In the final days before the Aug. 18 election, many Polk County voters received mailers or text messages from the campaign of Kate Wallace, a candidate for the School Board in District 3.
While promoting the credentials of Wallace, an appointed School Board member, the messages also included material about Victor Sims, one of her two opponents in the nonpartisan election.
Under Sims’ name and beside a photo of him, the mailer declared: “Boys to play in girls’ sports. Woke LGBTQ indoctrination in our classrooms. All charter schools and school choice programs banned by the courts.”
Sims denounced Wallace’s claims as lies in videos posted on his campaign Facebook page and in an interview.
“It was last-minute election propaganda to alter the votes,” Sims said. “I mean, campaigns do that often, but usually it’s some sort of truth. None of it was even partially the truth.”
Wallace said that the statements were based on Sims’ status as a registered Democrat, his background and the positions of groups supporting his campaign.
“I’ve never heard of a registered Democrat like Victor Sims so strongly deny embracing key tenets of the Democratic Party’s platform,” Wallace said by email. “Voters deserve to know who’s funding a candidate and why. If Sims disagrees with the platforms of the groups actively bankrolling and endorsing his campaign, he’s had every opportunity to say so publicly and hasn’t.”
Sims said that he believes the mailer and texts significantly shifted the results of the election. Wallace expanded her lead over him from 2 percentage points in early and mail voting to 9.3% after the Aug. 18 voting.
Wallace captured 45.1% of the total vote, leading Sims (35.8%) and the third candidate, Sarah Corona (19.1%). Because Wallace did not receive a majority, she and Sims will compete in a runoff election on Nov. 3.
“This is a nonpartisan race, and I am not filtering my views through the platform of any political party,” Sims said by email. “I have been clear that I support school choice, whether public, private, charter, or homeschool. Our classrooms should be places where our children are educated, not indoctrinated with political ideologies. When it comes to school sports, Florida has laws governing boys not being in girls sports.”
Sims: Rival’s claims are untrue
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Wallace last November to fill a vacancy in District 3 resulting from the death of Rick Nolte. She is now seeking a full, four-year term.
Sims said he did not receive either the mailer or the text, but he began hearing from friends and supporters on the morning of Aug. 15, the Saturday before election day. He posted a video that afternoon on his campaign Facebook page denouncing Wallace’s claims.
In another video posted the day before final voting, Sims again briefly alluded to Wallace’s campaign mailer and text messages.
“As we get to these last 24 hours — really 23, when the polls will close — we’ve seen how the opponents have played a game, and specifically one of them, and has unfortunately said some things that just aren’t true,” Sims said. “And that’s a reflection of her character, and not the character of who we are as a district.”
Sims said he considered making a more forceful response directly aimed at Wallace, but he opted not to do so after praying and consulting religious advisers.
In an email, Wallace pointed to Sims’ support from progressive groups as proof that he supports the positions she attributed to him in the mailer and text messages.
“Victor Sims sought and publicized support from organizations like the Florida Education Association, the School Board Project, and the Equality Florida PAC — groups that have made no secret of their agenda, including opposing Gov. DeSantis’ 2021 law (banning) boys from girls’ sports, and several times over, pursuing litigation aimed at defunding Florida’s charter schools and school choice programs,” Wallace wrote.
The FEA, an umbrella group for teacher and school staff unions, joined a lawsuit seeking to block taxpayer funding of charter schools and voucher programs. If the lawsuit succeeded, courts would halt funding for more than 20,000 charter school students and about 10,000 private and home school students in Polk, Wallace said.
“That’s a core reason I’ve never sought or accepted support from the Florida Education Association,” she wrote.
In joining the lawsuit, the FEA asserted that the Florida Department of Education and State Board of Education “have not upheld their duty to ensure schools receiving taxpayer dollars are held to the same standards, oversight and level of accountability.”
