Mr. Trump: DeSantis' next education commissioner is your best weapon against political euthanasia
Trump has a Shakespearean DeSantis problem; and DeSantis has a giant education corruption/Ralph Arza problem. DeSantis' replacement for disgraced Richard Corcoran is crucial in the MAGA civil war.
Donald Trump has a Shakespearean Ron DeSantis problem (with some Highlander tossed in.)
Florida and the wider national GOP are having a Henry IV, Part 2 moment. Trump is the fun orange Falstaff who joyfully groomed DeSantis’ Prince Hal in the lurid ways of MAGA. But there’s a kingdom at stake now; and there can be only one. The time of jolly jesters is past.
“I know thee not, old man”
DeSantis and the hardest core leaders of the GOP’s dominant MAGA/Putinist/Capitol Lynch Mob faction are done with the very old Trump. They think he’s low energy. In fact, this is a secret transcript of the last face-to-face Trump/DeSantis meeting:
Trump: God save thee, my sweet boy.
DeSantis [the new MAGA King]: My lord chief justice, speak to that vain man.
DeSantis henchman [to Trump]: Have you your wits? know you what ‘tis you speak?
Trump: My king! my Jove! I speak to thee my heart!
MAGA King DeSantis: I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers; How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! I have long dream’d of such a kind of man, so surfeit-swell’d, so old, and so profane; But being awak’d, I do despise my dream.
Here is actual film from the meeting:
Let me speak directly to the big orange Falstaff himself for a moment.
That scene stings, doesn’t it? Because it’s true.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. You need not let your sweet prince — who you put in power — betray you and send your doddering grandpa virility out to the glue factory, like the pigs did Boxer in Animal Farm.
DeSantis has made himself very vulnerable to you through his strange loyalty to a guy named Ralph Arza and through a massive bid-rigging, charter school, and education corruption scandal and cover-up in tiny Trump-voting Jefferson County. Here’s a full rundown of the scandal.
Why has DeSantis chosen “disgusting” Ralph Arza over you, Mr. Trump?
2018 seems so long ago. Back then, DeSantis hung on your every word, Mr. Trump. He made cute commercials about your wall. He was your obedient puppy.
DeSantis also banished Ralph Arza in 2018 from the sight of his campaign with much public dudgeon, for a pretty good reason: Ralph is a convicted criminal witness tamperer kicked out of the Legislature for making drunken, threatening, racial-slur filled phone calls. Ralph also happens to be director of governmental affairs for the Florida Charter School Alliance (FCSA) and chief political hit man for the Florida charter school industry.
That is in no way an exaggeration. Full rundown here. This Politico screenshot from 2018 is about Ralph.
As we’ll see in a second, Ralph is a problem in plain sight for basically everybody in Florida education and Jeb-oriented politics. But it’s worse for DeSantis.
Why?
Because, Mr. Trump, at the same time DeSantis and his friends are acting to retire you, they’ve completely rehabilitated Ralph.
Since DeSantis appointed Richard Corcoran, Ralph has been acting as the de facto second in command at the collapsing DeSantis Florida Department of Education, which has been run by disgraced, outgoing Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran. Corcoran once told me face-to-face he considers Ralph a “friend.”
Ralph is also a crucial figure in the ongoing DoE/Jefferson/MGT consultant bid-rigging scandal. Four of Ralph’s relatives worked for the Academica-owned charter school that Sen. Manny Diaz and Richard Corcoran forced on Jefferson County before it quit. And Ralph was present for no good reason during a potentially corrupt official meeting last fall, first reported by the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald. Full rundown of Ralph’s still not fully explained role in it here.
Why is Team DeSantis covering up rather than fighting?
Why did you banish the charter school industry’s “disgusting” racist convicted criminal witness tamperer Ralph Arza in 2018 and then let him run roughshod over the Florida Department of Education with Richard Corcoran’s blessing. Why did you empower him to help scam tiny Trump-voting Jefferson County?
