The voices are growing against Rep. Ritch Workman, R-Melbourne, for a recent campaign ad where he says he “led the fight to abolish Common Core,” but the well of legislation supporting that claim has run dry.
Sunshine State News previously reported on a recent ad which say the Melbourne Republican led the fight to get rid of Common Core. In the ad, education, tax cuts, ethics reforms, were all mentioned as part of Workman’s narrative to voters in his battle against Rep. Debbie Mayfield for Senate District 17. Mailers were also released with the same message.
SSN looked further into Workman’s claims and found he has sponsored no bills relating to abolishing Common Core in Florida out of the 46 bills he sponsored over the last three years.
Workman’s involvement has been so little in the fight against Common Core that anti-Common Core groups are hearing his name and asking: “Who?”
“It infuriates me,” said executive director of Florida Stop Common Core Coalition Karen Effrem on the ad. “He hasn’t been involved with any of us and we have done multiple events around the state and he was never at any of them, ever.”
Workman will face off against Rep. Debbie Mayfield for Florida’s Senate District 17 in the primary election, and Workman’s comments about abolishing Common Core are problematic in the eyes of anti-CCSS activists.
Mayfield has been generally beloved among anti-Common Core activists, who have turned to her for support in their education policies since 2013.
To them, Workman’s words feel especially hollow since they say he hasn’t even shown up or contacted them to push reforms in the Sunshine State.
“Many of us sacrificed three years pouring our precious time away from our families traveling to Tallahassee and meeting legislatures around the state of Florida,” said Florida Parents Against Common Core founder Laura Zorc, who penned a letter to voters in Indian River and Brevard Counties to “set the record straight” on Workman.
“Of all districts in the state for him to try to pull the wool over...Mayfield has been our rock in this fight and I couldn't let this false claim go unchecked,” she continued.
Workman has exchanged some interactions through social media with anti-Common Core activists in recent weeks after they called him out for the ad.
“Filing bills that do nothing and campaign mailers don't make a reformer,” Workman tweeted to Effrem after she asked him what bills he had filed to fight the standards.
“As far as I know there's no bill that Rich Workman has worked on … [nor] has [he] tried to meet with any of the Common Core groups to get support,” Zorc told SSN Wednesday.
On top of Common Core groups piling on Workman’s record, another website, RitchWrongman.com, has popped up in recent days criticizing him as a “deceitful politician.”
SSN attempted to contact Workman about what work he had done to fight Common Core, but he had not responded to media requests at the time of this article’s publishing.
Reach Allison Nielsen at allison@sunshinestatenews.com and follow her on Twitter @AllisonNielsen.
