Still refusing to accept that our community soundly rejected their School Board candidates in last month’s primary election, the leaders of the local Moms For Liberty group are blaming their devastating defeat on …
Local Republicans.
Not all local Republicans, of course.
Just those local Republicans who cared more about the quality of education and improving students’ academic outcomes than embracing the Moms’ relentless efforts to use our public schools as a culture-war battlefield.
Or as the local Moms group’s policy and media director described them in an online editorial published eight days after the election: a Republican majority that “isn’t about principled republicanism” and “trends to the middle of the road.”
The headline above Thomas Kenny’s nonsensical op-ed, in fact, stated: “Indian River’s Center-Left ‘Republicans’ Vote to Keep the Status Quo.”
You’ll notice that “Republicans” was in quotation marks, presumably because he doesn’t consider them real Republicans.
You should also notice that he was wrong.
The local Republicans who joined with the county’s Democrats and no-party-affiliation voters to re-elect Peggy Jones and elect David Dyer, both by 57-to-43 percent margins, opted for change on the School Board.
The voters chose Dyer to replace District 5 incumbent Kevin McDonald, who was appointed to the board by Gov. Ron DeSantis in April, after Brian Barefoot mistakenly resigned his seat in February.
The governor made the appointment at the Moms’ behest – the national organization was co-founded in our county by failed School Board member Tiffany Justice in January 2021 – and McDonald’s vote gave the group an undeserved 3-2 majority on the dais.
The voters, however, didn’t approve.
Scoffing at DeSantis’ endorsement of the two Moms-backed candidates, McDonald and District 3 challenger Rob MacCallum, the voters took back control of the board and placed it in the hands of people who will act in the best interests of our community.
Thousands of those voters were registered Republicans who, contrary to Kenny’s claim, put principles above politics. And you can be sure many of them consider themselves conservative – at least in the traditional sense.
But the local top Mom disagrees.
Jennifer Pippin, chair of the Moms chapter here, is quoted in Kenny’s editorial as saying, “The primary elections in Indian River County were an example of the majority of conservative Republicans not showing up to the polls.”
She said this despite a better-than-expected turnout of more than 40,000 voters, 26,545 of which were card-carrying Republicans.
Pippin then added, “The mail-in ballots and the RINO (Republican In Name Only) representation dominated the majority of the vote.”
The mail-in ballots were indeed decisive: Jones received nearly 6,200 more votes by mail than MacCallum, and Dyer received more than 5,000 more votes by mail than McDonald.
So? Mail-in ballots are legal in Florida, and they’re every bit as valid as those cast during the early-voting period or on election day.
Why bring it up, then?
Because the Moms leaders were embarrassed, seeing their candidates – including one who was appointed by the governor – losing lopsided races in the birthplace of their movement.
Someone needed to be blamed, and that’s what Kenny’s editorial did.
It blamed the governor for arriving late with his endorsements, which were announced two weeks after mail-in ballots were sent to voters.
It also blamed the county’s Republican organizations – including the once-influential, now-irrelevant Republican Executive Committee – for not doing enough to support MacCallum and McDonald during the campaign.
“To my knowledge, the REC didn’t do enough as an organization to help get candidates elected in the primaries,” Pippin was quoted as saying. “The waters were muddied with RINOs and party switchers.”
More troubling, though, is the Moms arrogantly believing they get to decide who gets to call themselves a Republican.
Apparently, they refuse to tolerate the thousands of true conservatives and right-leaning-but-moderate Republicans who live here, especially in our island communities, many of them as seasonal residents.
Many of them are older, wiser and not obsessed with divisive cultural issues. They don’t look across the aisle and see an enemy. They don’t try disparage other Republicans by calling them “RINOs.”
What you won’t find on the Moms’ Facebook page, however, is any recognition of their candidates’ defeat in the Aug. 20 election.
There are posts acknowledging the victories of Moms-endorsed school board candidates in other counties, as well as one in which Justice and group co-founder Tina Descovich announced they were “THRILLED” that 60 percent of the Moms-backed school board candidates in Florida won their races.
Actually, only eight of their 14 candidates won, and three were in Duval County.
There was nothing, though, about the outcome of the local School Board election – no official statement, no explanation, no we’ll-be-back rallying cry.
Not even Kenny’s editorial.
That’s odd, given that the Moms, in the weeks leading to the election, had flooded their Facebook page with posts promoting MacCallum and McDonald, and attacking their candidates’ opponents.
But remember: They had deluded themselves into believing their guys were going to win and, allowing themselves to be blindsided by the results, maybe they don’t know how to respond.
Know this, though: The Moms aren’t going away.
They have control of the School Board until Dyer is seated in November, and they’ll continue to use their 3-2 majority to advance their culture-war battle plan – the one embraced by those they deem to be real Republicans.
Not the Republicans who voted for Jones and Dyer for all the right reasons.
