Jennifer Jenkins, who first made headlines when she beat Tina Descovich, co-founder of the far-right Moms For Liberty, in the Brevard County, Florida, school board race in 2020, announced Wednesday that she’s running for U.S. Senate in Florida.
Under the leadership of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state has become the poster child for the right-wing extremism that has saturated school board races around the country. And Moms for Liberty, an extremist group that purports to support parental rights and has been behind the wave of right-wing school board takeovers, was founded in Florida and has wielded influence over the state’s education policies.
Jenkins surprised political experts in Florida when she beat Descovich, the incumbent, by nearly 10 points.
“When the school board wasn’t delivering, I decided to run myself,” Jenkins said in a campaign launch video. “And despite the odds, I won. In a county that Trump won by double digits.”
Jenkins has long pushed back on the parental rights movement, whose leaders say parents should be the final decision-makers when it comes to their children’s education. The movement has been behind the conservative charge to ban books with racial justice and LGBTQ+ themes, censor what teachers can say in the classroom and craft policies attacking transgender youth.
