The fight for majority control of the Pinellas County School Board is drawing statewide money, with an LGBTQ advocacy organization betting that candidate Nancy Velardi could provide the vote needed to shift its ideological balance.

Equality Florida Action PAC and the SPLC Action Fund announced a nearly $400,000 investment in school board races across Florida, including $250,000 for a direct mail campaign supporting 13 candidates in seven counties. Velardi is the only Pinellas County candidate included in the program.

The groups plan to send more than 300,000 pieces of mail to over 200,000 voters statewide, along with digital advertising, text messages and volunteer canvassing.

The spending is independent of the candidates and their campaigns. The mailers were not approved by or coordinated with Velardi.

For Equality Florida Action PAC Executive Director Joe Saunders, however, Pinellas represents more than one race in a statewide spending plan.

“We’ve been on a one-seat precipice for a long time,” Saunders told PoliVerse.

Velardi, a retired Pinellas County teacher and former president of the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association, is challenging an incumbent for a seat on the seven-member board. She spent more than two decades teaching at Pinellas Park High School before leading the teachers union.

Saunders said his organization views a Velardi victory as an opportunity to change the board’s balance on issues including book removals and policies affecting LGBTQ students, noting that the school board is always one seat away from being a book-banning and anti-LGBTQ majority running the school system. “Nancy’s record is the total opposite of that,’ added Saunders.

Equality Florida’s involvement comes several election cycles after school board races became a larger piece of Florida’s political battlefield. Much of that shift began with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2022 reelection campaign and the subsequent prominence of conservative education organizations, particularly Moms for Liberty. School board contests that historically received substantially less statewide political attention became fights over books, curriculum, parental rights, DEI and LGBTQ policies.

Pinellas became a ripe battleground for such standoffs as one of Florida’s largest school districts, which includes St. Petersburg and Gulfport, cities with sizable LGBTQ communities.The political environment has also changed since the height of Moms for Liberty’s influence. Equality Florida Action PAC says 76% of candidates backed by the organization lost their races in 2024, but Saunders doesn’t view those results as a reason to to rest on their laurels and stop spending.

“Moms for Liberty was a manufactured moment, not a movement,” he said. “It’s important to keep investing because these things happen over multiple cycles, and it’s never the same landscape.”

Equality Florida Action PAC uses an endorsement process that includes questionnaires sent to candidates. Saunders said Velardi participated while the incumbent did not return the organization’s questionnaire. Velardi’s background also factored into the endorsement.

“As a candidate, Velardi shows a willingness to be in our community and offer counsel on issues that are important to us,” Saunders said. “She’s also a former educator with years of public service.”

Though, the Republican incumbent, Lisa Cane, whom Velardi will run against, also has a substantial teaching background (particularly in the humanities) as the operator of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Academy, a nonprofit theatre school. Cane has occupied her seat on the school board since first being elected in 2018.

Her candidacy gives voters two competing visions for the direction of the board, while the outside spending adds another layer to what is officially a nonpartisan election. The additional funds will help level the playing field, though, because campaign finance reports from July showed Cane’s reports doubling those of Velardi’s.

The $250,000 mail campaign extends well beyond Pinellas. Equality Florida Action PAC and the SPLC Action Fund are supporting candidates in Orange, Hillsborough, Palm Beach, Sarasota, Seminole, Osceola and Pinellas counties.