For Republicans around the country, Tuesday’s midterms were a disappointment. For Republicans in Florida, the news couldn’t get much better.
At the top of the ticket, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio cruised to blowout re-election victories, while both chambers of the state legislature remained firmly in GOP hands.
But at the grassroots level — where political meets the personal — the victory was even stronger.
As Fox News noted Thursday, all six of the school board candidates DeSantis had endorsed going into runoff elections on Tuesday won their seats, with one of the victors telling “Fox & Friends First” that it was DeSantis that made the difference.
“The support I got from Governor DeSantis is what put us over the edge,” Cindy Spray, who was running for school board in Manatee County, on Florida’s gulf coast, told co-host Ainsley Earhardt.
“His view of how we need to stay back to the basics of education aligned with what I had viewed. And of course, my grandchildren. You have kids in school, you want to make sure that we’re getting the education system that we’re actually expecting from the public schools back to the basics and… supporting parental rights.”
An incumbent school board from Florida’s Atlantic coast, on the other side of the state, agreed.