DeSantis an Early Darling for Conservative Education Activists

The Florida governor is likely to tap into education group Moms for Liberty if he mounts a run for president, GOP operatives say.

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Moms for Liberty founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich present an award to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis before he speaks during the inaugural Moms For Liberty Summit on July 15, 2022, in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images)

Iowa Republicans anticipating a Ron DeSantis presidential bid expect the Florida governor to tap into a growing network of conservative education activists organizing under Moms for Liberty, a grassroots group aligned with the 2024 contender and based in his home state.

Moms for Liberty is a political nonprofit with no plans to endorse in the Republican presidential primary. But the national group, which advocates for parental rights and opposes liberal social policies in public schools, has cultivated a symbiotic relationship with DeSantis since launching in Florida two years ago. It now boasts six chapters throughout Iowa, a potential hotbed of support for DeSantis in the state voting first on the GOP’s 2024 nominating calendar.

“Whoever DeSantis hires should absolutely try and co-opt this group,” said Luke Martz, a Republican consultant in the Hawkeye State. 

Enlisting Moms for Liberty activists “makes total sense for DeSantis,” said Republican strategist David Kochel, who has been a senior adviser to multiple GOP contenders competing in Iowa.

DeSantis is deferring a decision on a White House bid until late spring or sometime this summer, after Florida’s legislative session ends. But the governor, the only contender competitive with former President Donald Trump in early primary polling, has captured the imagination of many grassroots conservatives by preserving conservative cultural values in Florida’s public square and dismantling historic liberal control of public institutions.

Grassroots Republicans are especially impressed with the governor’s education agenda. During the coronavirus pandemic, DeSantis opposed extended remote learning and mandatory masking in public schools. Last year, he supported and signed legislation limiting schools’ abilities to give classroom instruction that conservative critics claim encouraged students—over parents’ objections—to explore and embrace transgenderism and homosexuality. Enter Moms for Liberty, whose star and reach have risen in conjunction with the governor’s.

Founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, two former elected school board members, were mothers frustrated with their children’s public schools when they joined forces and started the group with $500 in seed money, initially operating out of a spare bedroom in Descovich’s house. Their grassroots effort to push the Florida Legislature to overhaul state and local education laws almost immediately landed a willing partner in DeSantis. 

In turn, the governor, who spoke at the Moms for Liberty national conference in Tampa last year, won the admiration of a group newly influential in conservative politics that has since expanded nationwide. It has dozens of locally run chapters, including in the key early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, as well as general election battlegrounds like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“I think the chapters are going to be naturally receptive to him because he stood up for parents during COVID,” Justice told The Dispatch. “I’m talking to these moms and they’re saying, I wish Gov. DeSantis was our governor,” she added, describing conversations with education activists in other states. “They just want someone to listen to them.” (A spokesman for DeSantis’ political team declined to comment.)

The ongoing political synergy linking Moms for Liberty and DeSantis, 44, is plain to see. 

On Jan. 23, the governor unveiled a proposal to “empower educators” that includes a “teachers’ bill of rights,” a pay raise, and checks on the power of teachers’ unions and school boards. Moms for Liberty announced its support for DeSantis’s initiative one week later. “We support the governor’s approach in this ‘Empower Educators’ proposal and we look forward to working with legislative leaders to help it become law,” Justice and Descovich said in a joint statement.

Justice explained Moms for Liberty, which recently opened a federal political action committee, has no plans to back any Republican who enters the presidential primary, nationally or through individual chapters. But she named other Republican presidential contenders positioned to appeal to Moms for Liberty members in the early primary states: Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, Trump, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.   

Trump is the only prominent Republican who has declared for 2024. He finished second in the 2016 Iowa caucuses behind Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. But the former president has two landslide general election victories under his belt in the state and retains a significant measure of goodwill and support there as the 2024 campaign gets underway and the contest for the GOP nomination intensifies in Iowa.

Nikki Haley, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina governor, is set to join Trump in the race Wednesday with a late morning rally in Charleston. On February 20 and 21, she will make her first visit to Iowa as a presidential candidate, hosting town hall meetings at small businesses in Urbandale, near Des Moines, and Marian, near Cedar Rapids.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is headed to Cedar Rapids Wednesday to headline a grassroots rally at a Pizza Ranch restaurant, a stop popular among Republican presidential candidates. While there, Pence will kick off a $1 million-plus statewide digital advertising campaign funded by his political nonprofit, Advancing American Freedom, centered around (you guessed it) parental rights and education reform. The former vice president has tapped a veteran Republican operative with ties to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to spearhead this effort.

