Republicans had a rough election night Tuesday. Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, a Republican who narrowly led in polls for months, lost New York’s 19th Congressional District to Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan, who had heavily campaigned on abortion since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Republicans did win a different special election in New York’s 23rd District. But in that race, Republican Joe Sempolinski won by only 7 points in a district former President Donald Trump had won by 15.
If Republicans underperform nationally in November the way they did Tuesday in New York, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will hold her majority.
There was one bright spot for Republicans, however, some thousand miles south in Florida. Of the 30 school board members endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, 19 won outright, seven advanced to runoff elections, and just four lost. And it wasn’t just how many seats DeSantis won but where he won them. Most prominently, both of the candidates DeSantis endorsed in Miami-Dade won, making Miami-Dade the largest school district in the country with a conservative majority.
As Gov. Glenn Youngkin showed in Virginia’s 2021 elections, Republicans can score big wins in blue areas by giving parents more power over their children’s education. The teacher’s union-led COVID lockdowns were a big eye-opener for many parents, as was the woke curriculum they saw their children being taught through distance learning.
The liberal media may have dubbed DeSantis’s Parental Rights in Education law the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, but Florida voters have turned it into the “Don’t Vote for Democrats” legislation. A recent YouGov poll commissioned by the Washington Examiner found that an overwhelming majority of adults (67%) oppose school teachers providing classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender to children in kindergarten through the third grade.
Even the teachers unions’ own polling shows that Democrats have badly over-politicized school curricula. An American Federation of Teachers poll from this May found that, by a 32-percentage-point margin, adults said they were more likely to vote for candidates who believe public schools should focus less on teaching race and more on core subjects. A similar 54%-26% margin favored legislation banning “transgender students who were born as males from competing in girls athletics.”
DeSantis’s education wins extend beyond school boards and state curricula too. He also ushered through what was at the time the nation’s largest expansion of school choice until Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) one-upped him last month. Gov. Kim Reynolds (IA) has also been successful in Republican primaries against state house members that voted against her school choice legislation earlier this year. For the first time ever, national polling shows that more voters trust Republicans on education than they trust Democrats.
Republicans need to stop playing defense on abortion and instead play offense on education. After COVID, parents know that Democrats care more about keeping teachers unions happy than they care about children. They know teachers unions control school bureaucracies, so they want more control over what and how children are taught.
If Republicans want to regain momentum heading into November, they need to go back to school.