Addressing the claim that he seeks to have all charter schools and school-choice programs banned, Sims said that he and his wife are considering home-schooling their daughter. He noted that he graduated from Chain of Lakes Collegiate High School, a charter school.
“Why would I attack someone that helped me?” he said.
Supporting ‘gender ideology’?
Sims has advertised endorsements from the Polk Education Association PAC, which is an affiliate of the FEA; the School Board Project, a national group that supports progressive candidates; and Equality Florida Action PAC, which says its mission is to empower and uplift the LGBTQ community.
The issue of allowing transgender students to play on teams matching their expressed gender is highly controversial. Advocates take offense at the labeling of transgender girls or women as boys or men.
In an email, Wallace claimed that Sims’ political affiliations going back to 2016, when he ran for the Florida House, include groups that support “gender ideology in classrooms.” She cited the platform of a nonprofit Sims founded in 2020, Guiding Hope, which said it opened a home in Lubbock, Texas, “to meet the needs of LGBTQ children in the foster care system.”
Sims’ campaign financial reports list a $100 contribution from the Rainbow Ridge LGBTQA Democratic Caucus of Polk County and a $1,000 donation from the Florida Democratic Party.
Wallace has reported about $73,000 in campaign contributions, compared with $27,000 for Sims. The vast majority of Sims’ campaign funding has come from individuals, as it has for Wallace.
Sims said that he does not mold his positions to fit those of all those supporting him.
“If organizations and individuals choose to support me knowing my positions on these issues, then I welcome that support,” he said. “I am the only candidate in this race who has treated this election in a truly nonpartisan manner by participating in Republican, Democratic and nonpartisan forums.”
After winning the three-way election, Wallace gained the endorsement of the Polk Republican Executive Committee. She also has endorsements from Polk’s four Republican state House members, County Commissioner Bill Braswell and BusinessVoice Inc. of Lakeland.
Wallace has received campaign contributions from the Winter Haven 9-12 Project and Liberty for Florida, both conservative groups; and the Realtors Political Advocacy Committee.
Impact difficult to gauge
Wallace did not say how many voters received the mailers and text messages, and it is impossible to measure their impact on the election outcome. While Wallace did see a dramatic jump in support on election day, compared to votes cast earlier, turnout among registered Republicans tends to be higher on the traditional election day.
Though candidates are technically barred from partisan labeling, Wallace has emphasized her status as a conservative and her connection to DeSantis, the Republican governor who appointed her. The Polk Republican Executive Committee promoted both her and Corona, without endorsing either, and directed critical posts at Sims, noting that he twice previously ran for other offices as a Democrat.
The Polk Supervisor of Elections Office does not provide public records on voting in a particular race by party registration.
Polk residents cast 43,795 votes in the District 3 race on Aug. 18, slightly more than the 43,322 cast by mail and in early voting.
“If you look at the results prior to that message, like early voting, vote by mail, Kate and I were actually neck and neck throughout the whole time,” Sims said. “That one text message and mailer really did shift the election, and that’s unfortunate, for election-day voters.
Sims offered anecdotal evidence for his claim that the mailer and text messages dramatically tilted the election. He said that he met a man the day after the election at the Bowen Yard food hall in Winter Haven and asked him how he had voted.
The man said he had planned to vote for Sims, but after seeing the message from Wallace saying that Sims would allow boys to play on girls sports teams, he shifted his vote to Corona.
“I mean, part of it is just straight manipulating the voters, and that bothers me,” Sims said. “But it also makes people not want to vote, when people don’t know if what they’re seeing or hearing is true.”
Sims said he and his campaign team spent the days after the election discussing how their approach might need to change in the two-person campaign for the Nov. 3 election.
“Our team has spent actually the last four or five days literally talking about, ‘How do we address it in a way that doesn’t change who I am, because I’m not an attacking person,” Sims said.
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Did late attack messages alter Polk School Board race? | Exclusive
Reporting by Gary White, Lakeland Ledger / The Ledger
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Gary White, Lakeland Ledger | USA TODAY Network
