Blue County Blunders Left GOP Voters in Central Florida County Without Ballots, Calling for Investigation

LAKELAND, Fla.—The Alachua County School Board in 2020-21 tangled with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly during a bitter battle that pit local school board autonomy against the state’s preemptive authority in managing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Along with the Broward County School Board, it was one of two Florida school boards where members’ salaries were docked by the state and their districts fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for imposing mask mandates in defiance of a DeSantis’ executive order and a state Department of Health rule banning such actions.

While the fines were rescinded in court rulings, the board’s actions induced controversy, which invited scrutiny. One of its five members was removed by DeSantis because she lived outside her district. His appointee, Mildred Russell, then cast the deciding vote when the board fired Alachua County School Superintendent Carlee Simon.

With four Alachua County School Board seats on the Aug. 23 ballot—two open seats and two incumbents, including the governor’s appointee—area Republicans seized on the parents’ rights movement, hoping to generate enthusiasm in support of three conservative candidates and Russell.

DeSantis was certainly doing so, riding parents’ anger over pandemic mask mandates and critical race theory. For the first time ever, a Florida governor was formally issuing endorsements in non-partisan local elections, backing 30 candidates in 19 school districts and campaigning on behalf of several before the Aug. 23 elections.

Among those 30: Russell, who was being challenged by none other than Diyonne McGraw, who she’d replaced on the board after McGraw’s home was found to be 328 feet outside the district she was elected to serve in 2020.

But enthusiasm among Republican voters can only be so efficacious in Alachua County, where the University of Florida dominates its largest city, Gainesville. It is one of just 15 of Florida’s 67

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