Those are the simple, core questions of a very big state and national political story that bears directly on DeSantis’s relentless pursuit of the presidency in 2024 — and his deep desire to squeeze you out, Mr. Trump.
The DeSantis administration, by all appearances, refuses to investigate this meeting and any corrupt acts that may have happened there. There is an obvious ongoing, plain-sight, “let’s ignore this,” cover up of the entire MGT part of the scandal.
I say that as an official, actual complainant to the governor’s Inspector General’s Office.
Think about that: DeSantis is eager to publicly pick a fight with Disney in Florida; but investigating the “disgusting” Arza, the full DoE/Jefferson scandal, and its motley crew of Jeb and Rubio-adjacent grifters terrifies him into abject surrender and silence. Why?
You don’t have to meekly let DeSantis go Falstaff on you, Mr. Trump
I know you, Mr. Trump, would never ever read Henry the IV, part 2 or Animal Farm. Or anything. You certainly wouldn’t read me. But some of your minions might.
And they should tell you, when they’re not grifting you, to pay attention to the behavior of DeSantis and his people in connection with Corcoran, Arza, and the DoE/Jefferson scandal.
That behavior reeks of fear and awareness of vulnerability.
Team DeSantis knows the DoE/Jefferson scandal already decapitated the leadership structure of his corrupt Department of Education by taking down DeSantis’ disgraced Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, Board of Education Member Andy Tuck, and Vice Chancellor Melissa Ramsey of the Florida DoE. It likely killed the future career of DoE Chancellor Jacob Oliva and kept him from becoming Miami-Dade superintendent of schools — despite full backing from the Arza’s political Miami mafia.
And all of that happened with limited focus from Florida’s power-fluffing political media narrative makers. Sometimes the biggest stories sit untouched in plain sight because media organizations are too scared, too lazy, too conflicted, or too busy to report them.
I don’t know which is the case here.
But Politico Florida bureau chief Matt Dixon should explain why Politico’s excellent reporters, who wrote the screen-shotted story above about Arza’s banishment in 2018, lack the physical ability to dial Ron DeSantis’ people and ask follow-up questions about Ralph Arza and the DoE/Jefferson story.
You could help them find their courage, Mr. Trump.
You could easily make Ron DeSantis talk about Ralph Arza and DoE/Jefferson corruption in great depth. Even Peter Schorsch couldn’t ignore it, then.
Hillary’s emails weren’t a story until you made them one. And make no mistake, Ron DeSantis, not Joe Biden, is your Hillary this time around.
Indeed, you have a giant DeSantis problem for which Ralph Arza is your only potential solution. (Well, other than Matt Gaetz, maybe. Your DOJ investigated Gaetz, Mr. Trump; DeSantis seems to have illegally withheld records related to Gaetz. LOL.)
Gaetz and DoE/Jefferson are the only places DeSantis has made himself vulnerable to you. That’s how stupid he was to appoint Corcoran.
Zero degrees of Ralph
You should pray your minions tell you all this, Mr. Trump. Team DeSantis is praying they don’t.
Team DeSantis knows this scandal, Ralph Arza’s “disgusting” presence in it, and the overall state leadership of Florida’s corrupt and failed Jeb-dominated education system are easy, vulnerable targets for you to hit.
It’s why DeSantis is so eager to duck any public fight over it.
Team DeSantis knows you trounced Jeb “Common Core” Bush in 2016 by destroying Jeb’s Florida education establishment, without even knowing anything about Common Core or education.
And you should understand that every Florida Education Commissioner candidate currently in the zeitgeist to replace the broken Corcoran presents a major risk to DeSantis that you can easily exploit at your Nuremberg rallies.
Florida’s entire existing education power structure — from Jeb on down — is Arza and DoE/Jefferson compromised. Almost any natural candidate to replace Corcoran comes with Arza and DoE/Jefferson wrapped around his or her neck and a ready excuse to talk about it.
Let’s take a look.
