Judging the judges on the ballot in Southwest Florida

The Florida Supreme Court Building. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Oct. 1, 2020 by David Silverberg

Five judges are on the ballot in this year’s general election ballot in Lee and Collier counties.

These are judicial “retention” questions, asking voters whether a judge should be kept in his or her current position. If voted out, the governor—in this case Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) —nominates a new judge to fill the position from a list of between three and six qualified people recommended by the Judicial Nominating Commission. There is no Senate confirmation in Florida, so the person selected becomes a Justice after taking the proper oath. When the judge’s term expires, his or her name is placed on the general election ballot for a merit retention vote, unless the judge chooses to leave.

Judicial retention questions are non-partisan and are not really political races in the sense that there are not candidates contending against each other.

Since there’s no campaigning or competition and very little media coverage, it’s difficult for voters to evaluate judges.

One stinging critique of the Florida judiciary comes from attorney Adam Tebrugge, a criminal defense attorney with 35 years of experience at the Florida bar, who argues in his blog that all of this year’s judicial nominees should be refused.

“My primary argument for voting NO on all Florida judges is that they are simply not doing their job,” he argues, stating that the appellate judges usually rubberstamp lower court rulings, especially in criminal cases, without serious consideration of the issues. “The problem is institutional and systemic, that is, the system is designed to fail, not to vindicate the constitutional rights of litigants.”

Further, Trebugge states, the judiciary has been politicized. “Every judge up for retention in 2020 was appointed by a Republican governor,” he writes. “Without a doubt, Florida judges have been politicized over the past 20 years. These days, membership in the Federalist Society seems like a prerequisite to being named judge.” The Federalist Society is an organization promoting a conservative and libertarian view of the law. Federalist Society judges, he alleges, “are chosen because they will vote a certain way, not for their fealty to the law.”

Tebrugge’s recommended solution is to send a message to Tallahassee and Gov. DeSantis by rejecting all judges on the ballot—even if it’s DeSantis who will appoint their replacements.

Whether Trebugge is right or not, voters require deeper knowledge of the judges on the ballot in Southwest Florida than they have been provided to date.

One judge on the ballot sits on the Supreme Court for all of Florida and is subject to statewide election.

Supreme Court Judge Carlos Muñiz

Judge Carlos Muniz

According to his official biography, Carlos Muñiz was appointed to the Supreme Court on Jan. 22, 2019 by DeSantis.

Prior to his appointment, Muñiz was the general counsel to the Department of Education and served on the staff of Secretary Betsy DeVos. He was confirmed to the department position by the US Senate.

Prior to his federal appointment he worked in both private practice and the federal government.

He also had an extensive career in Florida: he was deputy attorney general and chief of staff to Attorney General Pam Bondi, deputy chief of staff and counsel to the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, general counsel to the Department of Financial Services and deputy general counsel to Gov. Jeb Bush (R). In 2010 he contributed $78.70 to the election campaign of Republican Marco Rubio for US Senate, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

He’s a graduate of the University of Virginia and Yale Law School and grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, where he attended St. James Catholic School and Bishop Ireton High School.

Members of the Florida Bar Association who had considerable knowledge of Muñiz recommended his retention by 63 percent. Those with limited knowledge of him voted for his retention by 76 percent.

Muñiz has consistently voted with the conservative majority of the Florida Supreme Court.

For example, in June 2020 Muñiz voted with a four-judge majority to keep a constitutional amendment banning ownership of assault weapons off the Florida ballot.

The proposed amendment followed the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. According to the website Voting for Justice, which tracks judicial candidates, the organization Ban Assault Weapons NOW sponsored a petition to add the amendment to the 2022 ballot. However, the majority, including Muñiz, ruled that the amendment’s language was “misleading” because it stated that “If a person had lawful possession of an assault weapon prior to the effective date …, the person’s possession of that assault weapon is not unlawful.” They ruled that the terms “assault rifle” and “person’s possession” were “misleading.”

In an advisory opinion this past January on Amendment 4 of the Florida Constitution restoring felons’ voting rights, Muñiz also voted with the majority to argue that felons who have served their sentences must pay all fines and fees before being allowed to vote.

Analysis: Muñiz is a highly educated, well-credentialed judge with a record of conservative activism. In particular, his stint as Betsy DeVos’ counsel and his own unfamiliarity with public schools would seem to indicate that he is unlikely to be a friend of public education should any cases related to it come before the Florida Supreme Court. His vote on banning assault weapons indicates he would not favor measures restraining gun violence. He has also been criticized by Trebugge for ignoring “binding United States Supreme Court precedent in death penalty cases.”

The Second Court of Appeals

Four of the judges sit on the Second District Court of Appeal, which covers 14 counties in west-central Florida from Pasco to Collier and is headquartered in Lakeland. The court takes appeals from five circuit courts. There are 16 judges on the court who annually hear between 5,500 and 6,300 cases. These judges are being submitted to a vote in the 2nd District, which includes Lee and Collier counties.

Second Court of Appeals Judge Drew Atkinson

Judge Drew Atkinson, 46, is a native of Gainesville, Fla., and was raised in Bradenton where he attended high school. He is a US Army Ranger veteran and received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Florida State University and a juris doctor degree with honors from Nova Southeastern University.

He began his career in the Criminal Appeals Division of the Florida Attorney General’s office in 2005. After clerking for an Appeals Court judge he served as assistant general counsel to the governor, worked at the firm Broad and Cassel, LLP for a year and four months and then served as general counsel for both the Florida Department of State and Department of Management Services starting in 2013. He was appointed to the Second District court in 2018 by Gov. Rick Scott (R).

He’s a member of the Federalist Society. In the 2018 election cycle he contributed $250 to the congressional campaign of Mary Thomas in the 2nd Congressional District, according to the FEC. Initially calling herself a “true conservative” and winning an endorsement from the Tea Party-related Liberty Caucus in Congress, Thomas withdrew before the primary.

Of the Florida Bar Association members who had considerable knowledge of Atkinson, 69 percent recommended that he be retained.

Analysis: Drew Atkinson is a Federalist Society conservative judge with significant legal and governmental experience. Ideologically and politically, he sits on the hard right of conservative legal thought.

Second Court of Appeals Judge Morris Silberman

Judge Morris Silberman stands out for the very high ratings he received from Florida Bar Association members. Of the members with considerable knowledge of him, 92 percent recommended his retention as did 88 percent with limited knowledge of him. This gave him an overall 90 percent retention recommendation, the highest of all the Second Court judges on the ballot.

According to his official biography, Silberman received his undergraduate degree from Tulane University, majoring in philosophy and political science. He received his juris doctor degree from the University of Florida College of Law in 1982.

After law school and clerking, he worked in private firms in Sarasota and Clearwater and in 1988 formed his own firm in Clearwater, concentrating on business and contract disputes in civil litigation and appellate issues.

He was appointed to the Second District in 2001 by Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and served as chief justice from 2011 to 2013.

Silberman has an extensive record of professional involvement, serving on a wide variety of councils, professional associations and institutes in addition to official bodies like the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission and the Florida Bar Board of Governors. He’s done extensive teaching, lecturing and writing on legal matters.

Analysis: Silberman is a highly respected and experienced jurist who is active, engaged and community-oriented.

Second Court of Appeals Judge Daniel Sleet

Daniel Sleet attended Furman University in South Carolina on a full football scholarship and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1984, according to his official biography. He received his juris doctor degree from Cumberland School of Law in 1987 where he was awarded a scholarship his third year as Director of Trial Advocacy. During his last two years of law school, he served as a magistrate for the City of Birmingham, Alabama.

After law school he served as assistant state attorney for Hillsborough County, Florida from 1987 to 1991 before joining the Tampa law firm of Barr, Murman, & Tonelli as an associate attorney, specializing in personal injury defense. He made partner in 1998.

After practicing law for 19 years he was appointed to the Florida 13th Judicial Circuit Court in 2005 by Gov. Jeb Bush, winning re-election in 2008. In 2012 he was appointed to the appellate bench by Gov. Rick Scott.

By far the most controversial and high profile case over which Sleet presided was that of Kenneth Young.

In 2000 at the age of 15, Young, an African American, was sentenced to four consecutive life terms without parole for his role in four armed robberies of Tampa-area hotels in June of that year.

In Young’s telling, he’d been forced to participate in the robberies by his crack-addicted mother’s drug dealer. The dealer, owed money, threatened to kill the mother unless Young helped in the robberies, which he did. At one point, according to Young, he talked the dealer out of raping a robbery victim. Although the dealer threatened victims with a pistol during the robberies, no one was injured.

When Young was caught he was tried as an adult and sentenced to four life sentences.

There the matter might have remained except that in 2010 the US Supreme Court ruled that juveniles cannot be given life sentences without parole unless they commit murder.

That gave Young another chance at sentencing and in 2012 he appeared before Second District Appellate Court.

Now 26 years old, Young and his advocates argued that in his years in prison he’d studied, made an effort to rehabilitate himself and stayed out of trouble except for one instance when he failed to make his bed.

“I have lived with regret every day,” Young told the court. “I’ve been incarcerated for 11 years and I have taken advantage of every opportunity available for me in prison to better myself. I’m no longer the same person I used to be. First Corinthians, Chapter 13, Verse 11 says, ‘When I was a child, I thought as a child. … When I became a man, I put away all childish things.’ I want to turn around and apologize to my victim for what I did.”

At the same time, Young’s victims testified to the harm and trauma they’d endured. “As much as I know [Young] wants to be released, I’m not ready to have him walking around my neighborhood,” said one woman.

Sleet was the judge hearing the case. He congratulated Young on his diploma and rehabilitation efforts and said his imprisonment was “appropriate and effective.”

But Sleet didn’t buy Young’s version that the crimes were the dealer’s fault. Releasing him, said Sleet, “would be an award, a gift that you will not get from this court.” Then he brought down the gavel: “You will not get it, sir, because you do not deserve it. I heard your statement. I believe that you have some remorse. I believe that you’ve been rehabilitated. But I’m listening to these victims, sir, and I do not believe that this court should rely on your prison conduct thus far. Sir, this is about personal responsibility and accountability.”

Sleet did end the life sentences but sentenced Young to 30 years in prison, with credit for time served, and 10 years of probation.

The sentence sparked outrage and astonishment, not least on the part of Young: “I had showed from the time I’m 14 years old all the way to the time I’m 26 I have matured and everything,” he said. “I thought that that would mean something. He just basically told me that don’t mean nothing”—and after enduring the worst that prisons had to offer, “I survived through all that, and he like, ‘That don’t mean nothing. You showed that you rehabilitated, but I’m still gonna send you to this.’”

Sleet’s sentence set off a barrage of criticism, which can still be found online, mostly denouncing him for a lack of compassion. The Young case and Sleet’s sentence prompted a 1-hour Public Broadcasting Service documentary called 15 to Life, about the case.

In another August 2020 case that was the subject of public attention, Sleet wrote the decision rejecting the arguments of a pregnant teenaged girl, identified as Jane Doe, with Guatemalan parents, who sought an exemption from the Florida law requiring minors to inform parents of plans to have an abortion.

The judgment in August 2020 was the first after the law was passed. The girl was 14 when she became pregnant by her 17-year-old boyfriend. A district court in Hillsborough County ruled that she was not entitled to an exemption and Sleet and the appellate court agreed.

“Although she made decent grades in school, her answers to the questioning of counsel and the trial court were vague, and our review of her testimony supports the trial court’s finding that she was unable to articulate her understanding of the procedure, the medical risks involved, and the long- and short-term consequences of her decision,” said the decision, written by Sleet and joined by two other judges. “Furthermore, there is nothing in the record to refute the trial court’s assessment of her demeanor as ‘present(ing) as a very young, immature woman,’ and we must take that assessment into consideration. … Based on this record, Doe did not meet her burden of establishing by clear and convincing evidence that she possesses sufficient maturity to make the decision to terminate her pregnancy without parental consent.”

Analysis: Sleet is an accomplished jurist who does not seem to temper justice with mercy.

Second Court of Appeals Judge Andrea Teves Smith

Born in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1969, Andrea Teves Smith grew up in Bradenton, Fla.

She received her Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the University of Florida in 1991. In 1994, she earned her juris doctor from Stetson University College of Law, according to her official biography.

After law school she joined the private practice of Peterson & Myers, PA in Lakeland and worked for 19 years, chiefly dealing with business law. In June 2013 she was appointed to the Tenth Judicial Circuit Court by Gov. Rick Scott and then retained in the election of 2014. She served over five years in the felony, family and civil divisions.

On January 7, 2019, Scott appointed her to the Second District Court of Appeal.

Smith drew attention in 2018 when, despite little criminal law experience, she was assigned to oversee the second-degree murder trial of Michael Dunn, a former Lakeland city commissioner who shot and killed an alleged shoplifter. However, she went to the Second District before the trial. Nonetheless, circuit court Chief Judge Donald Jacobsen characterized her as “a very good courtroom manager and a good judge” before she changed courts.

Among the members of the Florida Bar Association, 80 percent of those with considerable knowledge of her work recommended her retention along with 84 percent of those with limited familiarity with her.

Analysis: There are no public indications of ideological or political partisanship by Judge Andrea Teves Smith and her reviews are favorable.

Liberty lives in light

Byron Donalds and the war against America’s schools

Collier County public school teachers call for better pay and state support at a Naples demonstration on March 4, 2019, in solidarity with teachers throughout Florida. Maintaining funding for public schools in Florida and around the nation has been a key issue in the face of competition from charter and non-public schools. (Photo: author)

Sept. 16, 2020 by David Silverberg

If you’ve enjoyed Betsy DeVos, you’re going to love Byron and Erika Donalds.

