School Choice Supporters Victorious in Florida Elections
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The Florida Federation for Children (FFC), and its affiliated PAC – groups that work to elect Florida legislators of both parties who support empowering families with educational choices – celebrated many victories in tonight’s elections.
Statement from John Kirtley, Co-Chairman of FFC:
“Tonight’s results continue the trend seen over the past several election cycles in Florida: When given a clear choice between a candidate who supports empowering parents to choose K-12 options for their children and a candidate who wishes to restrict those choices, voters prefer the candidate who supports educational choice. Tonight’s victories by pro-educational choice candidates continues the trend from this year’s primaries, where four pro-educational choice Democrats won their races. Floridians from both political parties today showed support for educational choice by casting votes for candidates who favor giving parents more options to customize their child’s education for their individual needs. It’s time to give children more educational opportunity through magnet schools, charter schools, education savings accounts, tax credit scholarship programs, and similar policies. FFC applauds these candidates for standing up for Florida families. In the 2018 election cycle, FFC invested over $1.6 million in 39 primary and general election races.”
Details:
FFC invested in the following races where champions of educational choice won, based upon results posted by the Florida Department of Elections at the time of release. In all of these races, FFC educated voters in households with tax credit scholarship children and charter school students–through mail, email, phone calls and social media—on the difference between the candidates on the issue of educational choice.
Governor and Attorney General:
FFC worked intensely to educate the over 230,000 registered voters in households with tax credit scholarship children on the differences between the candidates for these two offices on the issue of educational choice. Less than 30% of these voters are registered Republicans. FFC believes that where the candidates stood on educational choice, and the tax credit scholarship in particular, was a critical issue to these voters. FFC also conducted a social media campaign aimed at users located at every charter school around the state. FFC did 11 social media ads to the 230,000 registered voters with tax credit scholarship children. It had over 3.6 million impressions to voters in this group generating tens of thousands of likes and positive comments from Democrat and NPA parent voters. FFC also “geofarmed” every person who went on social media in the last 12 months at every charter school in Florida—all 650 of them. There were 100,000 such people. FFC sent them an ad informing them of Gillum’s position on charters 30 times in the last two weeks generating 2.5 million impressions on Gillum’s anti charter position.
Florida Senate:
Dana Young is in a recount with Janet Cruz in SD 18. A tax credit scholarship family was featured in an ad produced by Republican Senate Campaigns that ran on Spanish language television in Tampa.
Keith Perry won re-election in SD 8. A tax credit scholarship family was featured in an ad produced by Republican Senate Campaigns that ran television in the Gainesville market.
Manny Diaz Jr. won in SD 36. A tax credit scholarship family was featured in an ad produced by Republican Senate Campaigns that ran on Spanish language television in Miami.
FFC also invested in SD 16 (Ed Hooper victorious), as well as SD 22 (Kelli Stargel victorious) and SD 24 (Jeff Brandes victorious).
Florida House of Representatives:
We congratulate the following candidates which we supported who won their General Election for the Florida House.
- Wyman Duggan (HD 15)
- Jason Fischer (HD 16)
- Elizabeth Fetterhoff (HD 26)
- Scott Plakon (HD 29)
- Randy Fine (HD 53)
- Jackie Toledo (HD 60)
- Chris Latvala (HD 67)
- Toby Overdorf (HD 83)
- Chip LaMarca (HD 93)
- Ana Maria Rodriguez (HD 105)
- Vance Aloupis (HD 115)
- Anthony Rodriguez (HD 118)
The American Federation for Children is the nation’s leading school choice advocacy organization and works in states across the country to help secure additional, high-quality educational options for families.