Primary week: DeSantis wants to teach schools a lesson; Nuñez says bus illegal Cubans; elections police make arrests

It’s Monday, Aug. 22, and this is the Florida goes to the polls edition.

By the end of the day on Sunday, voter turnout in Florida was at about 15%, with about 100,000 more people casting ballots at the end of early voting for the primary election than in 2018, according to University of Florida’s elections expert Michael McDonald who analyzed the Division of Election’s report.

About 554,000 in-person votes and 1.5 million vote by mail ballots have been cast so far. Candidates crisscrossed their districts and “Souls to the Polls” events resumed across the state, amid worries about increased voter suppression.

A lot is at stake: When all the polls close Tuesday at 7 p.m. and the votes are counted, we will know which Democratic contender will take on Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s other GOP incumbents for attorney general, chief financial officer and the open seat for agriculture commissioner. There will be a few state House seats settled and we will also learn the line-up for the few competitive state Senate seats.

GOP registration gains: The number of active voters registered as Republicans surpassed Democrats for the first time in recent history this year. Although the percentage of no party-affiliated voters keeps growing, the G.O.P.‘s lead in Florida continues to expand. See the county breakdowns for how party affiliation, based on registered voters, has changed in Florida with our maps here.

Voter guide: And for more information about candidates on the primary ballot in South Florida, check out the Miami Herald’s voter’s guide here.

Who will be the Dem nominee? Meanwhile, the race for governor has become a referendum on DeSantis and his governing ideology. Congressman Charlie Crist and Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried battle over who is better positioned to defeat the governor, who is largely seen to be a top presidential contender among his party’s right-leaning base.

Busing Cubans to Delaware? Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, a Cuban-American Republican from Miami, is getting attention over one ideological issue important to the base — immigration — when she appeared to suggest on a conservative AM radio show over the weekend that DeSantis was planning to bus Cubans who were in Florida “illegally” to Delaware, the home state of the president.

DeSantis has proposed removing “unauthorized aliens” from the state and, while legislators approved $12 million in funds, the Florida Department of Transportation has yet to release details on how the busing program would work.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

Education politics: The governor spent Sunday traveling the state adding his political spin to non-partisan school board races by making 29 endorsements. He began the day in Miami-Dade, traveled to Sarasota, and ended in Jacksonville.

Speaking to a crowd of about 250 in Doral, the governor touted what he believed to be legislative wins for education in the state: laws that limit how race, racism and gender are discussed in classrooms, boost parents’ role in classrooms and place a greater focus on civics. About 40 protesters gathered outside with signs to denounce the governor and his education agenda.

In Sarasota, DeSantis spoke for about 45 minutes as protesters outside called the governor “DeSatan,” and held signs mocking his focus on “woke” ideology. And in Jacksonville, the governor blasted “leftist” school board members who defended mask mandates in schools during the height of the pandemic.

Grand jury wants Broward officials removed: If a Florida grand jury has its way, there will be more openings on school boards. The grand jury tasked with investigating Broward County Public Schools after the Parkland mass shooting released a lengthy report that recommends the removal of five school board members, four of whom are still appointed. The 122-page report accuses the the five members of mishandling millions of dollars meant for school safety as well as neglecting their duty.

Teacher firing: The Broward County School Board got at least one win last week, however, when an administrative law judge backed its decision to fire a science teacher who refused last year to comply with a mask requirement aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.

Restricting journalists: DeSantis had a busy week making the rounds outside the state in a two-day, four-state tour of battleground states, sponsored by the conservative nonprofit Turning Points Action. In Ohio, the group demanded that journalists covering a rally featuring DeSantis and Senate candidate J.D. Vance give organizers access to any footage they took, attempting to strip them of their role as independent watchdogs.

Fighting ‘woke’: And in a packed ballroom in Pittsburgh on Friday, DeSantis spoke for 45 minutes at a rally for Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor who brought busloads of supporters to D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021 and organized a slate of fake electors.

DeSantis told the crowd “we must fight the woke agenda” and touted the legislation he signed that bans schools from teaching students about the history of societal privilege and oppression based on race or gender.

Jewish leaders condemn: Jewish leaders joined religious groups in Pennsylvania who condemned DeSantis for appearing with Mastriano because of Mastriano’s ties to Gab, a right-wing social media site that has come under fire for its antisemitic and racist commentary.