Betsy DeVos, of course, is the US Secretary of Education. Byron is state Rep. Byron Donalds (R-80-Immokalee) and Republican candidate for Congress in the 19th Congressional District of Florida, the coastal area from Cape Coral to Marco Island. Erika, his wife and a public figure in her own right, is a former Collier County School Board member and served as the board’s vice chair, and is a relentless advocate for charter schools and non-public education.

Of DeVos, the National Education Association has stated, “As President Donald Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos has made it her mission to dismantle public education. She promotes the privatization of public schools through vouchers, continually calls for deep cuts to federal funding, rolls back protections for vulnerable children, and completely disregards their safety and the safety of educators during a global pandemic.”

Erika has praised DeVos in the past and like her has pushed for the privatization of education and promoted the charter school industry through lobbying, legislation and consulting as well as investing in specific charter schools. Byron during his time in the Florida legislature introduced a number of measures that would have reduced the authority of local school boards and harmed public education.

Whether labeled as such or not, both have pursued a DeVosian agenda.

Now, by running for Congress, Byron is seeking a national platform where he will have the influence to implement DeVos’ agenda whether DeVos is present or not. And Erika will have a similar national platform to lobby for the changes she has long sought in Florida—changes fiercely resisted by elected school boards and teachers, as expressed through their associations.

The education of America’s schoolchildren may not be high on the campaign agendas of Byron Donalds and his opponent Democrat Cindy Banyai, although Banyai has a well-thought out education agenda. Remarkably, though, Byron doesn’t even mention education as an issue on his campaign website.

However, given Byron and Erika’s pasts, education is the issue where they have been the most active, the most prominent and in many ways the most damaging to public schooling.

What are the education issues in this race and how did they evolve to this point? What are Byron and Erika’s backgrounds and records? Just how much influence on public education policy would Byron have if he were elected to Congress? And what is the potential impact of this local race on the future of America’s public education?

These are the questions this article will address.

(Terminology note: Advocates of non-public schools prefer to call their movement “school choice” in the sense that it gives parents a choice of schools. However, in this author’s view, the real dividing line between the types of institutions at issue is best described as “public” or “non-public” since they include charters, which can be quasi-public. Therefore, this article will refer to “non-public schools” to include all forms of schools outside the public school system.)

(Terminology note: Because we are dealing with two Donalds here, we will be using first names instead of the usual practice of using just the last name on second reference.)

A brief history of public and non-public schooling

From the very beginning of the United States, founders realized that an active citizenry engaged in running the country required universal literacy and an educated population.

Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia, in advocating for a 1784 bill for universal education in Virginia, noted that “The general objects of this law are to provide an education adapted to the years, to the capacity, and the condition of every one, and directed to their freedom and happiness.” (Emphasis ours.)

While universal public education was not enacted in the United States immediately on its founding, the idea of equally accessible, publicly-funded education gained ground throughout US history as states implemented public school systems and universal education over time.

Private schools were initially religious schools, primarily Catholic, and predate the American Revolution. Their acceptance by mainstream America has waxed and waned. In addition to parochial schools, there were also elite institutions to educate the sons of the upper classes. However, all these private schools were self-funded and never impinged on public education. (For a full account, see: “What is private school? History of private schools in the United States.”)

With public schools being criticized for a spectrum of shortcomings in recent years, some parents have turned to a variety of non-public alternatives like home schooling. Private schools were also boosted when public school systems were racially integrated in the 1960s and some white parents in the South responded by starting their own private schools to maintain segregation.

Beginning in 1974 professor Ray Budde proposed “charter” schools that would be free of public school restrictions on curriculum, allowing teachers to innovate, while being open to all students but funded at a lower level than public schools. Initially considered small schools-within-schools and aimed to encourage innovation and attention to students with particular needs, the movement grew and spread. Charters went from a small experiment to for-profit academies independent of existing school systems.

Increasingly, the government at both the national and state levels—and both Republicans and Democrats—provided grants and other forms of support to charter schools and other forms of private schooling. But critics are now sounding the alarm that this support in fact takes money and other support away from public schools.

No one has put the divide between public and non-public schools into greater relief than the present Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. An heiress with virtually no training or knowledge of educational issues whose family built its fortune on the privatization movement, she is a forceful advocate for non-public schools and has taken actions harmful to public education to the point where critics feared she was trying to end public education altogether.

The Florida situation

Florida opened its first charter school in 1996. The movement caught hold and expanded rapidly, with support from the Republican-dominated legislature. As in the rest of the country, the charters went from schools-within-schools, to non-profit schools to for-profit schools.

“The original intent of sharing innovative methods to others in the public-school system was replaced by permitting private corporations to siphon off tax dollars appropriated for education,” wrote Paula Dockery, a former Republican state legislator, in a February, 2020 article: “Florida charter schools: from innovators to pariahs.”

According to Dockery, there are 658 charter schools in Florida, of which about half are for-profit.

Their expansion notwithstanding, Florida charter schools have an abysmal business record. Since 1998, 409 have closed, mostly for financial reasons, and Florida ranks second in the nation for charter school failures. In 2014 the Naples Daily News did a four-part series called “Shuttered: Florida’s Failed Charter Schools.”

In 2018, Integrity Florida, a non-profit, anti-corruption research institute, released a thorough and comprehensive study of the impact of charter schools on public education in Florida called The Hidden Costs of Charter School Choice: Privatizing Public Education in Florida. It found that charter schools failed to deliver the promised educational innovation, were badly mismanaged due to lax regulation and that local school boards had been unable to manage charter schools. What is more, the movement led to a very well-funded lobbying industry and conflicts of interest as state lawmakers invested and ran charter schools while serving in the legislature.

Despite all these known problems, charters are receiving more state money than public schools for facilities: $150 million compared to $50 million for the public schools that educate 90 percent of Florida’s students, according to Dockery.

The record of charter schools in Southwest Florida accords with the state experience. Lee County has 18 charter schools in operation. However, the Lee County School District records 10 charter schools that have closed and eight proposed schools that failed to open. Collier County currently has three charter schools but doesn’t post past closures.

There is also an ideological aspect to the Florida privatization movement, as best demonstrated by the Florida Citizens’ Alliance, a grassroots organization working and advocating for non-public educational alternatives.

“We work to unleash the learning potential of every one of Florida’s 2.8 million students so they can become productive and fulfilled citizens in our constitutional republic,” states the organization’s website.

However, a more frank explanation of the organization’s views was given at a meeting at the Alamo gun range and store in Naples on May 30, 2018. Then, the Florida Citizens’ Alliance hosted Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.) who sat on the House Education Committee.

A 2018 Florida Citizens’ Alliance brochure blaming education for the youth vote in the 2016 election.

“You look at what’s going on in our schools with the indoctrination indoctrinating our kids on socialism,” said Keith Flaugh, the organization’s managing director. “They are indoctrinating our kids against religious values. It’s kind of a mixed metaphor; it’s a kind of mixed messaging. They are very secularism-oriented in what they’re teaching but they’re also teaching Islam. So it’s kind of a dual-edged sword. They are denigrating our constitutional values.”

Referring to a brochure that showed the numerous states where 18 to 24 year olds voted Democratic in the 2016 election, Flaugh said: “When you look at this map, that’s your First Amendment, that’s your Second Amendment, that’s your Constitution; because these kids, the vast majority of them are being indoctrinated to think that government is their nanny. And if we don’t stop that, we won’t have a constitutional republic. So that’s what we spend our time on.”

At this juncture between the public and non-public worlds stand Byron and Erika Donalds.

Enter the Donalds

The Donalds family with Byron and Erika, center, and their sons Damon, Darin, and Mason. (Photo: Byron Donalds for Congress campaign.)

Born in 1978, Byron Donalds grew up in Brooklyn, New York, raised with his two sisters by a single mother who stressed the importance of education.

He attended parochial religious schools, an all-black elementary school, a private Quaker middle school called Brooklyn Friends, and Nazareth Regional High School, a predominately black Catholic school, according to a 2012 Florida Weekly profile. He enrolled in a five-year Master of Business Administration program at Florida A&M University in 1996 and transferred to Florida State University (FSU) in his third year, graduating in 2002 with dual bachelor’s degrees in finance and marketing. He began working as a financial advisor at Wells Fargo Advisors.

In 1997 at the age of 19 he was arrested for drug possession, an arrest he has acknowledged in his campaign media. The case was put into pre-trial diversion and Leon County court records show he paid a $150 fee.

He and Erika met at FSU, where they both belonged to the Delta Sigma Pi business fraternity. She received her degree in accounting.

Byron ran for Congress in the 2012 Republican primary but was defeated by Trey Radel. Though he filed campaign finance reports to run for Congress in 2014 after Radel’s cocaine possession conviction, he never filed as a candidate.

In 2016 he ran for Florida House Representative in District 80, which encompasses eastern Collier County including the town of Immokalee and Hendry County.

During that race he was accused by his primary opponent, Joe Davidow, of lying about his criminal record in an application to serve on the board of trustees of Florida Southwestern State College (then Edison College). Byron’s application was initially held up by concerns among Florida senators but was ultimately approved.

“Davidow said Donalds falsified information on his confirmation questionnaire, responding ‘no’ to a question about whether he had ever been ‘arrested, charged, or indicted’ of federal, state, or local law. By not disclosing the incidents, Davidow said Donalds lied under oath about his record,” according to Florida Politics. Davidow even created a website called Lyin’ Byron (since deleted).

Byron said he’d been thoroughly examined by the governor and Senate and still approved for the board.

He won the seat.

Erika worked as a certified public accountant and starting in 2002 was chief compliance officer and partner at DGHM, an investment management firm.

The Donalds’ first child attended public school. However, when their second child had difficulties at school, Erika decided to put him in a private school. She subsequently discovered plans to open a charter school where he could attend tuition-free.

Realizing that there was a demand for non-public schooling, she helped found Parents ROCK (Parents Right of Choice for Kids), a non-profit advocacy group for non-public schooling in Collier County.

In 2014 she ran and won a seat on the Collier County School Board, where she continued her fight for charter schools.

“I ran to be a parent voice,” she told Florida Politics reporter Jacob Ogles, “and in hopes traditional public schools would become more responsive to parent feedback and students’ needs. My vision was (that) students would not need to leave public schools.”

However, when the Florida School Boards Association (FSBA) resisted state vouchers and sought to limit the number of charter schools in the state, she began a battle to enlarge the scope and nature of charter schools. She fought the requirement that members of school boards join the FSBA and helped found a rival organization, the Florida Coalition of School Board Members and served as its first president.

Her advocacy made her a leading voice for the non-public schooling movement in Florida and led to clashes with fellow members of the Collier County School Board where she came to serve as vice chair.

The big year

Byron Donalds addresses a Trump campaign rally at the Collier County Fairgrounds on Oct. 23, 2016. (Image: C-Span)

2016 was a big year for the nation, education and the Donalds—all of them.

Byron endorsed candidate Donald Trump and appeared with him at a rally on the Collier County Fairgrounds.

When Donald Trump won he appointed Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary, an appointment so controversial given her lack of knowledge and credentials that it took the intervention of Vice President Mike Pence to cast the deciding vote in the Senate to confirm her.

In Collier County, Erika celebrated the appointment. “It’s an encouraging step in the right direction for our country,” she told the Naples Daily News. “I like seeing an outsider in the position who will evaluate educational programs on their merit alone.”

Nor was she concerned by DeVos’ lack of public school experience: “I don’t have experience in the classroom either, and I’m certainly capable of serving in a governance role when it comes to overseeing a large operation,” she said.

Both Byron and Erika got to work promoting non-public schools.

In the legislature, Donalds was named to the Education Committee, among his other committee assignments, where he rose to vice chair of the Pre-K Appropriations Subcommittee.

Among the bills he introduced were a number favoring non-public schools or weakening public education. One, House Bill 7061, would have dropped a state requirement that teacher applicants take a “general knowledge” examination determining their fundamental grasp of the world. Byron argued that dropping the requirement would save teachers from losing their jobs. However, a practicing teacher argued it would open the door to unqualified or ignorant teachers.

Another required that textbooks “provide a non-inflammatory, objective, and balanced viewpoint on issues,” be “free of pornography” and be age-appropriate—a bill drafted by Keith Flaugh of the Florida Citizens’ Alliance.

“Since some people find the teaching of evolution and climate change ‘inflammatory’ and ‘unbalanced’ it would allow anyone who pays tax on a cup of coffee while visiting Florida to advocate teaching creationism and that climate change isn’t caused by humans,” argued Brandon Haught, a high school teacher and founding member of Florida Citizens for Science.

(Throughout his House tenure Donalds also consistently received an “F” rating from the People First Report Card, a project of Progress Florida, a progressive non-profit advocacy organization, for voting against measures that would help Floridians.)

With Byron in the legislature, Erika was very active on the non-public school front.

In November 2017 she founded the Optima Foundation, where she currently serves as chief executive officer. A non-profit 501c3 that takes tax deductible contributions, the foundation provides nuts and bolts business advice to start-up charter schools or, as the Foundation puts it, provides: “a model of efficiency, effectiveness, and results-driven processes” to charter schools.

The same year she was appointed to Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission and was named chair of its Local Government Committee. It was in that capacity that she proposed Amendment 8 to the Florida state Constitution.

Amendment 8 proposed three measures. It would have established eight-year term limits for local school board members. It would have also taken the authority to regulate charter schools from locally-elected school boards and given it to state authorities. Lastly, it would have promoted “civic literacy” in public education, requiring the legislature to pass laws to “ensure that students enrolled in public education understand and are prepared to exercise their rights and responsibilities as citizens of a constitutional republic”—a “constitutional republic” being the conservative movement’s phrase for its vision of the United States.

The amendment sparked immediate and vehement opposition.