Why hasn’t DeSantis announced Manny Diaz, R-Academica, as the guy yet?
Most people who pay attention to Florida education assume the education commissioner job will go to Sen. Manny Diaz. Corcoran named-checked him; and he certainly seems to want it.
The state taxpayers would likely double what Manny makes as an executive for Academica, the same Miami-based charter and education privatization giant that failed Jefferson County and refuses to allow an audit of how it spent all that extra tax money it got to fail.
Diaz has a been the leading legislative force in Florida’s broken, anti-teacher education system for nearly a decade. So he’s the natural choice for DeSantis if DeSantis is happy with Corcoran and Arza and the DoE/Jefferson grift and the associated Marco Rubio/Trey Traviesa Florida power center in education and beyond.
Manny is just another head on that vast DoE/Jefferson/Arza hydra. And he brings his own unique baggage:
Proves charter schools can’t work to replace the basic function of public education. Openly blamed the people of Jefferson County, not his employer.
Owns the DeSantis lie about killing Florida’s dead approach to standardized testing and improving the experience. The bill he championed increases testing by most analyses and relies on a state test platform that doesn’t exist. It’s a scandal in waiting.
Deeply tied to Arza and Corcoran and the whole shady Jeb-world of privatizing grift.
Was publicly accused in 2021 of inappropriate behavior as a young teacher, which Diaz denied. Some background here. I have no point-of-view on the truth of those allegations. But the DeSantis/Diaz GOP has been talking loudly and slanderously about the supposed “grooming” of kids. Not a great story to have attached to DeSantis Education Commissioner in an election year, especially when the Matt Gaetz shoe is still out there, potentially waiting to drop.
All those points complicate the Diaz decision. And if Manny was truly a lock — the continuation of a popular and successful approach for DeSantis — I think he would have been appointed already, at the same time Corcoran quit, for the sake of seamless continuity.
Of course, not appointing Manny is risky, too. It’s an acknowledgement that all of the above is, in fact, baggage. Acknowledgment of the obvious is often quite dangerous. Denial is often easier. Icing Manny would become a booming, unpredictable shot across the bow for the Rubio/Traviesa/Corcoran and Jeb-world concentrations of Florida power.
The Manny question highlights the pickle DeSantis finds himself in. And I look forward to having a lot of fun with DeSantis and Manny, whichever choice DeSantis makes.
Jacob Oliva? Read that investigative report again.
Corcoran also named-dropped DoE Chancellor Jacob Oliva as his possible replacement. But Oliva is just as central to the DoE/Jefferson scandal as Arza, Tuck, Ramsey, and Corcoran — if not moreso.
Indeed, the investigation that took down Tuck and Ramsey also documented that Oliva personally instructed a DoE subordinate to craft a Request for Quote (RFQ) for "transition services” for Jefferson using a multi-million draft agreement with Trey Traviesa’s MGT consulting. MGT then went on to submit the only bid.
To repeat: DoE had a written agreement with MGT that it used as the template for a supposedly competitive RFQ that MGT was the only firm to respond to. And Oliva is documented in DoE’s investigation as the leader who ordered a subordinate to do it.
Yikes.
The DoE’s sham investigation documented this — and then essentially ignored it, clearing Oliva of wrongdoing. Even still, the DoE/Jefferson scandal came up politically in the Miami-Dade superintendent search, which Oliva lost.
But Oliva’s full role and culpability in the MGT part of the bid-rigging scandal has not been investigated. Appointing him Education Commissioner begs reporters and opposition legislators to ask more probing questions about the whole scandal and its open cover-up by the DeSantis administration.
And eventually, somebody will ask Oliva if he was in the suspicious meeting with Arza and others reported by the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald — and what was said there.
What about Jeb’s loyalists in the unelected education “deep state”? Most of them can’t get away from Ralph.
Again, people who follow education politics in Florida know that unelected people associated with Jeb Bush and his foundation largely run our disastrous state public education system. I introduced folks to a number of them a few years ago.
