A.G. Gancarski
Last week, Florida Family Action endorsed Janet Adkins in the very contentious Nassau County School Superintendent race.
On Tuesday, FFA doubled down on that position, after “some Kathy Burns supporters were upset and expressed that they felt Burns was a conservative, that we ‘had not done our research’ and therefore the statements made were unfair.”
Not a wise move, as that reaction got an extended remix of the original endorsement.
Those objectionable FFA statements?
An assertion that — despite Burns being a Republican — she was an “18-year entrenched politician” with “close ties to left-leaning teachers unions” and is devoted to “leftist social engineering.”
The FFA backs up those statements: Burns has been elected three times without opposition; Burns has been backed by unions; and Burns supported the Obama Administration’s “Climate Transformation Grant.”
“While registered as a Republican,” FFA continues, “Kathy Burns has failed to fight for conservative principles over her 18 years in office. She has allowed the implementation of Common Core curriculum, and has failed to take a strong stand against the Obama transgender bathroom mandate.”
FFA’s issue with Burns and the “transgender bathroom mandate” is that Burns is not sufficiently outraged.
Burns is quoted as saying that “ the order has created much concern at all levels and rightly so” and this “is not an enforceable law.”
She has, asserts the FFA, “left the door open to implementation” by not actively opposing the measure, including calling workshops to discuss how Nassau County would react to losing $11 million of federal funding if it resisted the mandate.
In a “personal statement” at the end of the 1,557 word press release, Stemberger weighs in.
“Just being a good person and a ‘good Republican’ is no longer good enough in today’s dangerous world. Unless a candidate is willing to lead on critical issues they will not win our support,” Stemberger writes, adding that Adkins “received an A+ (100 percent rating) on the FFA Legislative Scorecard, the highest score possible for her voting record in the Legislature, making her a ‘Champion of the Family’.”
The moral of this story? When an organization endorses your opponent, it’s not a good idea for your supporters to fight that endorsement, as the endorsing group is quite likely, as in this case, to double down.
One comment
Karen Effrem - Executive Director FSCCC
August 11, 2016 at 12:13 am
It is highly ironic that FFA criticizes Kathy Burns for not doing anything about Common Core when Janet Adkins has been the queen of supporting Common Core in the Florida House. As chairwoman of the K-12 subcommittee, she was the chief author of the bill that merely and deceptively removed the name of Common Core from statute instead of really dealing with the horrible standards. Adkins promoted every bill that expanded the Common Core system and blocked every bill that opposed it. She has not been on the side of parents and students.
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