Those of us who pay (probably too much) attention to the political landscape understand that local elections are extremely important insofar as their results are the most likely to affect your day-to-day life directly. But they’re also the elections with the lowest voter turnout rates and the least amount of media buzz, which suggests the public simply doesn’t care about them as much as they should.
There’s reason to believe, however, that this is changing. In Florida this week, voters flipped dozens of local school board seats, electing conservative candidates supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Normally, school board elections are boring afterthoughts. But the turnover across Florida is a sign that voters, especially parents, realize that taking back local politics is the best and easiest way to ensure that your values will be respected and your way of life upheld.
“Parents are sick of the nonsense when it comes to education,” DeSantis said during a press conference on Tuesday. “We want the schools to educate kids. We are sick of the indoctrination. We want to make sure that they’re teaching them the basics, teaching them to read, write, add, subtract all the important subjects, not trying to jam woke gender ideology down their throat, not trying to do divisive rhetoric like CRT that’s teaching kids to hate each other and hate our country.”
DeSantis seems to understand the cultural moment better than any other Republican politician. He recognizes that issues such as critical race theory, gender ideology, and a failing public education system that has embraced both aren’t partisan issues — they’re human ones. And he’s able to mobilize voters across the political spectrum — several of the school board seats flipped this week were in liberal Florida counties, such as Miami-Dade — as a result.
In short, local elections matter. But so do the cultural issues that drive voters to the polls in the first place. There’s a lesson for Republicans in this: Lean into the culture war because the voters are on your side.