Scott is scheduled to deliver a speech in Des Moines on February 22 as part of speaking tour that appears to be the soft launch of an expected presidential bid. (“Our moms love him,” Justice said.) 

Still, at this early stage, it’s DeSantis who is generating the most buzz and interest among GOP voters and activists in the Hawkeye State. “A huge number of activists on the ground are waiting for him,” Kochel said. “I get calls or texts weekly asking me how to get on board.” “All of these activists are waiting for him,” added Jimmy Centers, a Republican strategist in Des Moines. “They’re not going to pick another horse until they see him.”

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  1. Wes.Bridges

    Authoritarianism is troubling from whencesoever it comes.

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  2. Jim S

    ‘Moms for Liberty’. Talk about an Orwellian name. When conservatives start talking about ‘Freedom’ it’s time to look out, because inevitably this translates to ‘Special Freedoms for Me and None for Thee’.

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  3. Jim.H

    In 2018, DeSantis won in Florida because he is for school choice and the Democrats hate that.

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  4. Bdecicco2001

    Moms for Liberty is a group which wants to make sure that children are not educated.

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  5. Sgruenwald730

    Moms for Liberty are an education group? Big if true.

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  6. Joe1776

    I'm against the federal government being involved in education decisions at all.

    I think DeSantis is ok to push some of these policies at the state level but I hope he does not think its ok to do this at the federal level. I hope he scraps all of the federal education involvement instead of changing them to fit his own views.

    But if everyone will insist that the Federal government must be involved in education, then ok better his views then the left's. Maybe after the left gets policies they don't like pushed on them from the federal level they will learn to appreciate federalism. I doubt that will happen I think it will just escalate.

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    Rajeev

    Nikki Haley has to jump into the race early. With so much financial power players waiting for Desantis she knows that there isn't room for very long for her and Tim Scott to be in the race especially with South Carolina early in the race. She also knows she fits exactly what would match Ron Desantis on a VP ticket even if she won't say it. Experienced Indian, female governor that has foreign policy experience at the UN and can fundraise.

    Chances are Nikki Haley or Tim Scott is gonna be this year's Tim Pawlenty/Scott Walker/Kamala Harris. They will try and create a 50 state campaign but get squeezed out of money either before Iowa or right after South Carolina.

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    Retired Prosecutor

    Educational failure puts the United States' future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk. The U.S. will not be able to keep pace—much less lead—globally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester for too long. These problems are particularly egregious in the inner cities, but are widespread. The iron grip teachers' unions have on the Democrats makes it impossible for them to propose comprehensive educational reform, and the last few decades are witness to this.

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    1. Jim S

      As the son of two retired public school teachers ( and two sisters retired from teaching as well ) it always disgusts me when people imply that somehow it is the teacher’s fault for belonging to a union. Whatever negatives unions have I am just thankful there is someone willing to stand up to right wing bullies like DeSantis.

      Based on what I have seen over the past 40 years the biggest obstacle to education is meddling from the outside which restricts teachers ability to address the needs of individual students versus this generic boiler plate approach ( usually couched as some kind of ‘return to the basics’ initiative). When you narrow the focus of what is taught you automatically create a whole class of kids who will never succeed because their strengths are never acknowledged or realized. For example arts funding is almost always the first to go, but what about a kid who is not so great at math but can paint like a master. You are setting them up for failure while taking away the growth in self esteem that would result from allowing them success in areas they do excel in.

      I also credit a lot of my success in life with the ready access to information. I started reading from my parent’s bookshelves when I was 7. There were very few restrictions on what I was allowed to read and I was never discouraged from asking questions. The current SoCon fueled outrage over students access to information is going to have exactly the opposite effect i.e. less access to information means a less educated populace. Hey why read books when u can burn them instead!

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        Retired Prosecutor

        Yes, less access to information is bad. Being illiterate and unable to read or process that information is even worse.

        The public schools are failing in much of America, particularly in the inner cities. The Maryland State Department of Education recently released the 2022 state test results known as MCAP, Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program. Baltimore City’s math scores were the lowest in the state; 7% of third through eighth graders tested proficient in math, meaning 93% could not do math at grade level. Project Baltimore analyzed the test results and found 23 schools – including elementary, middle and high schools – that didn’t have one student performing at grade level. There are public schools in the lower income parts of my city who aren't that different from this. Is continuing down that path a real option? Do we really want to condemn our inner city (and mainly minority) children to second class lives?

