Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News

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Tudor Dixon, the Republican vying to unseat Gretchen Whitmer in the Michigan gubernatorial race, has taken a page out of the playbook of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the area of education policy and joined an ever-growing list of conservatives on the matter of women’s sports.

Wednesday, in a pair of press conferences and connected press releases, Dixon announced that she plans to push for a parental rights in education bill and move to forbid biological males from participating in female sports.

The parental right bill will be modeled after the similarly named Florida law and forbid the discussion of sexual material among elementary-aged students and provide parents greater access to the educational process.

“The education system is failing too many kids on the basics of teaching how to read, write, and do math,” Dixon said in one release. “More than half of our kids are not reading or doing math at grade level because our schools are focused on the wrong things.‍

‍”Parents deserve to know what their kids are learning in school and they especially have a right to know that adults won’t talk to their children about radical sex and gender ideology behind their backs. It’s just common sense. As a parent, Gretchen Whitmer should agree with me, but she won’t … She won’t agree to these common-sense measures to curb the radical sex and gender instruction to kids because she stands with insane political activists in her party that are pushing this. If you don’t believe me, just ask her.”‍

Whitmer’s camp, through a statement to the Michigan Live news site, said Dixon’s announcement was, “the latest example of Tudor Dixon politicizing kids to try to divide communities and pit people against each other.”

At a press conference in Lansing, Dixon attempted to head off a likely leftist rebuttal: that a parental rights bill would be anti-LGBTQ.

“Parents deserve to know that their tax dollars aren’t being used to indoctrinate their children with radical sex and gender ideas before they’re even old enough to know what sex is,” Dixon said. “This is not anti-LGBTQ.”

On the topic of women’s sports, Dixon announced a plan to create a law that would require people born male to compete only in male divisions.

“Gretchen Whitmer has embraced the trans-supremacist ideology which dictates that individuals who are born as men be allowed to compete against our girls,” Dixon said. “Men and women are different biologically. It is both science and common sense. We are not afraid to say it and we aren’t afraid to do something about it.”

A Whitmer spokesperson, again speaking to Michigan Live, said, “Gov. Whitmer believes sports should unite communities as they come together on a Friday night for a football game or a Saturday afternoon for a swim meet, and politicians shouldn’t be telling schools how to play sports.”

Dixon’s promises come at a time when most top polls show her trailing Whitmer. The tracking site 270ToWin shows Whitmer enjoying between 49 and 55% of the vote depending on poll and date.