“Suddenly, the Legislature could allow any person or group or corporation, public or private, to set up charter schools or the like. And those schools would be free of oversight by the school board. This is so misleading you have to wonder if the deception was deliberate,” editorialized the Palm Beach Post.

“If Amendment 8 remains on the ballot, there is no way that voters will realize that a yes vote could allow unaccountable political appointees or even private organizations to control where and when charter schools can be established in their county,” argued Patricia Brigham, president of the Florida League of Women Voters.

The Polk County School Board was particularly outraged by the proposal, unanimously passing a resolution stating that the amendment “is not necessary, is not fair, is not desirable, and is not clearly understandable.”

So threatening was Amendment 8 that the League of Women Voters, working with the Southern Poverty Law Center, sued to stop it, saying it was misleading and violated a rule requiring that amendments deal only with single subjects.

On Aug. 20, 2018 Judge John Cooper of the Second Judicial Circuit in Leon County ruled that Amendment 8 “fails to inform voters of the chief purpose and effect of this proposal” and could not appear on the ballot in November. The state appealed the ruling but it was confirmed by the State Supreme Court on Sept. 7.

Amendment 8 never appeared on the 2018 ballot.

In addition to their legislative and advocacy activities, in 2019 Byron and Erika were involved in a bitter and convoluted fight over ownership and management of Mason Classical Academy, a charter school in Naples. One of the founders, Kelly Lichter, who had crossed swords with Erika before, alleged that Erika, the Optima Foundation and other parties were engaged in a hostile takeover of the school. Erika and other parties for their part alleged mismanagement and improprieties in the school’s management and proceeded to found the Naples Classical Academy, scheduled to open this month.

In January 2019 Erika founded yet another organization to promote and lobby for non-public schools, the School Choice Movement, which pursued the objectives of Amendment 8 in the Florida state legislature.

The Donalds’ involvement in the non-public school movement, including their commercial activities opening charter schools, has proven politically problematic for Byron.

In 2018 when Byron was running for re-election to the Florida House in District 80 he met with the Naples Daily News editorial board along with all the other candidates running that year.

Of all the many candidates running, the Naples Daily News endorsed only one Democrat that year; Byron’s opponent, microbiologist Jennifer Boddicker. In addition to praising her strengths and abilities, the board had interesting things to say about Byron:

“There’s a common denominator in much of the education policy Boddicker correctly cited as problematic. Her Nov. 6 Republican opponent, incumbent Byron Donalds, often had a hand in it.
“On multiple occasions, Donalds advocated for school choice legislation, raising questions because of his direct family connections to opening a Collier charter school and his wife now planning another on Florida’s east coast.
“Voters should elect state lawmakers to advance the interests of their constituents at large, not a specific subgroup or personal passions.
“Donalds was graded F-minus in open government policy by the First Amendment Foundation. He crafted a terrible bill that would have gutted the state’s signature Sunshine Law by allowing two officials of the same elected board to have private conversations about issues. Then, in his recent meeting with our editorial board, he again defended it by pointing to two examples — both involving his Collier School Board member wife.”
Naples Daily News

The battle for the future of America’s children

Teachers call for state support for education in Tallahassee in January 2020 at the start of the legislative session. (Photo: Florida Education Association via Twitter)

The issue of public and non-public education has not been a front-burner issue in this year’s political campaigns on any level; there’s so much more going on. But it is in the background.

In 2016, President Donald Trump campaigned in favor of non-public schools, saying he would fix failing inner city schools and calling the issue “the great civil rights issue of our time.” He proposed the idea of a $20 billion school voucher program—which faced Republican opposition and went nowhere in Congress once he was in office.

Nonetheless, Trump continued his verbal support for non-public education and appointed Betsy DeVos education secretary to pursue it.

When former Vice President Joe Biden declared his candidacy in May 2019, his first policy proposal affirmed his support for public schools.

“Educators deserve a partner in the White House,” said his initial statement. “With President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, they’ll get two. Dr. Biden has worked as an educator for more than 30 years. She and Joe understand that, for educators, their profession isn’t just what they do; it is who they are.”

The initial Biden plan called for tripling Title I funding, which goes toward school districts with a high proportion of children from low-income backgrounds. He promised to overhaul the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program to help public school teachers pay off their student loan debt. He called for doubling the number of school psychologists, guidance counselors, nurses and other health professionals in schools; ensuring federal funding for children with disabilities; and supported universal prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds. To keep schoolchildren safe, he called for a ban on military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.

He also came out against public funding of non-public schools.

In the May 2019 town hall with the American Federation of Teachers where he unveiled his education proposals, Biden said that while some charter schools succeed, federal money should not be spent on private, for-profit schools.

When it comes to vouchers and other such schemes, he said, “The bottom line is, it siphons off money for our public schools, which are already in enough trouble.”

Biden has since expanded his education proposals, calling for increasing teacher pay; investing in schools; ensuring that all students have a path to success and are educated equally regardless of location, income, race or disability.

In Southwest Florida, Democratic congressional candidate Cindy Banyai has detailed education proposals, starting with a vision that: “All children in the US have access to high-quality education, preschool through post-secondary, leading to a prepared, qualified, and advanced workforce filled with successful individuals.”

This is followed by eight very specific ideas for improving American education. When she’s elected she has a plan to introduce a “Workforce of Tomorrow” bill to implement them and find the funding mechanisms to make it happen.

“”I’m a big proponent of public schools because I understand their value. My kids go to public school,” Banyai told The Paradise Progressive. “I want the best for them and all our kids. We must invest more in public schools and not allow those public dollars to go into the hands of private corporations through private charter schools and vouchers. Teachers need good salaries that make it possible to live sustainably in our community. During the COVID-19 pandemic teachers have become front-line workers and deserve recognition and respect. Our public school teachers and students can count on my help in Congress.”

Astonishingly, for all the work he’s done on education issues and his involvement over the years, as of this writing, of eight policy positions he’s taken, Byron doesn’t mention education at all on his campaign website.

On Sept. 14, The Paradise Progressive e-mailed the Byron Donalds campaign the following questions:
1. In summary, what is your position on public education in the United States?
2. As a member of Congress, what specific actions do you intend to take regarding US education policy?
3. Do you approve of the policies and actions of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos?
The same day, The Paradise Progressive separately e-mailed the following questions to Erika Donalds:
1. If Mr. Donalds is elected and goes to Washington, will you go with him or stay in Florida?
2. Do you anticipate lobbying Congress regarding school choice and do you anticipate registering as a lobbyist?
3. If Mr. Donalds is elected, do you intend to divest yourself of all assets, financial interests, and investments in school or education-related businesses, entities or clients whether for profit or non-profit?
4. Can you summarize your view of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ policies, agenda and actions regarding public education to date?
5. How would you characterize your view of the state of public education today?
As of this posting, no response has been received from either party.

The impact of one congressman

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during a visit to Southwest Florida schools arranged by Rep. Francis Rooney in November, 2017. (Image: WINK News)

If anyone doesn’t believe that an individual member of Congress can have an impact on national education policy, one need only examine the first term of Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.), a man whose entire education, from kindergarten to post-graduate school, was spent in the parochial, Catholic schools of the Georgetown Jesuit school system.

When he first arrived in Washington, Rooney sat on the House Education Committee.

Rooney revealed the real nature of his education policy activities when he addressed the Florida Citizens Alliance program at the Alamo in 2018.

“We’re in the fight of our lives,” he said, endorsing the Alliance’s critique of public education. “It’s the education system which is brainwashing these kids, it’s Hollywood, it’s videogames and no one wants to talk about the real drivers.”

In Congress he tried to eliminate what he called “40 stupid little programs that have crept into the Higher Education Act since 1965” through what was called the PROSPER Act (Promoting Real Opportunity, Success, and Prosperity through Education Reform) Act. A Republican bill, it never went anywhere.

The bill tried to cut $2 billion out of education, including programs that rewarded students who went into public service after college. As Rooney characterized it, the PROSPER Act “eliminated this freebee if you go into public service, which is driving the liberals nuts. You know, you get a special loan if you commit to go into public service after college. It’s like paying people to fight against us”—meaning that service to the United States made a person an enemy of conservatives.

Rooney also brought DeVos to Southwest Florida twice in 2017 to tour the area’s schools, once after Hurricane Irma and once to visit local high schools and colleges.

The thrust of Rooney’s activities was to reshape American education in the DeVos mold. And what was that mold? As he put it at the Alamo: “We don’t need to become a nation of philosophers, okay? We need to become a nation of doers”—meaning that there was virtually no need to support education that wasn’t technical or trade-oriented.

Rooney and his fellow educational conservatives were unable to enact their program despite a completely Republican Congress with a president who agreed with their views. But their efforts to cut, shortchange and eliminate programs that benefit students regardless of their stations in life or income level were a warning of just how much damage a single congressman hostile to public education can do.

Analysis: The Donalds and the war on America’s schools

In their choice of who to send to Congress to represent them, Southwest Florida voters, parents and teachers should be aware of what they would get with Byron Donalds.

Donalds has not demonstrated any support for public education during his legislative career or in his political activities. On the contrary, he and his wife Erika have done all they possibly could to advance non-public education and personally profit from it.

There is nothing inherently wrong with non-public education. Parents and students who want religious schooling or alternative schooling are welcome to have it. But that educational alternative should not come at the expense of public schools or the teachers who serve them, the taxpayers who fund them, the employees who run them, the parents who rely on them, or the students who learn from them.

The charter school movement, of which they are advocates, is neither benign nor cost-free to public schools and taxpayers. From an experimental, innovative educational alternative, the charter school movement has metastasized into a for-profit gold rush, complete with shoddy products, questionable financing and unreliable outcomes.

In particular, Erika Donalds’ efforts have been directed at reducing or diluting the authority of local, elected school boards and weakening the public education infrastructure in the state of Florida and doing this sometimes in seemingly deceptive ways, as demonstrated by Amendment 8.

If Byron Donalds goes to Congress, those efforts will have a national platform and the potential authority of the United States Congress.

Indeed, if Donald Trump is re-elected, it may genuinely mean the end of the public school system in this country. The federal government may de-fund public education entirely and the Department of Education may be disestablished. If the department still exists, Betsy DeVos may have another four years in office. However, should she decide not to serve in a second Trump administration, it is conceivable that Erika could be a candidate to succeed her as Secretary of Education.

On the other hand, it is very possible that if Donald Trump is defeated and Betsy DeVos is no longer Education Secretary but Byron is elected, Erika Donalds will become a leading advocate on the national stage for the DeVos approach to public education, with Byron providing the legislative heft to advance the agenda.

Of course, if Cindy Banyai is elected along with Joe Biden and the rest of the Democratic ticket, all these questions become moot.

It is worth remembering the importance of public education for the continuation of democracy. To make the American experiment work, it had to rely on an educated, literate, informed electorate. Public education provided the basic knowledge of citizenship and history to everyone; it was a widely accepted government service that taxpayers maintained and it provided the common language and frame of reference for civic engagement.

The fragmentation and destruction of public education risks breaking and dividing a literate, engaged citizenry. Instead of a common education that treats all students as equally as possible, it risks lapsing into the situation of past societies where an educated, literate class of masters ruled over an ignorant, uneducated class of servants.

There is another risk: that the alternative, non-public educational alternative will teach a form of government that is ideologically anti-democratic and inimical to the continuation of this government in its current, constitutional form.

This may seem like a great deal to hang on the outcome of a local congressional race in an obscure corner of Florida but, like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings causing a hurricane, of such small motions are great events made.

As is abundantly clear, on the outcome of the 2020 election hangs the question of whether America will remain a democracy or fall into dictatorship. And on the future of its education system hangs the question of whether a weedlike cult of personality will implant its roots into the future or whether democracy will bloom in all the seasons to come.

Liberty lives in light

Battle of the underdogs: Banyai vs. Donalds and SWFL’s state of play today

Aug. 21, 2020 by David Silverberg

The winners of the Florida 19th Congressional District primary election on Tuesday, Aug. 18 were both underdogs in their respective primary races—but that’s where their similarities end.

On the Democratic side, when the race began, Cindy Banyai was the new girl in town, starting from scratch—people didn’t even know how to pronounce her name. (Ban-YAY, with a hard A.) She was a first time candidate up against David Holden who had run for Congress in 2018. As a result of that run, Holden was well known in Collier County, had established fundraising networks, name recognition and a base of supporters. Banyai never raised his kind of campaign money–$85,548.50 in receipts as of July 31, compared to Holden’s $229,760.19, according to the Federal Election Commission.

On the Republican side, Byron Donalds, although already a sitting state legislator, entered a crowded field relatively late in the game. He was up against two wealthy, largely self-funded candidates in Casey Askar and William Figlesthaler, both of whom bought lots of TV air time. In his fellow state Rep. Dane Eagle (R-77-Cape Coral) he was facing an established political figure who spent his whole adulthood in politics and served as majority leader in the state legislature. In an additional advantage, Eagle was based in Cape Coral, the demographic center of gravity of the 19th District.

Although both Banyai and Donalds were underdogs, each responded to their underdog status in different ways.

Banyai simply worked extremely hard all the time from the moment she declared her candidacy in September, before Rep. Francis Rooney announced his retirement. She sent out a constant stream of tweets, pronouncements, statements and a direct mail flyer. She wrote op-eds that appeared on the environment and Social Security. She held weekly virtual coffees and town halls. She energetically built coalitions and networks, vigorously reached out to other candidates and actively sought their endorsements. In at least one instance her outreach included Republicans. With traditional in-person campaigning curtailed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the constant digital campaigning stood her in good stead.

