A Moms for Liberty Cofounder Just Got Her Butt Kicked in a Florida School Board Race, and I Couldn’t Be Happier

6 min readThis Weekend in the Laboratories of Democracy(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to This Post)Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where the riot squad is restless and they need somewhere to go.Little victories, even in where-the-fck-else, Florida. From The Washington Post:Two Democrat-backed candidates beat out conservatives in Tuesday’s school board election in Sarasota, Florida, flipping the board’s majority. Helmed for the past year by a co-founder of Moms for Liberty—a conservative group that gained a national following with its parents’ rights messaging—the board is moving in a new direction, the winners said. A third Democrat-backed candidate will head to a runoff election against a contender endorsed by Republicans in November.“I really think at the end of the day, regardless of political affiliation, our community was just tired of the culture wars, the political theater and being the center of national attention for all the wrong reasons,” said Megan Tennimon, a former teacher who won election to the board on Tuesday.The Sarasota County School Board had been controlled by conservatives since 2022, on the heels of the pandemic. As school board meetings and elections, typically quiet and uncontroversial, became partisan battlegrounds, Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) got involved around that time by endorsing candidates, something that governors have rarely done. His involvement in the local races came as he pushed an education agenda that included a ban on teaching young students—and later all students—about sexual orientation and gender identity.This, you may recall, was the school board that featured the infamous Swingin' Zieglers.Her husband, Christian Ziegler, is the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. Police are investigating him for an alleged sexual assault in October. He claims the encounter, which he videotaped, was consensual. The woman making the allegation said he raped her, according to an affidavit for a search warrant. Both Zieglers have acknowledged having a three-way sexual encounter with the woman at a different time. She has made no public comments about the situation.Moms for Libertines!Remember when arguing with school board wingnuts was only arguing over evolution? Och, thim was the days!Moving a few degrees north into South Cackalacky—where, according to its current junior senator, 50 million people live—we find a scientist from godless Yale University blowing the whistle on some terrible environmental policies that go back decades. From The State:An Ivy League researcher extended his investigation of contaminated farmland in eastern South Carolina this week, taking more than 100 samples of soil, groundwater and plants in an effort to learn more about the threat facing agriculture from hazardous forever chemicals. Yale University scientist Jake Thompson’s work in Darlington County follows findings that forever chemicals have polluted about 18 farm fields that once were coated with a textile plant’s waste sludge for use as fertilizer. But more than 300 agricultural fields were once approved by the state for sludge fertilizer from the old Galey and Lord textile plant, and Thompson is trying to document the extent of the contamination beyond what he and government agencies have found so far.I'm no chemist, nor have I ever played one in this shebeen, but this seems to me like it was a pretty bad plan, and Mr. Thompson's data and I seem to agree on this.Thompson discussed his work Tuesday night during a Society Hill Town Council meeting, where he said contamination from forever-chemical polluted sewer sludge is affecting communities across the country. He had been asked to speak about the toxic chemicals polluting farmland in the area near Galey and Lord. “It’s not just an issue Darlington County is facing,’’ he told the council and a small crowd gathered at the Town Hall. “There’s over ... five to 10 million acres of land impacted across the United States through the spraying of sludge.’’ Thompson said the five to 10 million acres is a calculation based on sludge application nationally. Sewer plants across the country send sludge out to crop land as fertilizer.I give Thompson enormous credit for going out and explaining his work at places like town meetings at which he can explain what he's doing, what the people who live there can do about it, and, frankly, how rural America has been poisoned and screwed by American industry.“We are looking at a much wider range of sites across the area,’’ including more plants that could be contaminated with forever chemicals, Thompson said in an interview with The State. “The hope is that we can try to identify some of the risks associated with PFAS-contaminated land, especially how that moves into the agricultural system as a whole.’’Thompson, an environmental engineer, is with Yale’s Center for Natural Carbon Capture. He’s researching forever chemical contamination as part of an effort to find a way to clean up tainted farmland. The method he’s looking at involves burning certain plants at high temperatures, which kills forever chemicals, then spreading the charred material back on the land, The State has previously reported.Let us now take the Big Diagonal all the way up to Alaska where, because the Republican governor couldn't think two steps ahead, the Money Power took a serious kick to the jewels. From Bolts:Ballot Measure 1, a citizen initiative that caps donations to individual candidates at $2,000 per person per year, with a $4,000 cap on donations to governor-lieutenant governor tickets, passed easily. It leads 71 to 29 percent as of Wednesday morning.This measure would never have been voted on in the first place, but for the fact that Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy last month vetoed a bill to impose the very caps proposed by Measure 1. Because that bill was substantially similar to Measure 1, the measure would have been cancelled had Dunleavy signed it; his veto ensured the matter would be put to voters, who on Tuesday left no question about where they stand.Once again, nothing can truly be done to curb the money power until the godawful Citizens United ruling is sent off to a farm upstate to play with other bad decisions named Plessy and Dred Scott. But there seems to be little question where the people, in Alaska and elsewhere, have come to land.And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, whence, from afar, Blog Official Mussel Builder Friedman of the Algarve brings us the tale of terrible alibis. From the Oklahoma Voice:Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office did not respond to a request for comment regarding the Friday arrest of Secretary of State Benjamin M. Lepak, who Stitt appointed to the post in October. Lepak, 42, of Edmond, was arrested Friday on a municipal charge of public intoxication after Edmond police said they encountered him at about 10:45 p.m. on foot outside the drive-through window of a McDonald’s, according to a police report.An officer wrote in his report that Lepak had “extremely slurred speech” and could smell alcohol on his breath, according to the police report. Lepak seemed to struggle to remove his identification from his wallet, the report said. Lepak told officers he had driven to the McDonald’s, but later said he had not, according to the police report. His car was parked at the restaurant, the report said. Lepak said he had been to a church event earlier. He said he had consumed less than one beer after telling police he had consumed no alcohol and offered to get an Uber home, the report said. He told officers that he had been eating healthy, and it was his night to get McDonald’s, the police report said.Dude, take the L. Just ... take the L.This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.