DeSantis adds another win to his resume against politicized teachers unions
Zachary Faria
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has done just about everything Republicans could want from a president over the past few years. Now, that includes combatting one of the worst political influences on the country over the past five years: teachers unions.
Florida’s new law, signed by DeSantis, requires at least 60% of public sector union members to pay dues for the union to avoid decertification. That threshold has now caught up with the United Teachers of Dade, the Miami-Dade teachers union that made a substantial push to get members to pay dues and still fell short of the threshold. The union is now going to be stuck in a cycle of proving that 30% of teachers support unionization, 50% support continued certification, and that 60% dues number.
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DeSantis also signed into law a ban on unions automatically collecting dues from the paychecks of members, which is in part why the United Teachers of Dade have struggled to reach that threshold. Combine all of this with a more accurate reporting system, and DeSantis has helped usher in a more accountable regime for “zombie unions,” of which the United Teachers of Dade appears to be right now.
Perhaps the United Teachers of Dade became a zombie union stuck in limbo because of its transparently political agenda. The union’s president, Karla Hernandez-Mats, fought against reopening schools during the pandemic (in defiance of science), saying that getting children back in school was nothing more than a political game. Her union said that reopening schools was racist and that people were being “sacrificed.”
Oh, and she returned to her union president job after being selected as Democrat Charlie Crist’s running mate in his 2022 run against DeSantis, lest anyone try and persuade you that the United Teachers of Dade is anything other than a public sector wing of the state’s Democratic Party.
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You would think crippling the political power of a teachers union, especially after the pandemic exposed just how deep the tendrils of those unions reach into the levers of government (such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), would be a crowning achievement for a GOP presidential candidate. For DeSantis, it is yet another gem in a resume full of them. This should be one of the easier GOP primaries the party has had in some time.
Republicans have the option to nominate someone who has already shown he has the focus, political chops, and willpower to do exactly what the party wants from a president. Former President Donald Trump lacks the former two of those traits, and Nikki Haley lacks the latter two. This is yet another piece of evidence that DeSantis has all three. What more could a GOP voter ask for?