Lee County Democratic results (Lee County Election Office)

Collier County Democratic results (Collier County Election Office)

Donalds came by his underdog status because of the amount of money arrayed against him. He could not outraise or provide personal funds that could match Askar or Figlesthaler. But Donalds compensated by pledging his ideological soul to the conservative cause and winning the endorsement of organizations like Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity and the National Rifle Association. Super political action committees (PACs) that could spend unlimited amounts supporting his candidacy made up the difference.

Lee County Republican election results (Lee County Election Office)

Collier County election results (Collier County Elections Office)

It did not hurt him that, as he himself said: “I’m everything the fake news media says doesn’t exist: a Donald Trump-supporting, liberty-loving, pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment black man.” As one of the very few African American conservative Trumpers (another one, Herman Cain, died of COVID after attending a Trump rally unmasked), Donalds had the potential to inoculate the Trump right from charges of racism, making him extremely valuable to the Trumpist cause. Of all the candidates endorsed by Club for Growth, he was the only African American.

The outside PAC funding ultimately made the difference for Donalds, allowing him to narrow the broadcast advertising gap.

Although Eagle received a higher vote total than Donalds in Lee County, late on election night he conceded to Donalds, as did Figlesthaler. As of this writing, nothing public has been heard from Casey Askar or the other Republican candidates, although none of their vote totals came close to Donalds’.

State of play

As the general election battle begins, both candidates have their strengths and weaknesses.

Having won her primary, Banyai will now be receiving new endorsements (including one from David Holden, which should be coming since both candidates pledged to actively support the winner). Local Democratic Party organizations should be offering support, volunteer efforts and funding. If local media do their due diligence, they will acknowledge her campaign (in the past local media outlets have just ignored Democrats) and she may receive national media attention. Her fundraising should be enhanced and new sources will likely open up to her. This year, unlike 2018 when Rep. Rooney simply refused to debate and local organizations passively accepted his disdain, there may be actual formal debates where she’ll have a chance to explain her platform and gain a wider audience.

But in addition to her proven hard work and initiative, Banyai has the advantage of identifying with a popular candidate at the head of the ticket and a groundswell of urgency and desperation in the electorate that goes well beyond party divides. In Joe Biden, Banyai connects to a figure who has wide acceptance, as demonstrated by his consistently high polling data. There also appears to be increasing support from traditional Republicans repulsed by Donald Trump. What is more, the entire state of Florida is showing increasing signs of moving in a Democratic direction.

On the Republican side, having won his primary, Donalds will now receive the support of the local Republican Party organizations. Presumably the PACs that helped elect him will continue their support, although they may figure that having won his nomination in a safely Republican district they’re able to ignore the 19th and direct their resources elsewhere.

Most of all, Donalds has the advantage of the numbers on the ground, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats. As of this writing, in Lee County there were 202,553 registered Republicans, 129,245 Democrats, and 140,377 others including non-party affiliates (NPAs) and independents. (In Florida there is an Independent Party, so NPAs are not the same as independents.) In Collier County there are 112,044 registered Republicans, 54,380 Democrats, and 53,374 others.

The conventional wisdom is that people reflexively vote their registered party affiliation. In the past, that would be true in Southwest Florida. But now is not the past.

What’s new and different

This year, it would be unwise for anyone to blithely assume that the Republican primary is tantamount to the election in the 19th Congressional District.

There are several factors that make this an unusual year. One is the coronavirus pandemic. It continues to threaten lives, especially given the elderly population in Southwest Florida—and school-age children are at risk even as the state presses parents to send them to school. The national and state responses have been incredibly botched and even delusional. Another wave of infections may get worse. Voters have taken notice of the government response at the federal and state levels and people are frustrated, fearful and angry.

The local economy has crashed and the prospects for a quick recovery are dim. Instead, the economic effects of the botched pandemic response will continue to roll out in the days ahead, with more business closings and layoffs. With international trade disrupted by Trump administration trade wars and new border obstacles to international travel, the traditional influx of foreign visitors, snowbirds and investors is curtailed, further depressing an extremely seasonal economy built on tourism, hospitality and travel.

In the past, mail-in voting was the Republican secret sauce to winning local elections as people voted from the comfort of their second homes in the Midwest. Add to that the fact that the coronavirus has made mail-in voting essential for worried voters. In this primary election the majority of ballots were cast by mail but these were mailed out and returned before Trump and his Postmaster General Louis DeJoy attacked and disrupted the mail system. Having crippled the mails, Trump may have also crippled Republican mail-in balloting in Southwest Florida. Republicans may not be able to count on those absentee ballots to make up their majority despite the Florida state Republican party’s efforts to blur—literally—Trump’s attacks.

There is also always the possibility that natural disasters like hurricanes, red tide or algal blooms could occur in Southwest Florida but their political impacts are impossible to measure before the event.

But the single biggest political factor in the 19th Congressional District race right now is Donald Trump.

In Trump’s shadow

The 2020 election is a referendum on the presidency of Donald Trump—at both the national and local levels.

As a progressive Biden Democrat, Banyai offers an alternative to the current status quo. She is now the underdog in the race and the rebel against the existing order, both locally and nationally. Her task in getting elected is difficult but relatively simple: she has to win over enough NPAs, never-Trumpers and newly disaffected Republicans to form a majority coalition along with the Democrats who will support her. (To see a more detailed discussion of this topic see the article: “Passion and Pragmatism: The Democratic path to victory.”) It does not hurt that she’s a suburban mom with school-age children who can relate directly to mothers of all ages.

But the situation is much more complex for Donalds. Although the Casey Askar campaign played up Donalds’ various apostasies—voting for Barack Obama, saying nice things about Mitt Romney, having impure non-Trumpist thoughts in the dark mists of the past—Donalds loudly and emphatically proclaimed his total, undying loyalty to Trump.

He’s now the top dog in the race and he’s joined at the hip to Trump. He and the Club for Growth Action PAC played up his absolute, unvarying ideological obedience during his primary bid. In Southwest Florida that is certainly an advantage with the committed Trumpers who decided the Republican primary—but even so he barely squeaked by.

His absolute Trumpism means that he buys the bad with the good—in addition to the credits he gets for fealty, he also stands with Trump’s lying, meanness, cruelty, indifference, narcissism, corruption, irrationality, ineptitude and, to use Trump’s own words, “hatred, prejudice and rage.”

It also means he stands with Trump policies and many of these are inimical to Southwest Florida, like destroying Social Security and trying to take away everyone’s healthcare; restricting border crossings and travel and hampering local tourism and investment; despoiling and polluting the environment; drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico; attacking immigrants and immigration, which hurts local businesses and agriculture; and excusing and justifying the sheer incompetence of Trump’s and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ coronavirus response—or perhaps better put—non-response.

Donalds has to defend and promote all this. He has no “Etch-A-Sketch” option, as one of Mitt Romney’s aides once so memorably put it. He can’t shake a toy and make all his previous statements disappear into the past and dissolve from people’s memories. Some memories are indeed short, especially among Southwest Florida’s elders, but others have memories like elephants.

Mercifully, both Banyai and Donalds say they want to conduct a clean, non-personal, dignified race that focuses on policy and Southwest Florida and appeals to our better natures. We’ll see how long that lasts, especially if the polling narrows and the PACs and consultants have their way in pushing the kind of negative campaigning and advertising that fills their coffers.

So by a sheer accident of nature, history and coincidence, sleepy, swampy, sweltering Southwest Florida this year is home to one of the most interesting congressional races in the country. It pits a totally ideologically orthodox conservative African American Trumper with a checkered personal past against a progressive Biden Democratic white suburban mom, who also happens to be a PhD and former professional prizefighter.

It would be fun to see the two of them go three rounds in a boxing ring. But short of that, we’ll have to settle for a political bout.

Voters have a stark and definitive choice. Don’t prejudge the outcome before the final bell.

Liberty lives in light

SWFL’s 19th congressional endorsement race: Who’s ahead and who’s endorsing whom–UPDATED

08-06-20 Endorsements 2

Aug. 7, 2020 by David Silverberg

Updated 11:45 am with correction to Banyai endorsements and new addition, 5:00 pm with Donalds NRA endorsement.

We’re in the final days of the primary races in Southwest Florida. Early in-person voting begins tomorrow, Saturday, Aug. 8. Mail-in voting has been underway since ballots were mailed out in mid-July.

The race is down to inches—and insults. With in-person campaigning and canvassing curtailed due to the pandemic, it’s a battle of clashing television ads and claims.

But one aspect of traditional campaigning that the pandemic hasn’t derailed is endorsements.

Endorsements are very important. When made, campaign communication directors should blare them to the heavens. Do endorsements move voters? Well, some do. But equally important, they have a cumulative impact. They can tell a lot about a candidate’s support and presumably an endorser brings a whole host of followers to the favored candidate’s camp.

In fact, so important are endorsements that FiveThirtyEight.com, the statistical journalism website, created a whole system for evaluating endorsements during the Democratic primary race beginning last year. Endorsements are significant, wrote FiveThirtyEight’s founder Nate Silver, because while they don’t mean “the candidate leading in endorsements will automatically win the nomination, or even necessarily be an odds-on favorite,” endorsements are nonetheless an indicator of a political party establishment’s support for a candidate and the ultimate nominee is usually the one favored by the party leadership.

As it goes for the presidential primary races, so it should go for Southwest Florida’s 19th Congressional District primary race, which with 12 candidates, is one of the most crowded and contentious in the country.

This article looks at all the endorsements for congressional primary candidates of both parties. The endorsements are in four categories: organizations; candidates (meaning candidates in other races); activists (people who are active and prominent in pursuing particular causes); and others (by which are meant current and former officials).

Unlike FiveThirtyEight, this does not give numerical points to different endorsements. It also doesn’t count ratings from organizations, which are usually given as grades from A to F. Endorsements counted here are specific to each candidate, although organizations often endorse numerous candidates, whether competing or not. It is also important to note that the local political parties will not endorse candidates until after the primary and the party conventions.

We checked all the candidates’ websites for lists of endorsements (some seemed to actually hide their endorsements or make them as difficult to access as possible), included their press releases and invited all candidates to list any endorsements that are pending or might not yet be posted.

Democrats

In the Democratic primary race, candidates David Holden and Cindy Banyai have both been endorsed by the Democratic Environmental Caucus of Florida.

Also on the environmental front, Holden has been endorsed by VoteWater Florida, a nonpartisan, grassroots organization designed to identify candidates supporting clean water initiatives.

Among other candidates, Holden, who ran in 2018, has been endorsed by his former rival, Todd Truax, who is currently running for Lee County Board of Commissioners, District 3; Javier Estevez, running for state representative in District 105; and Sara McFadden, who is running for state representative in District 106.

Among community activists, Holden has been endorsed by Crystal Johnson, president of the Community Forum Foundation, a community-building non-profit based in Fort Myers, and W. Earl Sparrow Jr., a community activist and organizer in Fort Myers.

Banyai has been endorsed by: Lee County Young Democrats, No Dem Left Behind, a movement of Democrats running in heavily Republican districts, Moms Demand Action, an organization calling for an end to gun violence, Women for the Win, a coalition of media professionals helping female candidates, 90 for 90, a voter registration organization, Peaceful Protests Lee County, a grassroots protest and gatherings group, and Boots of Recovery, a group that seeks to raise political awareness for recovery acceptance and solutions.

Candidates who have endorsed Banyai (and whom Banyai has endorsed in turn) are: Rachel Brown, candidate for state Senate District 27; Katherine Norman, candidate for state Senate District 23; state representative candidates Anselm Weber, District 76; Maureen Porras, District 105; Danika Fornear, District 79; Juan Gonzales, Lee County Commission District 5; and Connie Bennett-Martin, candidate for Fort Myers Ward 4.

Among community activists, Banyai has been endorsed by: Alexandra Anderes, a Fort Myers attorney; Isaiah Carter, a campaign worker; Johnnie Terrell, a Fort Myers social worker; and Eddie Thinger, a Florida Gulf Coast University graduate, who serves as her press secretary.

(Of note: The Paradise Progressive has endorsed in this race.)

Republicans

Of the Republican candidates, state Rep. Dane Eagle (R-77-Cape Coral) has by far the largest number of endorsements. Partially, this is a result of his prominence as Florida state House Majority Leader and his numerous connections. Even at the young age of 37 he’s been a prominent politician for a long time.

He’s also the candidate who has come closest to running a traditional campaign. If not for the pandemic, he’d be the guy with the ground game; volunteer door knockers, phone callers and envelope stuffers who have gotten people elected in the past.

Eagle started collecting endorsements immediately after his campaign announcement on Nov. 6, 2019 and he’s made a real effort to solicit them.

Of course, the big endorsement has to date eluded him. Despite slavish devotion and pictures of him with President Donald Trump from a single encounter appearing in all his campaign literature and media platforms, the Big Man has not reached down into this particular primary race to anoint Eagle his chosen one. That one endorsement would probably have settled this contest long ago.

Despite what surely must be a disappointment, Eagle has racked up 22 endorsements from individuals, many sitting Republican officials, more than any other candidate.

The most prominent of these is Florida’s senior US senator, Marco Rubio. He has also been endorsed by Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-12-Fla.)

Of sitting state officials, Eagle has been endorsed by State Attorney Amira Fox; state Senate President-designate Wilton Simpson; and state Sen. Lizbeth Benaquisto, District 27. Sitting state representatives include: House Speaker-designate Chris Sprowls, Ray Rodrigues, and Spencer Roach.

Local mayors Kevin Ruane of Sanibel, JoeCovielo of Cape Coral, and Bill Ribble of Estero have endorsed him. Local officials include: Sanibel Councilwoman Holly Smith; Lee County Sheriff Carmen Marceno; Kathy Smith, public defender; Larry Hart, tax collector, and Linda Doggett, clerk of the court.

