By David M. Drucker
Saturday, February 11, 2023
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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