Teachers are taking a stand against Donald Trump and is launching a series of online ads speaking out on the controversial Republican presidential nominee in Florida.
On Tuesday, Democratic super PAC Local Voices and the American Federation of Teachers launched an online ad across the Sunshine State featuring a Putnam County high school history teacher who also worked in the Florida House of Representatives.
In the ad, Liz Middleton raises concerns about the future of her students if Trump is elected president. Middleton, who refers to herself as a “Bible Belt person,” says she knows what effect some of Trump’s controversial comments could have on an already easily-influenced youth.,
“The hardest part about being a teenager for them is finding out who they really are,” Middleton says in the ad. “My girls are all so self-conscious about their bodies.”
Middleton, a member of the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the American Federation of Teachers, then attacks Trump for comments he made attacking 1996 Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado for gaining weight after winning the competition.
For people like Middleton, the comments are particularly concerning for her as a teacher working with young students every day -- and are one of the reasons she won’t support Trump.
“I want my students, male and female, to know that the only reason to worry about body image is when working for optimum health, that nobody has the right to judge them or anyone else by some arbitrary and rigid standard of beauty,” Middleton explained.
Middleton endorses Clinton over Trump in the ad.
The ad first appeared on Local Voices’ Facebook page two weeks ago, but will now be running online in Florida as part of a larger set of buys in the presidential race leading up to Election Day. The larger ad buy includes television ads and amounted to $500,000 in three states: Ohio, Florida and Arizona.
The ad comes on the heels of AFT’s president Randi Weingarten slamming Trump for comments he has made about minorities during his presidential campaign.
Weingarten says Middleton isn’t the only teacher who’s concerned over Trump.
"All over this country educators echo what Liz Middleton has so eloquently shared,” she explained. “Call it the Trump effect or the normalizing of bullying and bigotry, but the facts are clear: the demeaning way that Donald Trump has talked about immigrants, Muslims, Mexicans, women and others is modeling behavior that is bad for our kids' development. It encourages the worst kind of prejudice and it's being used to justify incidents of harassment against other students.”
Last summer the American Federation of Teachers became the first nationwide labor union to endorse a presidential candidate when they endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Weingarten made stops in Florida to campaign for Clinton over the weekend, appearing at events Sunday for the Democratic presidential nominee. She has been particularly critical over Trump’s $20 billion education proposal which would expand the voucher program, a proposal notoriously unpopular with public school teachers.
The ads will run through Election Day.
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