Nor has Eagle overlooked former officials, being endorsed by: Jeff Kottkamp, former lieutenant governor; former state representatives Matt Caldwell, Gary Aubuchon and Trudi Williams; former Cape Coral mayors Joe Mazurkiewicz and Eric Feichthaler; former Lee County sheriff Mike Scott; and former state attorney Steve Russell.

Eagle has also been endorsed by Doris Cortese, the “godmother” of Lee County Republican politics, who encouraged him to run the minute Rep. Francis Rooney announced his retirement in October 2019.

In terms of organizations, Eagle has been endorsed by Florida Police Benevolent Association, Associated Builders and Contractors, the National Association of Home Builders and Personhood FL ProLife PAC.

The only other candidate who can count a US senator as an endorser is state Rep. Byron Donalds (R-80-Immokalee), who has been endorsed by US Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Donalds has also received endorsements from prominent national conservative organizations: Americans for Prosperity, Florida Family Action, the Republican Liberty Caucus, Empower America and Club for Growth. He is the only 19th District candidate to receive a full endorsement from the National Rifle Association.

The next most endorsed Republican is Dan Severson but his endorsements are from out of state. Reflecting his time in the Minnesota state house, he has been endorsed by former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, New Jersey-based Tea Party activist Michael Johns, and Texas-based Clint Lorance, a US Army officer who was court martialed and found guilty of second degree murder in Afghanistan and pardoned by Trump in 2019.

The other candidates in the field have received single endorsements or none at all: Casey Askar has been endorsed by the Everglades Trust; William Figlesthaler has been endorsed by former Florida state senator Garrett Richter of District 23; and Darren Aquino has been endorsed by the New York Young Republican Club.

Candidates Randy Henderson, Daniel Kowal and Christy McLaughlin do not list any endorsements on their websites or other platforms. Information on Independent Antonio Dumornay is not available.

Liberty lives in light

We tested SWFL candidates on their knowledge of a vital congressional issue. Here are the results.

Big Cypress National Preserve in the Everglades. (Photo: National Park Service)

July 10, 2020 by David Silverberg

The campaign season is kicking into high gear. If you’re in the Fort Myers-Naples TV market and watch the local news in the 5:00 to 6:30 pm hour, you’re seeing a seemingly endless stream of political campaign ads marching across your screen.

However, television ads are, of course, just snippets, intended to give a fleeting impression of a candidate.

These candidates—and the others who can’t afford air time—are vying to represent Southwest Florida in the Congress of the United States.

But do they have any grasp of the real work of Congress? Do they understand the nitty-gritty of government operations? Have they paid any attention at all to the kind of legislation that really affects Southwest Florida and Floridians? Do they have basic local knowledge? Are they doing any real policy homework? Do they know what a congressional representative actually does? Do they care about impacting peoples’ lives in Southwest Florida?

The Paradise Progressive decided to ask all congressional candidates one question about one issue that’s fundamental to Southwest Florida that involves Congress, the federal government and legislation to see how they responded.

The question, issued on Monday, July 6, was: “As a member of Congress, what specific changes would you make to WRDA to benefit Southwest Florida and the 19th Congressional District?”

Would anyone even google “WRDA” to see what the acronym means?

The most important legislation you’ve never heard of

WRDA: it’s usually pronounced “word-DA” and it actually stands for the Water Resources Development Act.

It’s hardly ever mentioned in Southwest Florida, in either conversation or the media, or especially on the campaign trail. And yet, it has an enormous impact on the region and its livability.

That’s because WRDA is the broad, all-encompassing congressional act governing all water projects and management in the United States. It’s a gigantic piece of legislation that gives the government authority to dredge canals, build dams, raise levees, control floods, maintain harbors, alter rivers, manage water releases and do the million and more things that require water to serve people, make land more productive and keep pollution at bay.

In Southwest Florida WRDA impacts the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee, the Herbert Hoover Dike, the Caloosahatchee River and all the other streams, creeks and lakes that manage and provide the life-sustaining liquid making human habitation here possible.

When it comes to Congress, it’s a piece of legislation where an individual representative can have a real impact and where he or she can make a real difference. Candidates can fulminate on all the grand themes they like, but once they’re in office and have to really deal with the nuts and bolts of governing, getting and spending federal money and representing their district, WRDA has to be a priority.

Because it covers so many activities, WRDA must be constantly reauthorized to keep up with new needs and changes. The bill’s preamble calls for a new WRDA reauthorization every two years and the Conservancy of Southwest Florida agrees, saying it’s needed “to provide consistent authorization of Everglades projects.” That’s a position echoed by the Florida Association of Counties.

A 2020 WRDA is in the congressional works and it may be presented to the full House by the end of July. Usually, it’s a bipartisan, politically neutral bill, since it deals with facts on the ground rather than ideology or partisanship.

As a demonstration of just how important it really is, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-4-Ore.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, chose to keep it out of the $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the House on July 1. That bill was treated as partisan by Republicans and has gone to the Senate where it is likely to die. By contrast, a separate WRDA bill is getting Republican buy-in and the Senate has already passed its own version. Unless President Trump is completely bonkers by the time it reaches his desk before the end of the year, he’s likely to sign it.

For Southwest Florida, the 2020 WRDA will authorize the funding for restoring the Everglades through the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). It will also regulate discharges from Lake Okeechobee, making harmful algal blooms less likely—or more so.

Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.), the retiring representative, was very active on WRDA to protect Everglades restoration funding and posted A history of Southwest Florida, WRDA and the Everglades on his website.

Various water-related local activist groups have already weighed in on the 2020 WRDA, in addition to the Conservancy.

“Lots of pieces to WRDA,” observed John Cassani, director of Calusa Waterkeeper, a non-profit, water purity advocacy group, to The Paradise Progressive. “Definitely needed but would not support the ‘savings clause’ issue if it gets into the legislation.” The “savings clause” essentially states that the legal state of existing water sources can’t be altered until new sources are found. In essence it protects the status quo around Lake O. It has long been the subject of controversy and debate. (For the full, official document involving the Savings Clause, see Annex B: Analyses Required by WRDA 2000 and Florida State Law.)

In Congress, on April 30, Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-20-Fla.) circulated a letter advocating that the next WRDA treat all CERP sub-projects as “ongoing” projects—that way there wouldn’t have to be separate congressional authorizations for each project. It would speed and streamline Everglades restoration. In a show of bipartisan agreement, Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-25-Fla.) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-23-Fla.) signed on.

WRDA is a vast and sprawling piece of legislation. It’s the kind of thing that a member of Congress, especially from Southwest Florida, has to keep an eye on. It’s not the kind of thing that lends itself to hoopla or slogans. It’s the real work of Congress and it’s where congressional representation really counts.

So how did our candidates do?

The candidates respond

Of the dozen candidate campaigns running for Congress in the 19th Congressional District, four responded to the WRDA question. Their answers are presented here in full and unedited.

The Democrats

Both local Democrats running for Congress responded to the question. In alphabetical order:

Cindy Banyai:

04-07-20 Cindy Banyai “The Everglades are one of the most important aspects of both our water and our community here in Southwest Florida. While I’m glad that the federal government has granted money to restore the Everglades and repair the Herbert Hoover Dike, I plan on ensuring this is a top priority of the government after I am elected to Congress. Francis Rooney pushed the estimated completion time back to 2022 because he knew he was not going to run again. Additionally, we need to continue to improve the process, allowing for more local input and control over releases, and speed of review of the Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule (LORS). It is necessary to be able to adjust the LORS so more water can be provided during the winter months, when our estuaries need it, and less flows in the summer months where there can be damage to our ecosystem. As the champion of the people of Southwest Florida I’m going to fight to ensure our water and our community are protected and that the federal government upholds their plans to restore the Everglades.”

David Holden:

04-16-20 David Holden cropped “I strongly support authorization of the Water Resources Development Act of 2020 (WRDA). The WRDA authorizes important water resource studies and provides critical federal funding that Southwest Florida needs to adequately protect its’ vital natural resources. It is my great desire that the WRDA is authorized soon and that our federal government expends all resources available to combat the climate change crisis we face today.”

The Republicans

Two Republicans responded.

Darren Aquino:

04-12-20 Darren Aquino “The Water Resource Development Act (WRDA) of 2018 clearly stated that the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) Storage Reservoir is part of the Central Everglades PLanning Project. However, the Army Corps of Engineers’ bureaucracy still designated this as a ‘new start,’ thus delaying the needed project that would have otherwise been completed in time and under budget. As your congressman, I will help diminish this act by the Army Corps. Furthemore, as your congressman, I will continue to support additional WRDAs that will provide needed insight and projects to aid water management and precision water ecosystems in Southwest Florida. We must stop the ‘Red tide’ and do everything in our power to do so. Republicans are the only ones who protect the environment. If you take a look at liberal communist China, they are destroying the environment every day. The Democrats and the Communists want to ruin God’s creations. It’s why they haven’t done anything when it comes to the environment in well over 40 years, and the first environmental efforts were done by Republicans. The Democrats and communists view environmental policy as punishing businesses and blue collar Americans, while ignoring the root of the cause. They have a deep hatred for America and our institutions.”

Casey Askar:

03-27-20 Casey Askar

“Sustained funding. Once a project is authorized, there must be sustained funding for completing that project. Time is money, and when it comes to CERP, the longer it takes to build these projects, the more it costs—both in terms of money and the harm that results from these projects not being online. The State of Florida has a track record of building projects faster and cheaper than the federal government. CERP is a 50/50 partnership between the state and federal governments. If the state can do it faster and cheaper, Congress should be passing those dollars onto the state to carry out the federal responsibility and stretch federal taxpayer dollars farther than they are going now. And they could do that by a block grant process.”

Of the other candidates:

State Rep. Byron Donalds (R-80-Immokalee): No response
State Rep. Dane Eagle (R-77-Cape Coral): No response
Dr. William Figlesthaler, Republican: No response
Mayor Randy Henderson, Republican: No response
Daniel Kowal, Republican: No available e-mail address
Christy McLaughlin, Republican: No response
Dan Severson, Republican: No response
Antonio Dumornay, Independent: No available e-mail address

Conclusion: Doing the homework

Election campaigns have always had a strong element of the trivial: There are people who make up their minds on a candidate based on his five o’clock shadow—or lack of it; whether he can shoot a gun or not; whether or not she wears a pantsuit or the cut of her hair.

But America has seen how damaging making judgments on these superficialities can be. Electing someone to office without preparation, or background or, for that matter, interest in government and its operations, can literally result in death, as we’re seeing with the coronavirus pandemic response.

Sending a representative to Congress to work on behalf of this region should be based on the person’s knowledge of government, the issues and their proposed solutions and ideas. Candidates should do their homework before they run and be familiar with their district’s vital interests. In the case of Southwest Florida, that means balancing the needs of human habitation with preservation of the natural environment.

That’s the ideal, anyway. In the race for 19th Congressional District seat, it’s now clear that some candidates—or their campaign staffs—are willing to devote some time and attention to what they will actually be doing if they get to Washington.

Or, at the very least, they’re reading and answering their e-mails.

Liberty lives in light

Trump, Biden and Florida’s Gulf shore oil war

Pro-Trump boaters take to the waters along southern Collier County on May 23.

June 6, 2020 by David Silverberg.

This year’s Memorial Day weekend began on Saturday, May 23 with hundreds of boaters in Southwest Florida launching a “Making Waves” boat parade to show their support for President Donald Trump and his re-election.

They had clear sailing on pristine waters from Naples Bay to Marco Island.

The irony is that if they get their wish and Trump is re-elected, those waters won’t be so pristine anymore.

That’s because if Trump is re-elected the eastern Gulf of Mexico will be opened to oil exploration and exploitation. In a second Trump administration, any future flotilla will have to dodge tankers, tugs, barges, tenders, lighters, shuttles, seismic testing boats and drilling ships among other vessels. Most of all, they would be maneuvering amidst immense drilling rigs. And the water will be slick with debris, pollution and—most of all—oil.

This is not fantasy or some conspiracy theory.

In 2019, after considerable confusion and mixed signals from the Trump administration whether the eastern Gulf would be opened to oil lease sales, Congress concluded, “the Trump Administration intends, if the President is reelected, to include the Eastern Gulf of Mexico in its final Five-Year Program and to hold lease sales in the Eastern Gulf as early as 2022.”

That’s stated in a July 16, 2019 report from the US House Natural Resources Committee. It goes on to say: “Given the widespread belief that a tweet from [Interior] Secretary [Ryan] Zinke declaring Florida off-limits to offshore oil and gas leasing was issued to support Florida Governor Rick Scott in his Senate race, the Committee is concerned that the Administration is playing similar games with its 2019–2024 program and intends to wait until after the 2020 presidential election, in which Florida may be a key swing state, before revealing an unpopular plan to lease off of Florida’s shore.”

Those are pretty strong words for a relatively obscure congressional report accompanying a piece of legislation.

What is more, they were not the statements of cranky Democrats taking potshots at Trump. In fact, they were issued to explain a piece of legislation introduced by a Republican.

And that Republican was Southwest Florida’s own Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.).

Rooney’s crusade

11-16-19 Francis_Rooney_official_congressional_photo cropped — Rep. Francis Rooney

On Sept. 11, 2019, the US House of Representatives voted 248 to 180 to pass the Protecting and Securing Florida’s Coastline Act of 2019 (House Resolution (HR) 205)).

The bill is pretty simple: it “permanently extends the moratorium on oil and gas leasing, preleasing, and related activities” in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. It prohibits sale of leases, oil exploration, drilling or extracting oil along Florida’s Gulf coastline in perpetuity.