        Here in Sacramento we (being in California) had among the longest COVID school closures. These closures were driven by CTA (California Teacher's Association), the largest source of political contributions in the State. When the Sacramento City schools finally opened in January of 2022, the day they were to open, and everyone deemed it safe to do so, the SCTA (Sac City Teachers Association) took their members out on strike. So there's that.

        I credit my success to a world class education I received in parochial school, and my three grown daughters, who had the same experience, agree. The progressive dirty little secret is how many of their "thought leaders" were educated the very same way.

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      1. Jim.H

        It won't wear off for the kids that missed out on 2 years of education because their schools were shut.

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      2. Bdecicco2001

        "n. I personally would love to see Congress just make all teacher's unions, nationwide, completely illegal so Republicans won't have that boogieman to kick around anymore. "

        They still would, since they are not constrained by reality.

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        Retired Prosecutor

        You buried the lede by completely failing to address the failure of the American public school system -- and by instead retreating into partisan talking points.

        Yes, the "COVID hook is going to wear off in another year . . . " and we will be back to the status quo -- a status quo marked by gobsmacking failure. The Maryland State Department of Education recently released the 2022 state test results known as MCAP, Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program. Baltimore City’s math scores were the lowest in the state; 7% of third through eighth graders tested proficient in math, meaning 93% could not do math at grade level. Project Baltimore analyzed the test results and found 23 schools – including elementary, middle and high schools – that didn’t have one student performing at grade level. This in a district that prides itself on its high teacher pay, amount spent per student, and where the superintendent makes $455K annually. Do we really want to advocate returning to that status quo? Or the tired claim that has been made for decades that with a little bit more time and with more money things will completely turn around?

        The policy of school choice is rapidly gaining acceptance among parents who are tired of waiting for things to improve. And those that oppose it will likely find themselves, to coin a phrase, on the wrong side of history.

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            JDW

            Not every poor family with kids needing help are uncaring. The reason vouchers are so popular in many poor underperforming communities is that it allows kids to escape to better schools.

            I agree though with you that some parents won't care or don't care. That is a sad state of affairs in and of itself in our society. I don't think parents used to be that way.

            I do think private schools would be better but I would require all private schools to accept only the voucher and nothing more. I would also require first come first serve so schools couldn't cherry pick.

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    Earl King

    Trump scared the bejesus out of white educated suburban women and is the reason he lost. My wife hates Trump with a passion. Most “mothers” are more liberal than conservative. My belief is that women worry about children whether they have them or not. The dynamics of men and women and children is deep seated in our genetic code. Women look for protection whether it is the Government or a man, especially if they have children. If I hear women clucking in the background to my statement above saying “I don’t need a man”, my retort would be you want Government to save your abortion rights from men...I said women want protection and if it isn’t a man they want protection from the Government. Since liberals are all about Government ensuring safety nets for children, women look far more benignly on the government than men do.

    This completely explains why men tend to vote GOP while more women tend to vote Democrat. Only idiots don’t understand this dynamic. Trump is an idiot. He went out of the his make women hate him. He is everything women hate about men. Angering women is not a path to the Presidency. If DeSantis can craft his message as protecting mothers and children he’ll go a long way towards getting educated suburban moms back in the GOP fold. As long as he remains sympathetic to the social safety net. Leaving the 15 week ban on abortion is key to this. Women are very protective of their abortion rights. Modest constraints might be tolerated. Dropping the state law to a 6 week ban will not help him with women....as was just on display in the 2020 election. You can bet that every state in the Union with a Democrat Governor will have an abortion question on the ballot...Be careful would be my advice. The country wants available abortion.

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      Rajeev

      Nothing "completely explains" such a large subset of the population. There are many issues that women vote upon with abortion being near the top. However, I don't necessarily think it relates to the social safety net. It relates to women having a choice over whether to have a kid or not if they get pregnant. Trump won a lot of the married women with kids in 2016 but lost heavily among younger women and single women. But Covid played a lot into 2020 and Biden took advantage of Trump's incompetence.

      The one thing that has been consistent with older female voters is that they tend to vote in a greater percentage of elections. Everything from school-board to sheriff to other local elections to off year elections. As a result they often have switched between the parties in non-presidential elections.

      YOu are very right that Democrats will definitely use abortion as a winner. Any time a 50/50 issue has such a forced change to it expect a counterbalance. Kind of a LeChatelier's principle applied to public policy.

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        Earl King

        You google Gender Gap in elections...but generally men vote Republican....I believe men have been voting Republican while women support Democrats....
        It has been generally recognized that women tend to support liberal policies...But here is an article that might explain it better to you.

        https://time.com/5903399/gender-gap-politics/

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