Losing part of ‘woke’ in court: The governor did not tell his audienes that several of his initiatives have been blocked in federal court. The latest came Thursday when a federal judge threw out part of the law, known as the Stop WOKE Act, calling the restriction on businesses an unconstitutional infringement on First Amendment rights. That ruling came on the same day that a group of university professors and a university student filed a federal lawsuit challenging another part of the law restricting how race-related concepts are addressed in education. Another education-related challenge also is pending in federal court.

Cheney scolds DeSantis: Although DeSantis has avoided repeating false claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential election, his embrace of election deniers like Mastriano, and Arizona’s Kari Lake, drew the rebuke of defeated Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney on Sunday. She said DeSantis’ strategy “is something that I think people got to have real pause about ... either you fundamentally believe our constitutional structure or you don’t.”

WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

Will arrests restore trust among election deniers? That is the question coming into sharper focus as DeSantis last week announced the arrest of 20 individuals on charges of voting illegally in 2020 because they had been convicted of murder or sexual assault and not had their rights restored. Because voter fraud is a low-impact crime that occurs at a statistically low rate in Florida, voting rights activists said the intent was to target and intimidate minority voters. Others suggest it’s an attempt to show election doubters, who could raise questions about this year’s results, that Florida is cracking down on voter fraud.

(Notably absent, however, is any attempt to crack down on election fraud perpetrated by the backers of the ghost candidate scandal or the Republican Party canvassers who illegally switched the party affiliations of more than 100 elderly Miami-Dade residents without their consent.)

Confused and mislead: Five of the voters who were arrested told the Miami Herald they registered to vote thinking the law allowed them to and they assumed they were free to cast ballots when their voter registration forms were approved. Nathan Hart, for example, said he was renewing his driver’s license when a man at a voter registration booth convinced him, mistakenly, he was eligible to vote.

‘No coincidence’: The timing of the announcement was immediately called into question. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said it was “no coincidence” the governor chose to announce voter fraud arrests days before the Aug. 23 election. “This moment was chosen, even though, probably, the state knew about it for a while,” she said Friday, suggesting the intent was voter intimidation.

Late money going to Fried and Crist: Crist received a last-minute $500,000 boost from the American Federation of Teachers, a union representing 1.7 million members while Fried received at least $425,000 from Mike Fernandez, the billionaire South Florida private equity investor who was a major donor to Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Val Demings spends big: Democratic Rep. Val Demings has outspent GOP U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio on ads by a greater than two-to-one ratio, according to data provided by two organizations tracking political advertising in the state. The difference is even greater in some vote-heavy areas, including Miami and Orlando, the data show.

Shifting arguments on sports betting: In a peculiar shift in position, the Department of Interior has revised its argument on Florida’s gambling compact with the Seminole Trige and last week filed a brief now saying that it has no role in rejecting a sports betting compact if the games occur on tribal lands. The DOI had previously argued that it authorizes online sports betting if bets are deemed to do occur on Indian land.

A federal judge ruled last December that the deal violated the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which regulates gambling on tribal lands, because it allowed gambling off property owned by the Seminoles. Now, the feds are asking an appeals court to reinstate the deal and the Seminole Tribe control of sports betting throughout Florida.

More politics of education: The Florida Department of Education is backing Cambridge Christian School in Tampa in a legal battle about whether the school should have been allowed to offer a prayer over a stadium loudspeaker before a 2015 football championship game.

Must watch: No matter what side of the issue you are on this, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner and Columbia University’s Jelani Cobb break down the arguments for and against the push to revise teacher training as it relates to gender and race in Florida. It’s worth a look.

Odd stuff: The Sarasota County School District has stopped all donations and purchases of books for school libraries — including hundreds of dictionaries — because it says it wants additional guidance from the Florida Department of Education about how to navigate the effects of the new restrictions on what’s acceptable in the classroom.

Florida prisons banned visitors, found more drugs: Despite ban on visitors in Florida prisons during pandemic, drug confiscations rose during that time, prompting the questions: Are staff working with gangs to smuggle in drugs? Is the problem rampant? What’s being done?

Good news: Florida’s unemployment rate dipped to 2.7% in July, matching the level before the COVID-19 pandemic and down from 2.8% in June.

Thank you for reading. Now WE HAVE SOME QUESTIONS! The Miami Herald is conducting a short survey of readers to help us better gauge interest in our politics coverage. We’d be grateful if you’d give it a look here.

Miami Herald Capitol Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Klas curates the Politics and Policy in the Sunshine State newsletter. We appreciate our readers and if you have any ideas or suggestions, please drop me a note at meklas@miamiherald.com.

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