That moratorium had been in place in one form or another since 1982, maintained by congressional action and presidential decisions, which applied not just in Florida but in a wide variety of waters around the North American continental shelf, including Alaska. However, in one of his earliest acts, in April 2017 Trump issued an executive order opening up American waters to oil exploitation. The order was challenged in court but the Trump administration proceeded with planning for the sale of oil leases beginning in 2022 when the current moratorium expires.

Rooney was elected in 2016 on the same platform—literally, they stood on the same stage—as Trump. What was more, Rooney and his construction companies had extensive ties to the oil and gas industry and much of his fortune resulted from work for it. One of his earliest political donors was the consortium building the controversial XL Pipeline. And even Rooney’s origins are in Oklahoma’s oil patch.

So perhaps Rooney had a better sense than most people of what was involved in offshore oil exploitation and how it would affect Southwest Florida’s tourism, hospitality, and retail businesses and overall quality of life. After all, he lives on the water in Naples’ Port Royal.

That’s why it was particularly interesting when, after Trump’s executive order, regardless of his other activities, Rooney began working to protect the Gulf coast from oil exploitation.

But in this effort Rooney was opposed by the oil industry, which wants the option to drill everywhere and anywhere, and his fellow Republicans, in particular the powerful Rep. Steve Scalise (R-1-La.), the Minority Whip in the House.

It’s worth noting the unique role of Louisiana in this: politically, the state and the oil industry are virtually one and the same. Offshore oil exploitation has brought great wealth and employment to the state and the people involved in the industry. However, it has also brought pollution and the occasional disaster, most spectacularly the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout and the subsequent nearly five month-long oil spill—really more of an oil eruption.

In Congress, Rooney couldn’t make headway on maintaining the moratorium and one day he confronted Scalise directly, as he related to a small group of constituents meeting at the Alamo gun range and store in Naples in 2018.

“I was on the House floor with Steve Scalise and I got in his face and I said, ‘You’re telling me that the industry won’t go for protecting the Eastern Gulf in Florida? What industry are you talking about? I’m talking about tourism. I’m talking about why we’re all here, okay? Just because Louisiana is a pit, doesn’t mean we want to become a pit. Okay?’” said Rooney.

Nor could Rooney make any headway with Trump’s Interior Department. He found that officials in the Department of Defense supported maintaining the moratorium because they trained pilots over the eastern Gulf. “…So the military is our ally on this,” he said. “The Department of the Interior is not. They want to ‘drill-baby-drill.’ They are Republicans, right?”

While Republicans were in power, Rooney and the moratorium made no progress.

USCG photo oil rig cropped 11-7-17

Vessels service offshore oil rigs. (Photo: USCG)

Enter the Democrats

Then, in 2018 the House changed hands and suddenly Rooney faced a new Democratic power structure and a new Speaker of the House—Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-12-Calif.).

On the first day of the session, Jan. 3, 2019, he introduced HR 205 with Rep. Cathy Kastor (D-14-Fla.), who represents Hillsborough County in the Tampa area, as his first co-sponsor. The legislation gained momentum, picking up other members of the Florida delegation from both parties as co-sponsors until by June he had nine Democrats and nine Republicans.

Pelosi agreed to move the bill forward and on Sept. 11, the same day he called on his Republican colleagues to acknowledge climate change in an essay in Politico magazine, Rooney also saw his bill passed in the House. All of Florida’s representatives, both Republican and Democratic, voted for it with only one dissenter, Rep. Ted Yoho (R-3-Fla.).

From there it went to the Republican Senate where it was introduced the next day by Florida’s two Republican senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. There it has languished to this day.

Why? Because with Republicans in charge, the odds were stacked against it: Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wasn’t inclined to move it and the Trump White House threatened to veto it. The Interior Department, the fossil fuel industry, the offshore drilling industry and the Republican leadership are against it.

Rooney has kept working for its passage.

“I’ve been working with Senators Rubio and Scott, as well as others whose support will be needed to advance HR. 205 in the Senate,” Rooney stated in response to questions from The Paradise Progressive. “They’re making sure that the Senate realizes the military, economic, and ecologic significance of banning offshore drilling east of the Military Mission Line” (the geographic line in the Gulf where the military trains)

There are possibilities that the legislation could still advance: “We’re keeping all options on the table for ways to advance HR 205, as stand-alone legislation, or as a potential amendment to other legislation. I’m optimistic that we can still be successful in this congressional session,” he stated.

On May 29, The Paradise Progressive asked the following questions about HR 205 of Sens. Rubio and Scott in a message to their offices:

1. Since its arrival in the Senate, have you taken any actions to advance this bill?
2. Do you plan to take any actions to move this bill to full consideration by the Senate before the end of the year?
3. If you plan to take any actions, what do you plan to do?

As of this writing, no response has been received.

Logic and illogic

Conventional political logic would dictate that if you’re a sitting president who must win the state of Florida to be re-elected, you do something that will make you popular in that state and gain you votes—like supporting HR 205. That would mean an endorsement from the president, breaking the legislation out of committee and getting it enacted into law before the general election on Nov. 3.

“The people of Florida have made it clear that they don’t want offshore drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico,” stated Rooney. “It endangers our tourism and real estate-based economy, and it adversely affects military readiness. There will be a political price to pay if the will of the people is ignored. The Trump administration can move this forward if they want to protect Florida.”

True enough. But conventional political logic has not been a hallmark of the Trump administration and it’s not in evidence now.

Of course, there are bigger issues dominating the landscape at the moment than drilling for oil off Southwest Florida—like whether America will remain a democracy and whether racism can be uprooted. Still, oil is an issue that particularly matters to the people, the region and the environment.

“It’s my hope that our next representative will exhibit the same commitment and have the successes that we’ve had over these last four years in fixing our water and protecting our environment,” stated Rooney, who is retiring after this term.

But with all of the Republicans vying for his seat pledging their blind obedience to Donald Trump, that’s not likely.

However, one person who has paid attention to the topic of offshore drilling is Democratic presidential challenger former Vice President Joe Biden.

On March 15, Joe Biden debated Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Washington, DC. In a discussion of climate change Biden said: “Number one, no more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, no more drilling on federal lands, no more drilling, including offshore, no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends, number one.”

Subsequent analysis indicated that Biden meant no new offshore drilling; not that he would close down existing wells. But that was good enough for Florida’s Gulf coast.

However, this was not something that was going to be taken lying down by the offshore drilling industry.

On Tuesday, May 26, the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), the organization of the offshore oil industry, hit back by releasing a study, “The Economic Impacts of the Gulf of Mexico Oil & Natural Gas Industry,” warning of dire consequences if there was no new leasing or permitting in the Gulf of Mexico. Projecting out to the year 2040 it predicted losses in oil extraction, jobs, industry spending, gross domestic product and government revenues. It pointed out that the industry is a pillar in the state economies of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.

Florida is not yet on the list—but it is certainly in the industry’s sights.

And incredibly, like a raid deep into enemy territory, on May 27 an article reprinted from the Lafayette Daily Advertiser of Lafayette, La., of all places, appeared in Naples, Fla., in an across-the-page headline on the front of the Naples Daily News Business section: “Gulf drilling restrictions could prove damaging.” It put forward NOIA’s propaganda without comment or question.

With this the industry proved that it really did have a long reach—right into Rooney’s own eyeballs and the heart of the opposition.

Joe Biden at the moment in his debate with Bernie Sanders when he uttered the words “no more drilling, including offshore.” (Image: CNN)

Analysis: Boatin’ for Biden

“I’m thankful that the Florida delegation, with the exception of one member, came together in a bipartisan way to pass HR 205 out of the House,” stated Rooney to The Paradise Progressive. “This shows the strong commitment that Floridians have to protecting our waters, our economy, and our military preparedness.”

Many Floridians do indeed have a commitment to Florida’s natural environment and they will keep working to protect it. But it’s also very clear that the only hope Southwest Florida—indeed, all of the Florida Gulf coast—has to protect its shores, its environment and its current economy is the election of Joe Biden as president.

Floridians of all political persuasions will get no succor or satisfaction on this issue from President Trump or his administration. He and his minions are just waiting for his re-election to pounce and then it’s “drill-baby-drill.” And the offshore oil and gas industry will certainly show no mercy.

So those in the flotilla of south Collier County boaters who took to the water on Memorial Day weekend should think very carefully about what they’re wishing for. If they really got their wish and Donald Trump was re-elected, the Florida waters and beaches they so enjoy will likely become a dystopian hellscape of oil rigs, ships and slicks.

But of course, that’s not the future that has to be. Perhaps just enough Floridians will realize that their best interests, the interests of their state, their country, their environment and their future lies in electing Joe Biden.

And then they’ll vote.

Offshore oil rigs 11-2-17

Liberty lives in light

Follow the money: Figlesthaler and the medicine men of SWFL

Doctor without helmet: Dr. William Figlesthaler and his wife, Olga, get on their bike and ride. (Image: Figlesthaler for Congress campaign)

May 21, 2020 by David Silverberg.

Updated with two-word correction at 12:20 pm.

In his most recent television commercial, Dr. William Figlesthaler, clad in leather, mounts his motorcycle and roars off as though in a GEICO commercial, thereby somehow proving that he’s qualified to represent Southwest Florida’s 19th Congressional District in the US Congress.

Figlesthaler calls the ad, “The Race is On” and indeed it is, as the August 18 Republican primary draws nearer. But an examination of the relative fundraising prowess of the various candidates—the only public measure of their respective positions—reveals Figlesthaler in second place, according to his 1st quarter financial report to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Leading the Republican pack is businessman Casey Askar who had, as of March 31, a war chest of $3,482,873.79.

But if Askar is the candidate of Collier County’s business elite (see “The Curious Case of Casey Askar”), then Figlesthaler is the candidate of SWFL’s medical establishment, which makes up the core of his support.

Despite their donations, Figlesthaler’s campaign is still largely dependent on the candidate’s personal loans.

During the reporting period, Figlesthaler loaned his campaign a total of $1,060,000 in five tranches between November 2019 and the end of the reporting period on March 31 of this year.

However, with the help of professional fundraisers like Anedot, a fundraising service based in Baton Rouge, La., Figlesthaler expanded his donor base. (To see The Paradise Progressive’s previous, Feb. 6 report on Figlesthaler’s finances see: “Follow the money: Figlesthaler’s finances and what they mean.”)

He raised $279,278.80 in 167 contributions in the first quarter, according to data processed by the FEC. That plus his loan gave him a war chest of $1,011,164.77.

Of Figlesthaler’s 167 primary election donations, 31 or roughly 19 percent, came from people in medical-related fields, primarily doctors, with a heavy representation of radiation oncologists and urologists. This does not include retired physicians and medical professionals.

One donor was Paige Kreegel, a fellow doctor, former Florida state representative and in 2012 a primary candidate in the 19th Congressional District, who kicked in $2,800 to the campaign.

Most prominently, Figlesthaler won the support of Reinhold Schmieding, president of Arthrex Inc., a medical device maker and the largest employer in Collier County, who to date has contributed the legal limit of $5,000 to the campaign.

Figlesthaler is now getting aid from medically-related political action committees (PACs) as well. The American Association of Clinical Urologists PAC (UROPAC) provided $500. The organization Friends to Elect Dr. Greg Murphy to Congress provided $2,000. (Rep. Greg Murphy (R-3-NC) is a fellow urologist and sitting member of Congress from North Carolina, where Figlesthaler did his residency.)

Another organization, Defend & Uphold Our Nation Now, contributed $500 to Figlesthaler’s campaign. This PAC is led by Rep. Neal Dunn (R-2-Fla.), a surgeon, and provides a convenient, legal cover for banking industry political contributions since it is overwhelmingly funded by the American Bankers Association, also known as BankPAC, according to the FEC.

Murphy of North Carolina, who apparently mentored and supports Figlesthaler, received $2,000 from that PAC. However, one recipient of the PAC’s largess, Republican candidate, Dan Donovan, a former representative from New York, returned a $1,000 contribution to the organization.

Figlesthaler also had to make a refund of his own during the quarter, returning $400 in contributions from a Fort Myers oncologist and his wife.

Of all 14 candidates running, Figlesthaler had the highest burn rate: $319,164.03 in expenditures. In addition to Anedot, Figlesthaler paid a wide variety of consultants for compliance, strategy, communications, advertising and media placement. He also has the most advertisements running of any candidate on local television.

Young Guns blazing

On April 28 Figlesthaler sent out an exuberant announcement: “Figlesthaler Selected to Lucrative NRCC ‘Young Guns’ Program,” making no secret of the real value he saw in being named to the Republican program, which seeks to increase the Republican portion of the US House of Representatives.

One of the main advantages of being in the Young Gun program is that it puts the candidate on a stage that may lead to campaign contributions, giving him or her exposure to the entire Republican funding network.

In that regard it can indeed be “lucrative,” as Figlesthaler points out.

Regrettably, FEC reports don’t designate which contributions may have come as a result of the Young Guns program, so it remains to be seen just how “lucrative” the program will be for Figlesthaler.

Four of the 10 Republicans running in the 19th Congressional District are in the Republican Young Guns program, which is led by House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, (R-23-Calif.) and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

There are three levels of Young Gunness: “On the Radar,” is the lowest, with the candidates running in competitive districts who have met standards of campaign organization and show potential for advancing to the next step. Both State Rep. Byron Donalds (R-80-Immokalee) and businessman Casey Askar are “On the Radar.”

The highest level is “Young Guns.” These people have met program goals, surpassed benchmarks and are likely to win. No Southwest Florida Republican has reached this level.

In the middle are “Contenders,” who, as the program’s website puts it: “have completed stringent program metrics and are on the path to developing a mature and competitive campaign operation.” Contenders are in congressional seats that appear to lean Republican.

