Via Miami Herald:
First lady Michelle Obama will stop in Miami on Tuesday to recruit residents to vote and volunteer to reelect her husband, President Barack Obama.
But the spot for the political event — Barbara Goleman Senior High in Miami Lakes — has some Republican members of the School Board seeing red.
Miami-Dade School Board member Renier Diaz de la Portilla has called for the event to be cancelled and board member Carlos Curbelo has asked the board attorney to reconsider his opinion that the event meets legal muster.
While School Board seats are nonpartisan, Diaz de la Portilla is running for state House as a Republican and Curbelo has worked as a Republican strategist.
“Allowing the first lady of the United States to use one of our schools explicitly to benefit the president’s reelection campaign is inappropriate and sends the wrong message to our students, employees, and to taxpayers — even if the president’s campaign is willing to pay for all costs resulting from the event,” Curbelo wrote in the letter to School Board attorney Walter Harvey.
Curbelo told The Miami Herald on Monday: “There’s a difference between official visits to schools by elected leaders and events that are for the sole purpose of advancing the interests of a political campaign.”