Community members raise their hands at a School Board meeting on June 10, 2024, in a show of support for keeping Holiday Hill Elementary open. | Megan Mallicoat, Jacksonville Today
Published on August 16, 2026 at 4:50 pm
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On the eve of Florida’s primary elections, a lot of money has flowed into Duval County’s nonpartisan School Board races.
The candidates in one race, District 6 on the far Westside, have together received more than $200,000 — making theirs the third-most-expensive among more than 200 school board races statewide. And one candidate in District 2 has the support of numerous state-level political action committees flush with cash.
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The outcome of the elections for Duval’s three open School Board seats will determine the ideological direction of the board for the next two years. School board elections in Florida have been nonpartisan for decades. Duval’s board, though, has had a clear conservative majority in recent years. Currently, six of the seven members are registered Republicans.
Two of the vacated seats currently belong to Chair Charlotte Joyce and Vice Chair April Carney, both staunch conservatives who consistently vote in line with the board’s current bloc who tend to favor policies pushed by the administration of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
District 4 rep Darryl Willie — the board’s sole registered Democrat— has held the third seat for eight years and is now term-limited.
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Westside money
Most of the money in the District 6 race is supporting two candidates: Lindsey Denmark and Clarence James. They’ve raised about $90,000 and $100,000, respectively — in large part because they’ve both given five-figure loans to their campaigns.
Denmark, a real estate agent, has received numerous donations from people and businesses in the real estate industry. (James has the endorsement of the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors, though.) She’s received some support from political action committees, too.
James is a longtime law enforcement officer — now with the Duval Schools Police Department, and before that, for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. Many of his largest contributors are PACs related to police organizations.
As of Sunday afternoon, campaign finance reports show Denmark has spent about $9,000 more than James; Denmark’s expenditures total about $80,000, while James’ sit at about $71,000.
The remaining three candidates in District 6 have raised a combined $17,400.
Robert Stafford has raised about $9,200, most of it from his own pocket. Michelle Petty’s contributions total $5,700 and came from numerous small, individual donations. Supervisor of Elections records show Tammyette Thomas has raised just $2,500, but reported expenditures of almost $3,000. It’s unclear why her ledgers are in the red. She’s personally invested $1,250 in her campaign, and the rest is from a number of small, individual donations.
4 for Four
Four candidates are competing for Willie’s District 4 seat. Three of them have raised about $45,000 in total. (The fourth, a write-in candidate, lists only two contributions from herself in her campaign finance reports.)
Rhodesia Butler has brought in about $20,000 and spent nearly all of it as of Sunday afternoon. She’s personally loaned her campaign $2,000 and collected a small handful of $1,000 donations. She received more than 100 donations of $100 or less and reports no contributions from PACs. The Jacksonville National Organization for Women donated $500 to Butler’s campaign and gave her their endorsement.
Alfreda Denson Butler has raised almost $14,000 and spent about $12,000. She reports financial support and endorsements from organizations like the Duval Teachers United teachers’ union, the Florida Education Association, and the local police and firefighters unions.
James “Coach” Jacobs has raised $11,000, but spent only $3,500, according to campaign finance reports Sunday afternoon. He paid a qualifying fee with a check from his campaign bank account in June — though that payment is not listed among his reported expenditures.
In 2023, Jacobs reported two donations from a donor named “Reginald Blunt” — for $120 and $100, respectively — from addresses that match School Board District 5 rep Reginald Blount’s voter registration information. Two other similar transactions total another $300. Blount, who was elected to the board in 2024, did not respond to Jacksonville Today’s request to confirm the transactions.
By the Beaches
In District 2, 26-year-old Donovan Bradley has raised about $62,000, while his opponents have brought in about $15,000 and $2,700, respectively.
His largest contributions — and about 40% of his total — have come from a network of local- and state-level PACs operated by Republican strategists, and from professionals and businesses in the real estate, construction and consulting sectors.
According to campaign finance records, Bradley has 39 contributions of $1,000 — the maximum allowed — and 26 of less than $100. Current District 2 rep April Carney, who chose not to run for reelection and instead gave her endorsement to Bradley, also backed him financially with a donation of $1,000.
In contrast, one of Bradley’s two opponents, science teacher Donna Westrich, has raised $15,000 with little support from PACs, none from businesses, and more than 50 donations of less than $100 from individuals.
Bradley is seemingly also receiving indirect support from PACs. Registered Republicans in the Beaches recently received a mailer, from a PAC called Leading for Our Future, disparaging Westrich as someone “proudly endorsed by radical leftists” who wouldn’t “answer [the] call” of local parents. The reverse side of the mailer hailed Bradley as someone who would “give conservatives a seat at the table.”
He did not respond to Jacksonville Today’s request for comment for this story.
Bradley is a policy analyst for Restoration of America, a Ponte Vedra-based advocacy group whose website says “our nation’s most significant threats are twofold: internally – the elite, Marxist neo-liberals and, externally – Communist China.”
Restoration of America operates nonprofit organizations and Super PACs — a special kind of political action committee that can receive unlimited contributions for work that influences elections — and on its website boasts that during the 2024 election cycle, it delivered “accountability and results for its donors on a scale not previously seen.”
The Leading for our Future PAC hasn’t directly donated to Bradley’s campaign, but its contributions and expenditures consistent with Republicans’ pattern of directing money through PACs to try to sway local school board races.
As of Sunday afternoon, campaign finance reports show Bradley and Westrich have each spent about 80% of the money they’ve raised. The third candidate, Terence Myers, has raised $2,860 and spent $2,690. Half of his total comes from a $1,500 personal loan to his campaign, and the remaining money was raised through mostly small donations from individuals across the U.S. He reports no financial support from PACs or businesses.