Here reside State Rep. Dane Eagle (R-77-Cape Coral) and Figlesthaler.

It’s ironic that these two should be Young Guns together since Figlesthaler has been sniping at Eagle for being less than gung-ho on gun ownership. Eagle has been taking fire since December for allegedly betraying gun owners by supporting post-Parkland gun reforms in the Florida legislature. Figlesthaler accused Eagle of being receptive to former presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, who favors gun restrictions. Eagle shot back at Figlesthaler in an April 27 WINK-TV online debate, saying he thought Figlesthaler had been watching too much “fake news” on CNN.

The two will no doubt continue exchanging potshots.

At least on his motorcycle, Figlesthaler can remain a moving target.

Liberty lives in light

Has the Trump magic worn off — in SWFL and everywhere else?

The wizarding world of Donald Trump. (Photo illustration: New York Magazine)

May 11, 2020 by David Silverberg.

Has Donald Trump’s magic finally worn off?

We’re not talking about his delusional magic that the coronavirus would simply disappear: “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” Nor are we talking about the magic of beating impeachment: “the real defense, the real legal strategy, was a belief in Trump’s magical properties,” as Michael Wolff put it in his book Siege.

No, we’re talking about real magic, in the real world, with real results: The magical ability to get politicians elected.

Say what you will about the man, he has been able to pick and place his candidates in key Republican primary elections.

Nowhere has this magic worked more than in Florida, where Trump’s magic elected the governor in 2018.

In late 2017 Ron DeSantis was a two-term congressman who was losing a Republican primary race for governor to Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.

Putnam looked like a lock, with strong fundraising and a long lead in the polls. But then Trump reached down, breaking party norms of not picking a favorite in a primary race, and chose to endorse DeSantis. Why? Perhaps it was DeSantis’ toddler appearing in a TV commercial building a border wall with toy blocks. Or maybe it was DeSantis’ slavish and extravagant Trumpism. Or, most likely, it was DeSantis’ charges that Putnum was insufficiently Trumpy.

Whatever it was, it worked. DeSantis went on to defeat Putnam in the primary and squeak into the governor’s seat.

Trump has intervened in other intra-party contests too: in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana—even reaching way down the chain of command to oust the Ohio Republican Party chairman for opposing him.

Trump’s candidates won. His interventions and the blind loyalty of his most faithful followers made him the complete ruler of the Party.

Republican politicians know this. They’ve seen the magic. If they’re in a primary race, Trump can call it with a tweet.

But COVID-19 has been as resistant to Trump’s magic as it has been to hydroxychloroquine.

A historic precedent

There’s an example of a natural disaster bringing down a president who had ridden out other crises.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina barreled across Florida, the Gulf and slammed into the Mississippi coast, Louisiana and—most tellingly—New Orleans.

The city was devastated. The response was chaotic, ineffective and a disaster in itself. Federal agencies, the state government and the city’s leadership failed completely. Americans saw desperate, struggling people, abandoned without food or water and a hapless administration that couldn’t help them.

They also saw a president looking down from Air Force One, seemingly oblivious and above it all, apparently uncaring and ineffective.

For President George W. Bush, despite the many efforts he really did make in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the political tide turned against him.

“In a national catastrophe, the easiest person to blame is the president,” Bush later reflected in his book, Decision Points. “Katrina presented a political opportunity that some critics exploited for years. The aftermath of Katrina—combined with the collapse of Social Security reform and the drumbeat of violence in Iraq—made the fall of 2005 a damaging period in my presidency. Just a year earlier I had won reelection with more votes than any candidate in history. By the end of 2005, my political capital was gone. With my approval ratings plummeting, many Democrats—and some Republicans—concluded they would be better off opposing me than working together.”

That is the key. Politicians have to make a calculation: Is it more personally advantageous to work with the party’s leader, or against him?

By any objective measure, Donald Trump’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic has been truly disastrous. From ignoring and dismissing it when he could have prepared for it, to minimizing it as its toll mounted, to defying science and suggesting that ingesting bleach might defeat it, his actions are on a par with the Emperor Nero, not to mention George W. Bush. And he has presided over the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression and an appalling and dizzying rise in unemployment.

Trump’s strategy for dealing with this has been to blame anyone and everyone else for the nation’s troubles: China for the virus, Democrats for the economy, governors for quarantines, Barack Obama for being alive and the media for reporting it all. The Republican Party has given up on trying to defend Trump’s actions, instead advising its candidates to blame China for everything.

It would take a powerful spell to get Americans to overlook their misery, fear and confusion and buy the Trump line. But Trump is betting that with enough money, relentless advertising and casting lots of blame it might just work and get him re-elected.

But will it continue to get his candidates elected?

Enchanted Southwest Florida

Southwest Florida’s 19th Congressional District has 10 Republican candidates jostling to be the area’s next representative in Congress (as has been well documented by The Paradise Progressive).

All are Trumpers desperately trying to show their true Trumpiness. One reason for this is that they are trying to appeal to the hard core Trumpers who will likely determine the outcome of the Republican primary on August 18.

But there is another factor: If Trump so decides, he could reach down and finish the primary race with a tweet endorsing a candidate, like he did for Ron DeSantis. That would certainly settle it for the Republican primary constituency and likely for the primary.

Right now it’s not clear that Trump has Southwest Florida on his mind or that he is inclined to intervene. He might decide to ignore all the traditional politicians and go with a dark horse—or not. He might ignore the rich amateurs and pick an unknown, leaving Casey Askar to light a cigar with his $3 million personal campaign loan or William Figlesthaler with a bunch of urinal screens and no place to put them.

If there’s any candidate who might seem likely to get a Trump endorsement it’s State Rep. Dane Eagle (R-77-Cape Coral). He was the first candidate in the race, he has a legislative record, he’s an ardent Trumper, he’s a known quantity, he’s a Republican Party “contender” and he even has a photograph with himself and Trump to prove that he’s at least met the man.

State Rep. Dane Eagle, an unidentified man and Donald Trump in an undated photo from the Dane Eagle congressional campaign.

But whether this counts for anything with Trump is unknown and at this point unknowable. Trump hasn’t endorsed him. The problem with worshiping a thin-skinned, impulsive and mercurial god is that he may strike without provocation or warning or turn his favor on a whim. Certainly with Trump past performance is absolutely no predictor of future behavior.

Still, it’s safe to say that the Trump magic will probably work if he chooses to use it in Southwest Florida—at least with Republicans.

Beyond them, though, maybe not so much.

Faltering magic and the race to watch

The fact is that the Trump magic may work in Republican primaries but once he gets into the real world, he’s not so magical.

Despite endorsing candidates in Alabama’s 2017 Senate race and Kentucky’s 2019 governor’s race, Trump’s candidates lost. Republicans lost both Virginia’s House and Senate last year. Trump lost again in Wisconsin on April 7 when a conservative judge he backed, Dan Kelly, was beaten by liberal Judge Jill Karofsky. And, of course, Trump’s biggest electoral defeat came in 2018 when he lost the House of Representatives to Democrats despite his determined efforts.

The Trump magic will be tested again tomorrow, Tuesday, May 12, when Californians in the 25th Congressional District north of Los Angeles vote in a special election.

The district went for Trump in 2016, then flipped in 2018 and is judged “even” by the Cook Political Report, the bible of congressional political junkies.

The previous representative, Democrat Katie Hill, resigned in a sex scandal. Running to replace her is Democrat Christy Smith and Republican Mike Garcia.

Trump decided to jump into this one with both feet, emphatically endorsing Garcia, and charging that the election is “rigged” because the state installed an in-person voting site when most of the voting was supposed to be by mail–which he has also denounced as “rigged.”

Of course, regardless of the outcome, Republicans and Democrats will do what they always do: the winners will generalize the victory (it shows broad trends and is a death knell for the opposition) and the losers will narrow the defeat (it was due to peculiar factors in the district and the candidate).

Still, it may be an indication whether the Trump magic still has its powers and whether a pandemic, an economic crash, a devastated labor force and sheer, demonstrated incompetence has taken the enchantment from this inept and overwhelmed sorcerer’s apprentice.

Liberty lives in light

Guns, germs and storms: The threats to the 2020 elections in Florida and beyond

Voters wait to cast ballots in the Wisconsin presidential primary on April 7.

May 4, 2020 by David Silverberg.

This year, election officials—in Southwest Florida and around the nation—will face threats and challenges unlike any that most Americans have experienced in their lifetimes.

At the same time, never has a clean, efficient and fairly conducted election been more important. The 2020 election will be one of America’s most historic, shaping the nation’s future in as fundamental a way as the very first one in 1788. Given the stakes, the results—however they turn out—must be seen and accepted by all parties as legitimate and accurate.

What is more, Americans tend to think of election cycles as a force of nature, like the orbiting of the planets and the rising of the sun, always taking place as scheduled. Before this year, the only postponed primary in American history that this author could find was the New York mayoral primary scheduled for Sept. 11, 2001. This year, 15 states postponed their presidential preference primaries due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

So it’s essential to look ahead to the challenges that election officials and voters may face and how they’ve faced them, where history provides any guide.

This is not a complete list, by any means. There have always been questions about elections and there’s much potential for mischief in the mechanics of counting and recording votes. However, this year some unique threats stand out.

First, there’s the threat that’s particular to Florida…

Storms

05-04-20 Michael_2018-10-10_1715Z_cropped — Hurricane Michael, 2018

This year Florida will be conducting a critical primary election on Aug. 18. While August is not the depth of Florida’s hurricane season—that comes in September—August, and late August especially, has always been a very active time for hurricanes.

This has been an unusually hot year already, the signs are not good and 12 long-term prognosticators are predicting a highly active hurricane season.

Hurricane Irma struck Southwest Florida in 2017 when there were no elections scheduled. But Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 storm and the strongest ever to hit Florida, hit the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 10, 2018 just before a general election scheduled for Nov. 6.

That was in the midst of the hotly contested races for Senate between Rick Scott and Bill Nelson and for governor between Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum.

With infrastructure and local polling places destroyed, Panhandle election officials extended early voting days, starting voting on Oct. 22. In badly hit Gulf and Bay counties, officials established “mega-voting sites” that were open 12 hours a day, according to Reuters. Though voters had to travel further than usual, they were still able to cast ballots.

Ordinarily, voting by mail can take the place of in-person voting but in the case of Hurricane Michael mailed ballots were likely lost and absentee voters may not have received mail-in ballots in time.

Fortunately—if that word can be used in such a disaster—Hurricane Michael struck long enough before the election to give officials time to respond and no one promoted the idea of postponing the election. It took place in affected counties at the same time as the rest of the state.

“What a hurricane does to alter the dynamics of politics and campaigning is it reinforces to people that without government, you have nothing in an emergency,” Steve Bousquet, Tallahassee bureau chief for the Tampa Bay Times, told National Public Radio at the time.

“You know, everyone’s asking, where’s FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Administration]?” he said. “Everyone’s asking, you know, where first responders are. And they’re grateful for the help they’re getting from first responders. But everywhere you look, you see the hand of government trying to give people hope.”

It’s worth noting that Hurricane Michael struck very late in the season, on Oct. 10. This year a hurricane could disrupt the primary election in August or the general election in November—and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that two separate hurricanes could strike on or near both election days.

Germs

05-04-20 Masked medical personnel — Healthcare workers in protective gear.

This year is not the first time a United States election will be occurring in the midst of a pandemic. In 1918 a congressional mid-term election took place amidst the Spanish flu pandemic. (For an excellent article on this, and the main source for the account below, see the History Channel’s “How the US Pulled Off Midterm Elections Amid the 1918 Flu Pandemic.”)

The 1918 influenza struck in a first wave in the spring, died down and then roared back ferociously in September and October, killing 195,000 Americans. By Election Day, Nov. 5, the flu was dying down in the eastern part of the country but mounting in the west. Overall turnout was reduced, at about 40 percent.

“Despite the risks involved, there appears to have been little public discussion about simply postponing the election that year,” states the article. “Jason Marisam, a law professor at Hamline University who has studied how the flu pandemic affected the 1918 midterms, argues that there might well have been talk of postponement—if the United States hadn’t been at war at the time. But with their troops fighting overseas, Americans’ spirit of civic pride was running high, and voting was seen as a necessary act of patriotism.”

More recently, Wisconsin chose to hold its primary as scheduled on April 7 of this year despite the Coronavirus pandemic and numerous efforts to postpone the election.

According to Wisconsin’s official tally, turnout for the primary was 34.3 percent, or 1,551,711 votes cast in both the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries.

The Coronavirus had a big impact on absentee or mail-in voting in the state. “…The coronavirus almost certainly contributed to the record number of people who voted absentee,” wrote Nathan Rakich in an analysis on the website FiveThirtyEight.com. “As of Monday morning [April 13], 1,098,489 absentee ballots had been returned, meaning absentees will probably account for about 80 percent of all votes in this election. That’s an unheard-of proportion in Wisconsin, where voting by mail is not very widespread. For example, only 10 percent of Wisconsinites voted absentee in the 2016 presidential primary, and only 27 percent in the 2016 general election.”

But the mail-in and absentee ballots caused controversy in a state unaccustomed to that form of voting and the results could face legal challenges.

“There have been numerous reports of voters not receiving their absentee ballots in time to cast them, and hundreds of ballots have been found never to have been delivered at all; the U.S. Postal Service is currently investigating what happened,” writes Rakich. “Not to mention, some absentee ballots that were mailed back on time may not be allowed to count. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that absentee ballots must be postmarked by April 7 in order to count, but there are already reports of several hundred ballots not postmarked, which means they might not count.”

A final official result of the Wisconsin primary is scheduled for release on May 15.

