The Republican civil war and the Polk School Board races

The GOP successfully made the local School Board races generic R versus D, but lost a big chunk of its own voters to the Democratic coalition. Thoughts on a weird night.

Correction: Contrary to my understanding, Scott Franklin’s office tells me he took no official position on any School Board race.

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Polk County’s Democratic school board candidates vastly overperformed Tuesday night in an R+13 electorate. One Democrat won outright 53-47 (19 point over-performance); and two others lost 51-49. (11-point over-performance)

A fourth Republican, Jill Sessions, who proudly uses a criminal, church-cheating campaign manager, couldn’t get above 37 percent (a whopping 15-point underperformance) against a Democrat and an NPA. She’ll get crushed in the November runoff with excellent NPA incumbent Lisa Miller, who is popular across the political spectrum here. I am also an NPA, for the sake of disclosure.

Associating with the CCDF, at all, cost the GOP school board candidates at least 10-12 margin points. That’s the CCDF voter tax.

Here are a couple of looks at the turnout figures:

A tiny uptick in the terrible Democratic and NPA turnout would have wiped out all the Polk Republican candidates.

This includes “normal” Republican Justin Sharpless, who is not part of the crank alliance that went 1-2 Tuesday night. Justin, endorsed by Grady Judd, should have won by 10 to 15 points in that electorate. He barely survived against the outstanding Sara Jones, who ran an amazing race with almost no money.

Generic races, only individualized on the margins, highlighting the GOP civil war

The striking similarity of the results points to how successful state and local Republicans were in making School Board races generically partisan. The vast majority of voters — on both sides of the two-person races — appear to have voted in static blocks — one pro-GOP and one anti-GOP.

Only a tiny, tiny marginal sliver voted based on what they thought of individual candidates. That’s just the reality the numbers show.

Voters made no distinction between Rick Nolte and Justin Sharpless. They saw them as the same person — much as they did Sarah Fortney and Sara Jones.

The good news for GOPers — and what allowed them to win two races — is that they had a 52-39 edge in turnout. The bad news, and what almost cost them every seat is that a substantial chunk of those same GOPers and NPAs voted with the mediocre Dem turnout as a consistent bloc against all the GOP candidates — “normal” Sharpless included.

That dynamic bears watching statewide; and it relates very much to the Polk Republican civil war I wrote about here — between the normies and the cranks.

Rick “T.I.T.S.” Nolte (see below, still up on his FB page, coming to your daughter’s middle school) and Justin Sharpless are on opposite sides of that civil war between normies and cranks.

That’s why Sheriff Grady Judd endorsed only Justin Sharpless — and not the three cranks.

But the cranks are winning this internal war over the formal public identity of the GOP, which is why DeSantis, who is also a crank, endorsed fellow crank Nolte, not Sharpless. It’s also why a big chunk of GOP and NPAs voted against the GOP cranks and normies alike.

Ya’ll should do something about that, normies.

A few other quick points about last night

• Losing Sarah Fortney — by a point — to “T.I.T.S.” Nolte is very bad for everyone in Polk County, especially parents who need constituent service. I will have a fuller appreciation of my dear, brave, historically significant friend Sarah when I have time to do her justice. But much like me, the powerful, angry forces arrayed against Sarah barely managed to squeeze her out of office. And they’ve done nothing to discredit her voice and force as advocate for the humanity of students and teachers. They've just freed her to serve as an advocate full time. They’ve freed her to go on offense.

• Nolte is going to be very entertaining and easy to make miserable — because he’s gross and not bright. Right now, sitting in plain view, his campaign contributions show at least $6,200 in illegal cash donations.

This doofus has 10 misdemeanor $100 cash donations just on his last reporting period. And this, below, appears to be the self-declaration of a felony. LOL.

Look, most likely someone just entered “cash” wrong. I cannot imagine that anyone would be so stupid as to openly declare his crimes like this. But I am going to file a state elections complaint to find out. Congratulations, Rick. I’m so looking forward to covering you.

• It turns out that hiring a church-cheating criminal with six shady PPP loans does hurt your campaign, even in a generic R v D election. In fact, it’s decisive. The CCDF’s guy, James Dunn, went 0-2 last night. You can argue that Dunn helped boost Kay Fields by 19 points in sheer Democrat overperformance. She should send him a thank you bouquet — after I get mine.

• The Moms for Medicare scooters “movement” is just Tea Party 4.0. They’ve been updating every few cycles. Their median voter is not a mom; it’s a 62-year-old white guy originally from New Jersey foaming at the mouth about Brandon. They will go back into their clubhouses, leaving the cranks as easy targets for people actually paying attention in day-to-day life. Actual parent complains will continue to revolve around what they always do: staffing and the emotional and intellectual well-being of kids. We decent civic people need to aggressively use the cranks however we can. I always find cranks valuable in advancing my social and moral goals. They tend to be the best weapons we have as object lessons.

• Kelli Stargel’s malevolent, lazy career came to a lazy and malevolent end last night on the jagged rocks of Hillsborough County. She set hundreds of thousands in corporate shill PAC money on fire to get 27 percent of the vote. At least the Dosters got paid.

That’s a wrap for now.