Do Florida school board elections signal the end of Moms for Liberty?

The poor results of school board candidates backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in this month’s primary raised questions about whether the governor’s influence could be on the wane.

He might not be alone.

Since his endorsements mirrored those of Moms for Liberty — they jointly targeted several incumbents for defeat — several observers suggested the organization that some have labeled a hate group had reached its limit, too.

Big losses across the state for candidates who advanced the group’s agenda, including efforts to ban library books and restrict lessons about race, sex and gender, pointed to mounting dissatisfaction with an organization that had quickly gained sway with powerful Republicans amid the anti-mask, parental rights politics of the pandemic.

Equality Florida, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, said in a statement that the only thing worse for conservative candidates than a DeSantis endorsement was support from Moms for Liberty.

Moms for Liberty leaders, however, said they were happy with primary results.

“Statewide we are very pleased. We had a 60% win rate,” co-founder Tina Descovich said, counting candidates who moved to runoff elections as wins.

Among the 14 candidates that Moms for Liberty backed statewide, three won, six lost and five headed to November runoffs. Their candidates lost in counties where the group’s endorsed candidates cruised into office two years ago.

Descovich said her group’s polling shows that its involvement draws attention and interest in races. And while it’s unfortunate that some supported candidates lost, it’s also inevitable, she said, suggesting that perhaps the losses were due more to issues specific to each race than anything related to her group.

She added that Moms for Liberty is finding successes beyond the ballot box in areas such as its lawsuit challenging federal Title IX rules imposed by the President Joe Biden’s administration.

“Everything is just booming,” she said, adding that the group’s annual convention in Washington, D.C., will include such speakers as former president and current candidate Donald Trump. “We are growing massively. Moms for Liberty is full steam ahead.”

Maurice Cunningham, a retired University of Massachusetts Boston political science professor and author of “Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization,” said that might be too rosy an outlook. He said Florida’s primary results emphasized a decline of Moms for Liberty.

If its leaders want to revive the flagging effort, Cunningham said, they need to shift strategies.

“It’s hard to build things and easy to break things, and M4L is really only good at breaking things,” Cunningham said via email.

Cunningham said Moms for Liberty seems intent on pushing school choice by generating distrust in public education.

“But the public is sick of the chaos and disruption,” he said.

Jon Valant of the Brookings Institution, who has analyzed the influence of Moms for Liberty since 2022, said the group’s success rate has diminished over time as its brand “has grown more toxic as the organization has become better known.”

It’s gotten to the point, Valant said, where a Moms for Liberty endorsement can prompt voters to oppose that candidate.

In Sarasota County, for instance, where Republican voters hold a nearly two-to-one majority over Democrats, two Moms for Liberty-backed hopefuls lost. Incumbent Tom Edwards, a liberal Democrat whom DeSantis targeted for defeat during a meeting with Moms for Liberty leaders in February 2023, won a three-way race in which he outpolled his opponents — including one endorsed by Moms for Liberty — in all but two precincts.

Ted Bordelon, a national LGBTQ+ activist, said his national Agenda PAC spent $52,000 to serve as a “counterpunch” to the Moms for Liberty campaign in Sarasota. Sarasota has become ground zero for this work, he said, in part because of the scandals surrounding co-founder Bridget Ziegler, another board member who pushed the district and state far to the right.

Many Sarasota residents, including other board members, urged Ziegler to resign amid accusations that she and her husband were involved in sexual activity that some said illustrated her hypocrisy in pushing for anti-LGBTQ+ policies. She remains on the board.

“Our larger goal is to make Moms for Liberty so ineffective or so small that they can’t have this kind of influence in races across the country,” Bordelon said. “We’ve seen them suffer a ton of losses. People are rejecting the circus.”

In Indian River County, where Republicans also hold a two-to-one advantage, the two board candidates on the ballot backed by DeSantis and Moms for Liberty fell far short, winning about a tenth of the county’s 34 precincts.

The group’s endorsed candidates in Pinellas County — which was closely watched as three challengers aimed to flip the board to a more conservative majority — fared just as poorly. Running in a countywide at-large race, incumbent Laura Hine won all but one of 286 precincts to beat a Moms for Liberty candidate by nearly 40 percentage points.

Two years earlier, by contrast, a candidate with the group’s backing — and some connections to QAnon — took a countywide board seat by a four-point margin.

“I think it says loudly that the silent majority is done with partisan political noise and wants can-do leaders who will focus on the work at hand,” Hine said.

Pinellas incumbent Eileen Long, who fended off a challenge from another Moms for Liberty-endorsed hopeful, said she believed county voters also were fed up with the nastiness.

“People saw the behavior and the words they used, and the public doesn’t want that,” Long said.

For instance, supporters of the Moms for Liberty candidates disparaged local law enforcement leaders and longtime Republican officials who backed their opponents, said Katie Blaxberg, who faces a November runoff against Moms for Liberty candidate Stacy Geier. On Facebook, a local Moms for Liberty leader called Blaxberg a “pink vagina hat wearing baby killing liberal.” Another supporter baselessly called Sheriff Bob Gualtieri “pro pedophile literature in schools” who supports “radical liberals” after he endorsed Hine.

Conservative Pinellas activist Audra Christian said she and others switched their allegiances after being personally attacked by Moms for Liberty representatives. She said the group abuses anyone who disagrees.

“I felt it started out as a good thing,” Christian said. “It’s become a cult where you can’t question, can’t offer suggestions.”

County Commissioner Chris Latvala, for whom Blaxberg once worked as a legislative aide, said these types of tactics highlighted the slide in support for Moms for Liberty candidates in Pinellas. The Republican former lawmaker advised Blaxberg and Erika Picard, who challenged Long, to keep the group at a distance.

Blaxberg denounced Moms for Liberty. Picard downplayed the group’s endorsement in her campaign and outperformed the others. Still, Picard lost in the most Republican area of the county, in part because of her adherence to some of the Moms for Liberty platform, Latvala said.

Repeatedly pushing a false narrative about children identifying as cats and asking for kitty litter in restrooms did not help, he and others said.

“The adults in Pinellas County pushed back against Moms for Liberty,” Latvala said. “I think November is going to be much of the same.”