If the Coronavirus behaves the same way as the Spanish flu, there is a strong likelihood that the United States could see a second intense wave of infections in the autumn, possibly close to the voting period.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on April 28: “I’m almost certain it will come back. The virus is so transmissible and it’s globally spread. …In my mind, it’s inevitable that we will have a return of the virus or maybe it never even went away. When it does, how we handle it will determine our fate. If by that time we have put into place all of the countermeasures that we need to address this we should do reasonably well. If we don’t do that successfully, we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter.”

That means a possible return of quarantines, closures and lockdowns, possibly at an even higher rate and more restrictive than in the spring.

Given that possibility, election offices need to be prepared for massive voting by mail and that means having sufficient forms, envelopes and the means of verifying and authenticating ballots. But it also means finding the volunteers and poll workers willing to make in-person voting available as well.

At the same time, if there are new bans on assemblies, lockdowns and quarantines once general voting begins there will be all kinds of charges and suspicions about manipulation of voters one way or another.

This raises another potential hazard…

Violence

05-04-20 Michigan protesters — Armed protesters in Michigan, April 30.

On April 30, armed demonstrators protesting the Coronavirus quarantine entered the Michigan state capitol building, where lawmakers were meeting. Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has been a particular target of President Donald Trump’s ire, as expressed in his tweets and in on-camera comments.

No shots were fired in Michigan but while attracting only small numbers of participants, these armed demonstrations are occurring with increasing frequency. Many were organized by conservative groups and they were certainly encouraged by President Donald Trump’s call to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia from the strictures imposed by their Democratic governors.

This advances a trend toward armed protests that began in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 during which one person was killed by a car driven into a crowd by a right-wing extremist. On Jan. 20, 2020, large numbers of gun-rights protestors demonstrated against proposed gun restrictions in the state capital of Richmond. Just prior to the rally, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested three individuals planning to attend, for firearms violations. They called themselves “The Base,” an English translation of the Arabic, “Al Qaeda.”

To date, other than Charlottesville, none of the other armed protests have resulted in violence, loss of life or destruction. However, it is not inconceivable that in a hotly contested and emotional election, armed individuals or terrorists could attempt to intimidate voters or disrupt or interfere in the electoral process. What is more, in this case such protestors could have the encouragement from an aggrieved party, most likely the President of the United States.

This is not unprecedented in American history. In the 1850s pitched battles occurred on the streets of Baltimore, Md., on election days during the heyday of the anti-immigrant Native American Party, more commonly known now as the “Know-Nothings.”

Potential disruption is always a possibility in any election, so security needs to be robust and alert. But with the trend toward armed displays, this year’s polling places will need additional layers of protection and that protection must be strong, overwhelming and fairly applied to all sides.

The Trump factor

WARNING: The following contains worst-case scenarios that some readers may find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.

Perhaps the greatest unknown in this year’s election is the president himself. Given his past actions and character he is also the most volatile and dangerous factor in an already combustible brew.

As noted above, Donald Trump has encouraged “liberation” of states whose governors he opposes, has consistently condoned extremism and violence and openly pursues power at all costs regardless of its impact on the American people, the Constitution or the country.

Trump has always been dangerous but this year he’s also defensive and desperate. Like a cornered rat he has no course except to lash out and attack.

Having shown himself unrestrained by law, the Constitution or the norms that have allowed American politics to function without damage to the country, Donald Trump has to be judged capable of a variety of actions that could adversely impact this election—and the future of elections in general.

Cancellation

“Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow — come up with some rationale why it can’t be held.”

Those are the words of former Vice President Joe Biden during an April 23 virtual fundraiser, discussing the possibility of President Donald Trump attempting to cancel the 2020 presidential election.

Biden is hardly the first person to worry that Trump could try to cancel the election. Numerous legal and constitutional experts have concluded that he has no legal power to do so, regardless of the pandemic or states of emergency that may be declared.

What gives rise to this fear, however, is Trump’s clear ignorance of the law and the Constitution and his demonstrated contempt for legal restraints on his actions.

Cancelling elections is a classic ploy of dictators, who of course want to rule without any democratic restraints and in the past they have used national emergencies to rule by decree. The classic example of this was Adolf Hitler who used the Reichstag fire of 1933 to get passed an enabling law that allowed him to rule without any checks or restraints.

If Trump succeeded in canceling the election it would mean the end of American democracy and establishment of an undisguised dictatorship.

Postponement

More likely than outright cancellation is the possibility that Trump could try to postpone the election, probably based on the state of the Coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, postponement now has precedents in the postponed primaries of this year.

Postponement is a slippery slope; if the presidential election is postponed an immediate fight would begin over setting a new date. There’s no guarantee that another election would be held later and it has the potential to effectively become a cancellation. It would also disrupt all the down-ballot elections critical to running the country under its current Constitution: federal senatorial and representative elections; state, local and municipal elections; and a wide array of policy questions and referenda.

An attempted postponement would be challenged in the courts and there would be an immense outcry. However, Trump has never shied away from court challenges and he has ignored past outcries.

Delegitimization

When he was facing an electoral loss in 2016 Trump denounced the electoral system as “rigged” against him. He has begun doing the same again this year, tweeting on May 1: “Don’t allow RIGGED ELECTIONS!”

While this might be a sentiment all Americans would rightly share, coming from Donald Trump it could also be seen as a threat against an election outcome that he might try to delegitimize with charges of fraud or rigging.

Trump has always attempted to delegitimize anything he doesn’t like: the news media, governors, Democrats, other nations. When he was in private life this was just disparagement. On the campaign trail, it was just denigration. But as president, it is a strategy of stripping credibility from national institutions and constitutional checks and balances that stand in his way.

Of course, if he wins through the Electoral College or Russian interference, his victory will ipso-facto become legitimate in his own eyes.

However, there is a strong possibility that Trump will try to delegitimize the entire election if the outcome is not to his liking.

Invalidation

Should he lose the election, Trump may try to legally invalidate the outcome, challenging it in court, alleging fraud and refusing to abide by its results.

In the past Trump has alleged that he lost the New Hampshire primary due to massive voter fraud and that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 popular vote victory was similarly due to voter fraud.

“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he tweeted on Nov. 27, 2016, repeating the allegation in a January meeting with members of Congress.

There has never been any credible evidence of these allegations and in fact a commission Trump established to investigate them ultimately disbanded without validating any charges.

Trump’s fantasies of massive voter fraud cost taxpayer money to investigate but this year he might use them to try to try to invalidate the results of an election. This is not the same as delegitimization; it is an attempt to declare the results legally invalid and of no force.

Should he lose, Trump might also refuse to concede or relinquish power in January 2021. Although the United States has never had a fight over electoral legitimacy, other countries have in the past and a prolonged struggle risks civil disorder or even domestic war.

Suppression

Voter suppression has long been a problem in US elections but given the patchwork of election jurisdictions and the decentralized nature of the US electoral system, it has been done at the state and local level.

However, with mail-in voting on a massive scale likely this year due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Trump has verbally attacked the US Postal Service (USPS), tried to starve it of funds and denounced voting-by-mail as potentially fraudulent.

“Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans,” Trump tweeted on April 8 at 7:20 am. By 6:34 pm that day he felt he had to tweet a clarification: “Absentee Ballots are a great way to vote for the many senior citizens, military, and others who can’t get to the polls on Election Day. These ballots are very different from 100% Mail-In Voting, which is “RIPE for FRAUD,” and shouldn’t be allowed!”

It seems doubtful that Trump could stop all voting by mail or otherwise suppress sufficient votes by command. However, his rhetoric and his encouragement of vote suppression from the bully pulpit of the White House could encourage state and local officials to conduct suppressive activities in order to skew the election in his favor.

* * *

These are just some of the scenarios threatening this year’s elections.

However, in addition to all these scenarios there is another one and it is this: The election takes place as scheduled. The weather cooperates. Voting is orderly. People can vote in whatever form they choose. All who wish to vote do so. The count is honest and accurate. The results are accepted by all parties and the public. Power is conferred peacefully, legitimately and legally. The country heals.

What are the chances?

Liberty lives in light

SWFL State of Play Today: Sorting through the herd

04-28-20 sheep stampede

April 28, 2020 by David Silverberg.

Southwest Florida is not usually known for stampedes—of any kind. But right now a herd of political candidates is charging through the landscape from Cape Coral to Marco Island and all are hoping to emerge as the region’s representative in Congress.

Thirteen candidates have now qualified to be on their parties’ August 18 primary ballots, according to the Florida Division of Elections; two Democrats, 10 Republicans and one Independent.

Who exactly is running right now? And just as important, why has there been such a Republican stampede in a place like Southwest Florida, a place that’s usually so politically quiet and somnolent?

This article will attempt to sort the herd.

The Democratic contest

01-15-20 Holden and Banyai — David Holden and Cindy Banyai

On the Democratic Party side, both Cindy Banyai and David Holden will be on the primary election ballot on August 18. At a Jan. 15 meeting of the Collier County Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus, both pledged to support whoever emerged as the Party’s nominee.

The Paradise Progressive has been holding online debates between Banyai and Holden on Coronavirus and the economy and will continue to ask pertinent questions. Both are intelligent, articulate candidates committed to social justice and democracy. Banyai did internships on Capitol Hill and taught abroad in Asia. David Holden, who holds a Harvard University degree, served in Democratic Party positions in White Plains, NY and ran for Congress in 2018 against Rooney.

But while the Democratic primary contest has seen a civilized discussion of the issues, the Republican primary battle, in keeping with the tone set by President Donald Trump, has been wilder and less enlightening.

The Republican stampede

The 10 Republican candidates can be divided into three groups.

The rich amateurs

Businessman Casey Askar and urologist Dr. William Figlesthaler are the richest candidates, with cash on hand of $3,482,873 and $1,011,164 respectively, fueled by personal loans to their campaigns. Based on their Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, Askar has loaned his campaign $3 million and Figlesthaler $1,470,000 ($1,060,000 in the first quarter of 2020 and $410,000 in the fourth quarter of 2019).

Neither has any prior electoral experience, neither has ever held a government position (unless you count Askar’s stint in the US Marines) and neither has ever served in a legislative body. Both are running on the strength of their belief in Donald Trump and their respective business successes—fueled by lots of personal cash.

(Neither responded to questions from The Paradise Progressive asking them to name specific measures they would take in Congress to support and sustain the SWFL economy.)

The Old Pros

State Reps. Byron Donalds (R-80-Immokalee), Dane Eagle (R-77-Cape Coral), Heather Fitzenhagen (R-78-Fort Myers) and Fort Myers Mayor Randy Henderson (who on April 8 submitted his resignation effective Nov. 30 from the mayoralty, as required by law so that he can run for Congress) are all local elected officials with legislative or executive experience and existing bases of support.

Dan Severson served in the Minnesota state house from 2002 to 2011, giving him legislative experience, although not in Florida.

The poor newcomers

Darren Aquino, a New York actor before moving to Naples, and Christy McLaughlin, a recent graduate of Ave Maria Law School, who will turn 25 this summer to become eligible for office, did not report receiving any campaign donations in the first quarter of 2020, according to the FEC. Dan Kowal, a Collier County sheriff’s deputy who previously served as a US Capitol policeman, only entered the race on April 21.

In a class by himself is Independent Antonio Dumornay, a former Republican who switched to Independent.

The issues

On the Republican side of the ledger, there is virtually no distinction between any of the candidates when it comes to addressing the issues or taking policy positions.

The chief qualification they all cite is total loyalty to Donald Trump and his program—whatever that is at the moment. All are Trump defenders, so their only distinction is the fierceness of their fealty.

Christy McLaughlin stood out this this past weekend by holding an online rally calling for Florida to end any Coronavirus restrictions. She is the only candidate among the Republicans calling to end all forms of quarantine and join Trump’s “liberation” movement.

It is interesting that Dan Kowal, the newest newcomer, doesn’t mention Donald Trump anywhere on his website’s home page. While he’s another angry Republican— “It’s time to stop being ruled by the loud minority: the career politicians, special interest groups, and big business” —it’s not until well into his website, under “key issues” that he declares, “I Stand With President Trump. I’m a patriot. I’ll work to bring justice to those who conspired against the President and against this Great Nation.”

Why the stampede?

So what’s going on here? Why so large a herd of undistinguished and indistinguishable Republican candidates?

The answer is that the 19th Congressional District appears to be a plum ripe for plucking by any candidate, no matter how marginal.

The usual calculation is that in Southwest Florida only the Republican primary counts and winning that primary is tantamount to winning the general election. And the Republican primary is determined by a tiny minority of Republican activists who this year consist of fanatical Trumpers. If a candidate can win even a small following among the people who are certain to go to the primary polls, he or she can take the election.

What is more, the rich amateurs are calculating that enough money and enough advertising can easily sway these primary voters and the usual qualifications like roots in the community, name recognition, knowledge of the region, attention to local issues—in fact, attention to any real issues at all—is irrelevant.

The old pros have a more traditional approach, clearly believing that their past electoral successes, existing following and service record will stand them in good stead. In this, Dane Eagle stands out both for his political experience in the state legislature and his geographic base in Cape Coral, the highest populated city in the District, where he has an existing infrastructure on the ground.

But this year it would be a mistake to count out the Democrats. Even in conservative Southwest Florida unhappiness with the president’s Coronavirus response, his clear ineptitude in dealing with the crisis and what appears to be derangement in his statements and public appearances, may be wearing on more traditional Southwest Florida Republicans.

What is more, the March 17 revolution in the City of Naples, where voters threw out the mayor and entire city council, may just be a harbinger of a widespread discontent and readiness for overall change.

In the meantime, the stampede for Francis Rooney’s seat provides an interesting spectacle, better entertainment than TV and something to behold in wonder while quarantined at home.