Miami-Dade School Board Conservative Majority Hinges on November Runoffs

The fate of the Miami-Dade School Board's conservative majority will be decided in November.

In the August 20 primary election, DeSantis appointee and Miami-Dade County's lone DeSantis-endorsed candidate Mary Blanco failed to secure more than 50 percent of vote to retain her District 7 seat. That means she's headed to a runoff in November against Max Tuchman, a tech entrepreneur and teacher endorsed by the Florida Democratic Party.

District 3 candidates Joe Geller and Martin Karp, who are looking to replace progressive board member Luisa Baez-Geller, will face off against other in a runoff in November. (Baez-Geller won the Democratic primary and will face U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar for the U.S. House District 27 seat.) Karp previously served on the school board and was a previously registered Republican. He has since registered with no party affiliation. Geller, a former state representative and mayor of North Bay Village, is a registered Democrat.

District 9 incumbent Luisa Santos, who was also endorsed by Florida Democrats, beat out Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidate Kimberly Beltran on Tuesday. Santos had previously been listed as one of the seats DeSantis' targeted to flip in the 2024 election.

If Tuchman wins in November, DeSantis and Moms for Liberty-aligned members Roberto Alonso (District 4), chair Maria Teresa Rojas (District 6), vice chair Monica Colluci (District 8), Danny Espino (District 5), and, perhaps, the aforementioned Blanco (District 7) — could find themselves in the minority. 

Over the past two years, as DeSantis continues to work to reshape the public education system across Florida, the Miami-Dade School Board has shifted to the right. These historically nonpartisan positions have become political and cultural-war battlegrounds as Moms for Liberty and other parental rights groups championed by the governor attempt to use the public education system to fight "indoctrination."

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, DeSantis threw his support behind a slate of school board candidates — a rare move for a state's most powerful executive. Of the 30 candidates he endorsed, 25 won seats, including Alonso and Colluci.

The latter was also endorsed by Moms for Liberty, a group that has spearheaded a nationwide effort to remove books they deem objectionable from school classrooms and libraries and to ban discussions on topics like gender and sexuality.

DeSantis went on to appoint Blanco and Espino to the school board in November 2022. (Espino was recently re-elected to his seat unopposed.)

Since the governor has exerted his influence, the school district has had a conservative majority that has voted in line with DeSantis and his political allies.

The school board was one of the first to explore allowing chaplains into Miami-Dade public schools and offering the conservative-backed classical education curriculum developed by Hillsdale College, a private Christian liberal-arts school in Michigan that DeSantis views as a model for the New College of Florida. It has rejected recognition of LGBTQ History Month and discussed banning LGBTQ flags in schools.