Hillsborough school board’s Vaughn floats run for governor if removed

Tampa Bay Times | By Divya Kumar | September 8, 2025

Jessica Vaughn called the state’s pressure on Hillsborough’s school officials a “climate of fear.”

Jessica Vaughn said her first priority as an elected official is being chairperson of the Hillsborough County school board.

But amid a handful of book challenges and increasing state pressures, Vaughn said she’s thinking ahead and contemplating a run for governor, if removed from the school board.

In a Facebook post Saturday, Vaughn announced she “might explore a run for governor.”

The post comes ahead of what is set to be a contentious school board meeting Tuesday. Superintendent Van Ayres told state officials he planned to request that the board call for the removal of two additional books after a summer of state scrutiny around Hillsborough County books.

Earlier in the summer, the State Board of Education sent threatening letters and called Ayres before them. As a result, Ayres pulled 55 books and put every other book that had been challenged in any other county in the state on review.

State officials initially said they were satisfied with the response, but lambasted Ayres, Vaughn and board member Nadia Combs on social media, after a post surfaced about the memoir of a transgender YouTuber that was available in a high school library. The book was removed and Ayres said he planned to recommend the removal of two additional books.

In a Facebook livestream last week, Vaughn listed some of the book titles that were removed as a result. She called on state officials to be more direct if they opposed LGBTQ+ content. She questioned if she too would be called for a scolding by the state board.

In an interview, Vaughn said the recent debacle over books led her to consider a run.

“(The attorney general) has overridden all of these parental rights, local municipality rights, federal judge rights, and has put local elected board members … in the position where they have to look at removing books under the threats of arrest,” she said.

The current administration, she said, has created a climate of fear, with threatened Alachua and ousted Broward County school board members and fired Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren serving as reference points.

“The governor, anytime he comes to a press conference anywhere near Hillsborough County, loves to tout how he’s removed elected officials, and won’t hesitate to do that again,” she said. “When you have these threats about ending people’s career, taking away their salaries, arresting them, or removing them, it creates such a climate of fear that it suppresses democracy on every level.”

Vaughn said her consideration and stance on removing books goes beyond the titles, and that she sees a void in the current set of gubernatorial candidates discussing the issue at hand.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re for removing these books,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what side of these culture wars that you’re on. It’s not about these specific issues. It’s about how democracy is structured, how due process is structured, home rule, local government, representative democracy. I feel like there’s a direct attack on that.”