the parental rights organization poised to lose influence on several boards across the state.
That is a drastic decrease in public support for right-leaning competitors since 2022, when nearly three times as many candidates won their seats and the group spent thousands on over 50 Florida school board campaigns. Moms for Liberty Florida PAC has not financially backed any Florida school board candidates while still donating funds to Florida House candidate Monique Miller and Florida Senator Debbie Mayfield.
These donations are indicative of the organization setting its sights on federal and state-level politics as local support dwindles, aligning itself with President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds.
Researchers studying conservative trends in education and candidates alike agree that confronting school districts’ many challenges in an era of steep enrollment declines requires getting back to core priorities: financial oversight and academic success.
Culture war fights that once fueled the rise of Moms for Liberty are now losing steam in local Florida politics.
Some conservative candidates like Donovan Bradley, a contender in the Duval County District 2 school board race vying to replace Moms for Liberty-endorsed April Carney, are taking different approaches than their predecessors.
“I don’t think that people are really paying much attention to Moms for Liberty or their involvement in the campaigns that are going on this cycle. I try to stay focused on the issues and what matters most to voters…I’m doing this because I care about the school district, and I want students to have opportunities presented to them,” Bradley said.
This comes after several school districts including the Sarasota County School Board, once ground zero for culture war issue disputes, are likely to experience a shift in political leaning come the general election.
“When some of the school board members actually took office on a Moms for Liberty platform, they actually found the lack of indoctrination and a lot of things that they ran on and thought was happening is not the case,” Huriya Jabbar said, a professor and researcher of education policy at the University of Southern California.
The movement illuminated what exactly was on the shelves of school libraries, but claims of teachers and media specialists corrupting children or spreading sexually explicit content were not substantiated in Florida.
“Our mission is to defend parental rights at all levels of government, and that mission has never been limited to school boards…What we do is get moms and dads actively participating in their own government,” Tina Descovich, CEO and co-founder of Moms for Liberty told The Florida Trib in a statement.
Yet, many of the most outspoken Moms for Liberty members like Bridget Ziegler in Sarasota County and April Carney, who sits on the school board in Duval County, will not run for reelection this year with no pursuit of other elected positions in sight.
While Moms for Liberty claims to have “active investment” in school board races, the same school boards the organization flipped in major school districts four years ago may no longer hold a conservative majority.
Moms for Liberty once celebrated a “parental rights majority” on Miami-Dade, Sarasota, Brevard, Duval and Clay County school boards. By November, the group is expected to continue its right-leaning hold on only two boards in Clay County, which ranks first in its number of books banned, and Brevard County, where co-founder and CEO Tina Descovich currently resides.
Each of those school board candidates in Brevard and Clay counties are incumbents.
Still, Descovich says “the movement is not slowing. The momentum has not stopped.”
Trinity Webster-Bass covers education for The Florida Trib. You can reach her at trinity.webster-bass@floridatrib.org. The Tributary is a nonprofit newsroom producing high-impact government accountability and investigative journalism in the public interest. Based in Jacksonville, the Florida Trib's mission is to shine a light on systemic problems and solutions, hold those in power accountable, and focus on under covered topics through collaboration with other news organizations and the community.
