Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Saturday blasted the increasingly popular critical race theory that is seeping into school curricula nationwide and promised he would oppose any Republican school board candidate in Florida who doesn’t resist it.
During an interview that aired Saturday night on “Unfiltered with Dan Bongino,” DeSantis promised to aim his “political apparatus” against any Republican school board candidate who supports either critical race theory or mandatory masking for schoolchildren.
“Next week, I have my Commissioner of Education going to the Board of Education banning it, banning any departure from accurate history and following our standards,” DeSantis told Bongino regarding critical race theory. “This is something we’ve got to stay on the forefront of.”
“We’re also, Dan, not going to support any Republican candidate for school board who supports critical race theory in all 67 counties or supports mandatory masking of schoolchildren,” DeSantis continued.
“As you said, these local elections matter. We are going to get the Florida political apparatus involved so we can make sure there’s not a single school board member, Republican, who ever indulges critical race theory,” DeSantis added.
WATCH:
Gov. @RonDeSantisFL tells @dbongino that critical race theory and "any departure from accurate history" will be banned in Florida. pic.twitter.com/jwTAUkw7qA
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) June 6, 2021
Political consultant Ryan Girdusky, who recently started the 1776 Project PAC to support local school board candidates who oppose critical race theory, praised DeSantis for his position, telling The Daily Wire: “Currently, Florida has over a dozen school districts in the state that push the 1619 Project and critical race theory. I believe he is serious about his intentions. He is the most popular Republican in the state and the 1776 Project PAC would gladly campaign on behalf of school board candidates who oppose critical race theory and have DeSantis’ endorsement.”
DeSantis and Florida have been at the forefront of states fighting back against critical race theory, which DeSantis has before described as a “very harmful” form of “race-based” Marxism. As The Daily Wire reported in April:
Asked to respond to the claim that America is “a systemically racist country,” DeSantis told Fox News host Laura Ingraham during a town hall that such a proposition is “a bunch of horse manure.”
“I mean, give me a break. This country has had more opportunity for more people than any country in the history of the world, and it doesn’t matter where you trace your ancestry from,” DeSantis said to applause from the audience. “We’ve had people that have been able to succeed.”
“And here’s the problem with things like critical race theory that they’re peddling,” DeSantis continued, pivoting to the controversial academic movement that some states such as Florida and Idaho have taken measures to ban from their public schools. “They’re basically saying all our institutions are bankrupt, and they’re illegitimate.”
“Okay, so how do you have a society if everything in your society is illegitimate?” asked DeSantis. “So it’s a very harmful ideology, and I would say, really, a race-based version of a Marxist-type ideology. So we’ve banned it in our schools here in Florida. We’re not going to put any taxpayer dollars to critical race theory, and we want to treat people as individuals, not as members of groups.”