AN ABSOLUTE WINNER OF A STORY – YOU MEAN, MINORITIES ARE ALLOWED TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES? – AT 10:45 P.M. ET:   A shocking report from Florida.  Did a mini-revolt among African-American women cost Andrew Gillum the governorship?  It appears to be the case.  From Daily Signal:   

Conservative Republican Ron DeSantis and progressive Democrat Andrew Gillum presented voters with starkly different choices on an array of issues, none more distinctively polar than their plans for charter schools.

In short, DeSantis proposed expanding them while Gillum espoused “siphoning them off” as drains on the public school system.

That distinction—rather than the personalities and ideologies involved—may have compelled about 100,000 African-American women, the vast majority registered Democrats, to vote for DeSantis over Gillum on Nov. 6, according to William Mattox, director of the Marshall Center for Educational Options at the James Madison Institute, a Tallahassee-based conservative think tank.

According to a CNN exit poll, of the roughly 650,000 black women who voted in Florida, 18 percent chose DeSantis over Gillum—an unexpected wedge of support by “school-choice moms” that was the difference in the race, concludes Mattox in a Wall Street Journal analysis of Florida’s midterm elections.

“While 18 percent of the black female vote in Florida is equal to less than 2 percent of the total electorate, in an election decided by fewer than [32,463] votes, these 100,000 black women proved decisive,” Mattox writes.

More than 290,000 students are enrolled in the state’s 650 charter schools. In addition, about 108,000 low-income students participate in the Step Up For Students program, which grants tax-credit funded scholarships to attend private schools.

According to Mattox, most Step Up students are minorities whose mothers are registered Democrats.

COMMENT:  Obviously, Gillum was tone deaf on this issue.  He did the standard leftist thing – arguing that charter schools are an evil, when in fact minority parents love them.  If there's any issue more important than group loyalty, it's children.  Have leftist Democrats heard of children?  Do they approve?

November 28, 2018