Former Brevard County School Board Member Jennifer Jenkins Eyes 2026 U.S. Senate Run

By Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix

July 23, 2025

Jennifer Jenkins, a former Brevard County school board member and founder of an organization designed to weaken conservative influence in local education policy, says she is considering entering the Democratic race for U.S. Senate next year in Florida.

The seat is held by Republican Ashley Moody, appointed to the position by Gov. Ron DeSantis in January. It was formerly held by Marco Rubio who resigned the post to serve as President Donald Trump’s secretary of state.

Jenkins, 38, served for one term on the school board, from 2020 to 2024. For the past year, she’s headed a political committee called Educated. We Stand. She created the committee to support school board candidates in battleground states and to beat back the conservative education policies promulgated by organizations like Moms For Liberty.

“I’m seriously considering it,” Jenkins told the Phoenix on Monday about entering the Senate race.

“It’s something that I’m not taking lightly. I’ve thought about this for the last several years. I’ve been entrenched in the fight for our public schools and meeting with grassroots Democrats and people across Florida, and I keep hearing the same thing over and over again — that people are sick and tired of people in power making excuses to not use that power to help regular people.

“And I keep getting asked the same question, if I’m going to run for Senate. So, I am having conversations with my family and the people closest to me who I trust.”

Jenkins said she doesn’t have a specific timetable for her decision.

To close observers of the Florida political scene, there is a sense of déjà vu to all of this. In late spring 2023, Jennings said she was considering entering the 2024 Senate race against Republican incumbent Rick Scott. She ultimately did not. Former South Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell was the Democratic nominee, losing to Scott by 13 points.

Jenkins’ tenure on the school board was marked by dramatic moments. An elementary school speech pathologist, she was elected to the board in a stunning upset victory over incumbent Tina Descovich, who would go on to co-found Moms for Liberty. (Gov. Ron DeSantis reappointed Descovich earlier this year to the Florida Commission on Ethics.)

In a red district, Jenkins won by nearly double digits that summer; Donald Trump won Brevard County that November by more than 16 points.

That was the year that COVID-19 hit America, and Jenkins became a target of some conservatives for her advocacy for wearing masks on school campuses and supporting LGBTQ students. The only Democrat on a nonpartisan board, she received threats and harassment, an experience she described during a Democratic Party rally in Tampa in 2023.

“When I was sworn into office, I never expected that I would have the personal battle that I had,” she said. “Protests in front of my home. The vandalism on my property. Three-foot ‘F’-‘U’ letters burned into my lawn. Be followed by private investigators. Slanderous websites.’”

Jenkins said she was only going to serve one term and that decision was cemented for her when her (and another school board member’s) seat was redrawn during redistricting. Florida Today wrote in 2023 that the redrawn seats were held by “the two members who most often vote against the new right-leaning majority.

The episode inspired the founding of Educated. We Stand.

“Originally, when I first ran for office, I literally was an educator who was sick and tired of being paid so poorly with my husband, living paycheck to paycheck, being unable to prepare and save for my own daughter’s college and future. And so that’s why I stood up and fairly quickly got thrust into what we see as the war on public education now, and it inspired me to stand up for my community and to be a loud, outspoken activist,” Jenkins said.

“Towards the end of my term, though, I never intended to run again but I did shift through the experiences that I had — some of them pretty horrific. I told myself there had to be a bigger ‘why.’ There had to be a bigger ‘why’ about why I had to go through that heartache and that experience with my family, and I felt like I needed to step up and do something bigger and continue to spread the message and advocate for public education.”

The Democratic field

The only major Florida Democrat to enter the Senate race for 2026 so far is Josh Weil, the Orlando educator who raised nearly $15 million in his losing bid to Republican Randy Fine in the special congressional election in Florida’s 6th Congressional District earlier this year.

Another potential candidate is retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel Alexander Vindman, whose testimony before Congress helped lead to President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. He’s now a resident of Broward County and has told reporters recently that, like Jennings, he is considering entering the contest.

Jenkins says she understands it’s a challenging environment for Democrats in a state where Republicans hold a more than 1.3 million lead in voter registration, but believes the party more than ever needs people to fight for “everyday families.”

“I’m tired of hearing that Florida is a lost cause, because I don’t believe that and I don’t want to be told that because that’s my family’s future we’re talking about — and I don’t want to hear that my family’s future isn’t worth fighting for,” she said.

“I was a minority voice here in Brevard County. I still won by 10 points in the year that Donald Trump won by 17. I know what’s possible when people show up and they speak out and they organize. We can win because every day people care about what connects us and what’s best for our families, not what’s best for a political party that’s next to their registration on their voter registration card. So, I do believe it’s possible. I do think that we need someone who is authentic and willing to push back and tell it like it is and to be a fighter and just connect people as people.”

The winner of next August’s Democratic Senate primary will most likely face Moody in the general election, as the former state attorney general is not expected to face any serious opponents in her race for the Republican nomination next year. Moody has raised more than $2 million in her regular campaign account, and another federal super PAC aligned with her candidacy has raised $7 million, according to NBC News.

The winner of the 2026 Senate race will finish the last two years of Rubio’s term, then could run for re-election in 2028.

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