Midterm elections in the United States: schools, the other campaign

Audio 01:33

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis-backed school board candidate Jackie Rosario greets voters outside a polling station in Vero Beach, Florida.

© RFI / David Thomson

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

This Tuesday, November 8, in addition to their representatives, the Americans also elect members of their school boards, local authorities which decide on programs and health measures in schools.

After the pandemic, the Republicans made these elections a central axis for mobilizing the conservative electorate, and the "midterms" campaign was also played out around education issues.

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With our correspondent in Florida,

With her supporters, she planted her signs right at the entrance to a polling station in Vero Beach, Florida, where voters began voting early.

I show my posters to voters, so when they're in the voting booth, they remember my name!

Jackie Rosario is running for re-election to a school board, an ultra-local election that attracted very little interest before the arrival of Covid-19 and the health restrictions that electrified conservative parents in the United States.

During the pandemic, parents wanted the right to decide whether their child should wear the mask or not.

It was the perfect spark.

Now parents have a say in schools.

And the "midterms" campaign was partly played on these questions, in schools.

With her association Moms For Liberty, Jackie Rosario even received the support of the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.

She is now campaigning to get what she calls “LGBT ideology” out of American schools.

Schoolteachers aren't supposed to teach gender ideology, or tell a six-year-old that he was born in the wrong body.

You're a boy, but if you're wondering, then maybe you're actually a girl… Our job is to educate, not indoctrinate!

Moms For Liberty also wants to ban from school libraries 150 books on sexual and racial issues that they consider inappropriate.

It's a fight of good against evil, sums up a supporter of Jackie Rosario who has every chance of winning her election.

►Read also: “Midterms” in the United States: Conservatives and Democrats neck and neck in the south of the country

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