Charlie Crist Names Head of Far-Left Union as Running Mate Against DeSantis

Democratic challenger Charlie Crist has now chosen a Miami teachers’ union leader who opposed school reopenings, equated worried parents with serial killers, and even asserting that “fear of halal meat” contributes to genocide as his running mate. Karla Hernandez-Mats, the president of United Teachers of Dade, will be introduced by Crist as his running partner during a Saturday campaign event, CBS Miami reported on Friday. Hernandez-Mats began to speak out against DeSantis’ efforts to reopen schools in May 2020.

As The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s (R.) Democratic opponent Charlie Crist has selected as his running mate a Miami teachers’ union head who opposed school reopenings, compared concerned parents to serial killers, and even suggested that “fear of halal meat” perpetuates genocide.

Crist will unveil United Teachers of Dade president Karla Hernandez-Mats as his running mate during a Saturday campaign event, CBS Miami reported Friday afternoon. In May 2020, Hernandez-Mats emerged as a vocal critic of DeSantis’s push to reopen schools—at the time, she dismissed the Republican’s claim that the coronavirus “just hasn’t had an impact” on young people, calling the remark “completely contradictory to what we know to be the facts of this pandemic” and “dangerous for our communities at large.” Hernandez-Mats later acknowledged that students failed to learn at the same pace following the closures.

Beyond her school closure advocacy, Hernandez-Mats has attacked parents who attend school board meetings. In October 2021, she shared a cartoon that likened those parents to a range of fictional serial killers, including mass murderer Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and butcher knife slayer Michael Myers from the Halloween series. “For any of you following the school board meetings, you know that the craziness is real,” Hernandez-Mats said. “God be with us.”

Even though Crist won the Democratic primary for governor of Florida just three days ago, his campaign has already encountered some difficulties. Only a few hours after DeSantis won, Crist, who has previously declared himself to be “on the battlefield of love,” claimed that the more than four million Floridians who cast their ballots for him harbor “hate” and don’t care about the state. Republican Crist presided as Florida’s 44th governor between 2007 and 2011. Crist later ran for the Senate but lost to Republican Marco Rubio in the primary. As a result, he left the GOP and supported Barack Obama in 2012.

Matthew Williams