{"id":352693,"date":"2026-07-26T04:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T04:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/352693\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T04:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T04:46:08","slug":"florida-weekly-roundup-return-of-the-mack-northescambia-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/352693\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Weekly Roundup: Return of the Mack : NorthEscambia.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Florida Weekly Roundup is a look back at last week in a Florida politics and government.<\/p>\n

Florida landed a new education commissioner this week and the wife of the Republican gubernatorial frontrunner approved.<\/p>\n

And political viewers also watched as two others on the GOP gubernatorial ballot took their bickering to court over one\u2019s residency.<\/p>\n

TEACH TO THE WORKFORCE<\/p>\n

The Florida Board of Education unanimously approved Henry Mack as the state\u2019s new education commissioner Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Mack, a former senior chancellor at the Department of Education and most recently the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor, was recommended for the position by Gov. Ron DeSantis last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is an honor beyond words to be entrusted with stewarding Florida schools at this pivotal moment,\u201d Mack told the Board.<\/p>\n

Mack replaces Anastasios Kamoutsas, who recently became president of Polk State College, and interim commissioner Paul Burns, a senior chancellor at DOE. The position pays approximately $330,000 a year.<\/p>\n

Among those applauding the board action was Erika Donalds, wife of Congressman Bryon Donalds, who described the appointment as a win for Florida\u2019s students.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Mack believes in academic excellence and education freedom for all, and he understands better than most what Florida\u2019s workforce demands. I am confident he will help lead all of our students to achieve the Florida Dream,\u201d Erika Donalds posted on X.<\/p>\n

Erika Donalds is a former Collier County School Board member who advocates for school choice programs.<\/p>\n

Mack worked for DOE from 2019-2023, led the state\u2019s career and technical education initiatives and heavily supported DeSantis\u2019 parental rights policies.<\/p>\n

During his time with DOE, Mack was critical of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and a proponent of \u201cclassical\u201d education, a teaching approach backed by conservatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlorida is restoring the classical aims of public education \u2014 starting by confining woke ideology to \u2018the dustbin of history,\u2019\u201d he posted on social media in 2023.<\/p>\n

THAT D.C. VOTE<\/p>\n

GOP gubernatorial candidate James Fishback told a Leon County Circuit Court judge he\u2019s always lived in Florida and only stayed in a Washington, D.C. residence \u201cseasonally,\u201d defending himself from an attempt to knock him from the ballot.<\/p>\n

Lt. Gov. Jay Collins challenged his eligibility, alleging Fishback lived in the nation\u2019s capital in 2020 and 2021, violating the Florida Constitution\u2019s requirement that a governor must have lived in the state for seven straight years prior to taking office.<\/p>\n

Judge David Frank indicated he plans to issue a ruling on Fishback\u2019s eligibility on Monday.<\/p>\n

Before the hearing, as Fishback and his retinue of about 20 supporters waited for the judge to begin, he condemned Collins for bringing the case and called him a \u201ccoward\u201d for not being there in person.<\/p>\n

During the hearing Fishback aimed more barbs at Collins, a former Green Beret in the U.S. Army who didn\u2019t move to Florida until 2019 himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cJay Collins, a man from Montana, hired a California lawyer \u2026 to sue a fourth-generation Floridian to illegally and illegitimately remove me from the ballot,\u201d Fishback said. \u201cHe\u2019s in third place. I\u2019m in second.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both candidates trail Donalds, who has been endorsed by President Donald Trump and leads in most public polling for the primary.<\/p>\n

Collins\u2019 attorneys pointed to a series of documents indicating Fishback voted in Washington D.C. in 2020, bought a property in D.C. in 2021, and used that address to set up businesses and nonprofits and when filing tax returns.<\/p>\n

Fishback, 31, said his parents moved to D.C. in 2019 and he initially was living with his grandmother in Broward County. In 2020 he ended up getting \u201cstuck\u201d in D.C. during the Covid-19 pandemic and didn\u2019t want to return to his grandmother\u2019s house because she was immunocompromised and he didn\u2019t want to transmit the disease that was more deadly among the elderly than other populations.<\/p>\n

That led him to live in his parents\u2019 apartment for much of that year. Fishback said he wanted to vote for Trump in 2020, but looked into voting by mail too late. So instead he walked into a voting booth in D.C. and asked if he could use his Florida driver\u2019s license identification card to vote.<\/p>\n

He said he didn\u2019t review the details of the electronic tablet he signed, which registered him to vote in D.C., which requires at least a 30-day residence in the city to vote there.<\/p>\n

In Washington D.C. there is same-day registration, unlike in Florida where a voter must register nearly one month before an election.<\/p>\n

ACROSS THE POND<\/p>\n

Gov. Ron DeSantis led a trip to the United Kingdom this week with education, insurance and aerospace leaders.<\/p>\n

DeSantis\u2019 participation in the trip was announced after the team was already on the ground. He attended the opening of the Florida Pavilion at the Farnborough International Airshow.<\/p>\n

Other deals, such as Relativity Space\u2019s plan to expand its Space Coast operations, and a memorandum of understanding signed between Space Florida and the UK Space Agency that called for each to spend $200,000 toward joint research projects were announced as well.<\/p>\n

Another deal announced at Farnborough involved the Department of Transportation and Eve Air Mobility. This deal is intended to continue the state\u2019s effort to make Florida more friendly to battery-powered aircraft, with the goal of creating \u201cvertiports\u201d serving as hubs for short aerial commutes by eVTOL craft that have characteristics of airplanes and helicopters.<\/p>\n

And later, DeSantis and Insurance Commissioner Mike Yaworsky, after participating in a series of meetings with leaders in Britain\u2019s insurance and reinsurance industry, held a discussion on insurance with Dame Susan Langley the Lady Mayor of London.<\/p>\n

STORY OF THE WEEK:<\/p>\n

Henry Mack was approved as the state\u2019s new education commissioner.<\/p>\n

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:<\/p>\n

\u201cI am here with a proven record of trying to break down silos between education and labor, a record that evidences a deep philosophical commitment to forming both skilled talent and virtuous citizens in pursuit of the common good.\u201d \u2014 Henry Mack, incoming Florida Commissioner of Education.<\/p>\n

by Jine Turner, The News Service of Florida<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida Weekly Roundup is a look back at last week in a Florida politics and government. Florida landed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-352693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}