Graphic courtesy Pixabay.

A majority of voters in Sarasota in November voted in favor of a proposed constitutional amendment to turn school board offices into partisan positions. That was slightly higher than the percentage of voters statewide who supported the same move.

It doesn’t much matter. Constitutional ballots require 60% support to pass. Since it was a constitutional amendment passed in 1998 (with 64% support) that made school boards nonpartisan in the first place, only a new amendment can reverse that decision no matter how badly the Florida Legislature wants to the change.

But results in Sarasota seem especially peculiar considering how voters a few months ago delivered such a strong statement against the politicization of the local School Board. Two years after a conservative takeover of the body that cost a superintendent his job, nearly installed a completely political apparatchik in his place and effectively turned board meetings into a 1990s talk show that late Sarasotan Jerry Springer might refuse to host, voters in August appeared to repudiate the step to the right.

I know. Some quite certainly will argue re-electing School Board member Tom Edwards did not necessarily mean voters hate showboat politicians. But he had been a lone dissenting voice on many policies, and a pragmatic force working with pro-business groups on matters outside board meetings. At the least, awarding him a second term rejected the particular politicization seen in the wake of the right-wing takeover of local education policy in 2022.

Certainly, Liz Barker’s election unseating incumbent Karen Rose, who had run a partisan campaign against wokeness as she sought another term, showed a distaste for populist huffing.

Of course, both political parties engaged in School Board races this year and in the part. State Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, pushed for the School Board measure to appear on the statewide ballot. He runs an accounting firm with Eric Robinson, who Edwards unseated from the School Board in 2020. Gruters felt then the reason Edwards, a Democrat, won was likely because Democrats did a better job communicating the party of their candidate better than Republicans did for Robinson. Certainly, when conservatives won a board majority in 2022, the fact the three winning candidates were all Republicans had been messaged by both their supporters and critics alike.

With that in mind, it may be no surprise most voters now favor making the offices partisan officially. May as well drop the charade.

But what voters should keep in mind is that under Florida law, whether a race is partisan or nonpartisan has more to do with who votes than who runs.

Every registered voter in Sarasota County could vote in August on every School Board race, just as they could for judgeships or any municipal contest. But any partisan primaries in August were closed only to voters of that party. Even if only Republicans run for an office, meaning the primary will effectively decide a race and should theoretically be open to all voters, whichever campaign would benefit from a closed primary will inevitably find a write-in candidate and shut the August race to only members of their own party. If you want to call this on insidious GOP tactics, rest assured in Democratic counties and other jurisdictions, Democrats unscrupulously employ the same method.

The day may yet come when enough Floridians vote for partisan School Board races that an amendment passes. I just hope voters understand the outcome of this change will be disenfranchisement of any voter registered in a minority party, along with the growing number of voters who don’t register with any party at all. 

Jacob Ogles is contributing senior editor of SRQ MEDIA.

Graphic courtesy Pixabay.