They are a real life education “deep state.”
Several of those people could make logical state Education Commissioner candidates, given their Jeb-world and Florida education pedigrees.
They include Patricia Levesque (runs Jeb’s foundation); Jon Hage (owns the Charter Schools USA chain); and John Kirtley (the father of Florida’s failed, segregated, massive-dropout-rate abomination of a voucher program).
But they are all, literally, Ralph Arza’s bosses.
As board members for the Florida Charter School Alliance, they have indulged and empowered Ralph as their political hit man for years — despite the fact that he’s a convicted criminal racist witness tamperer who is in the middle of the DoE/Jefferson scandal.
They don’t want to be asked about that any more than DeSantis does. I’ve asked about it repeatedly, on Twitter and through email. And this is how they responded.
See Mr. Trump, they pay attention. And they’re sensitive. Your minions should take notes and share with you.
My best guess: Randy Fine, Bill Montford, or Shan Goff
To recap, everyone mentioned publicly by “savvy” Florida reporters as a candidate has zero degrees of separation from Ralph Arza and the DoE/Jefferson scandal. So do the most logical Jebbist candidates not mentioned.
As I said before, that’s a pickle DeSantis bought for himself for zero benefit.
In my last piece, I noted that the DoE/Jefferson + Arza vulnerability + DeSantis’ cocky, confrontational behavior suggests Randy Fine is the leading candidate. I also pointed to a smarter, Machiavellian choice: Bill Montford, a former Leon County superintendent and Democratic state senator who runs the Florida Superintendents association.
There is one more name to add, I think. I recently heard from a source that the DeSantis administration gets advice from Shan Goff, who is a Jeb-world stalwart. I can’t independently verify the truth of what the source told me. But it makes sense.
Goff does not come with obvious DoE/Jefferson or Arza baggage that I can see. She is more operational than openly political.
Indeed, perhaps no individual so thoroughly embodies the endless, incompetent Florida education Deep State recycling of failed ideas and performance than Goff.
She's been educratting since 1985, even before JebWorld. Almost nothing in Florida education has escaped her bizarro-world Midas touch. She’s helped Florida produce America's worst test score growth with age (if that’s what you care about); deep ESE problems; one of the worst American teacher shortages; the most incompetent state DoE; and the most dishonest use of data to harm your kids. See this article.
I had the great joy of interrogating Shan Goff face-to-face about the state’s school grade fraud at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Lakeland during my 2016 campaign. Read all about that here.
Despite all that, she is likely the safest, most boring Jeb-related commissioner pick to make.
She’s the only one who gets clear of Arza and DoE/Jefferson, at least on her face. She’s a smarter pick than Manny politically and probably poses the least overall risk for DeSantis.
But she’s not risk free. Trump can to tie her to Common Core. Jeb-world championed Common Core before Trump obliterated them with it in 2016. That certainly includes Goff.
If I was conspiracy-addled MAGA acolyte, I’d see Shan Goff as a stalking horse for the return of the vanquished Jeb and Common Core-ism in #FreeFlorida.
An easy tweet, Mr. Trump, if you were still tweeting
No matter who DeSantis picks for commissioner, it doesn’t change what’s already happened in education during DeSantis’ corruption and scandal-eaten first term. DeSantis is on the hook for all of it — if someone puts him there.
Back to you for a second, Mr. Trump.
You have a dark talent for sensing vulnerability and smelling the blood your grifty minions direct you to. I hate to appeal to it.
However, in the MAGA civil war, I find it my patriotic duty to act as a remorseless arms dealer for both sides.
And this is about the only Javelin missile you have to fire at the DeSantis tank.
You and [insert name here] and Ralph Arza, who used to be too criminal and too racist for you, sold out my voters for Miami grifters as corrupt as Hunter Biden, Ron. And yet, you made their buddies the boss of all education in your state. Sad.
Otherwise, Team DeSantis will reduce you to begging for Falstaff cameos for Shakespeare in the Park. Sad.