All of Southwest Florida’s congressional representatives voted to keep House Speaker Rep. Michael Johnson (R-4-La.) in his position, rebuffing an attempt by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-14-Ga.) to oust him.
The vote taken this evening at 5:43 pm was to table Greene’s “motion to vacate,” House Resolution 1209, which would have declared the Speaker’s position vacant and set in motion an effort to elect a new Speaker. By tabling the motion, the House set it aside, taking no further action and effectively killing it.
The House voted overwhelmingly, 359 to 43 to table the motion. Some 196 Republicans and 163 Democrats voted for tabling. Only 11 Republicans and 32 Democrats voted against it. Seven Democrats voted “present,” 10 Republicans and 11 Democrats did not vote at all.
Rep. Diaz-Balart (R-26-Fla.) was very clear about his reasons for the vote.
“This Motion to Vacate vote is nothing more than a patently obvious attempt to seek attention, it will not help achieve any tangible results except media interviews for the proponents,” he stated on X. “Since @SpeakerJohnson was elected, he has proven remarkably adept at achieving conservative policy wins with the smallest majority in modern times. Time and time again he has earned my respect and deserves the support of every House Republican.”
As of this writing, Reps. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.) and Greg Steube (R-17-Fla.) had not posted statements about their votes on any platform.
Tuesday, March 19, Republican voters will have the final opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice in Florida’s Presidential Preference Primary.
There’s hardly any point in doing so, though. The Republican nominee is known. All his competitors have dropped out and the Florida Republican Party has already endorsed him. There is no suspense here.
Early voting results in Lee and Collier counties are reflecting the inevitability of the outcome and the lack of enthusiasm. As of Sunday, March 17, in Lee County only about 20.25 percent of voters had participated by mail and in-person voting. In Collier County that was only 17.91 percent and in Charlotte County it was 17.17 percent.
The participation rates may go up when the final in-person voting occurs on Tuesday.
But not only is there little mystery about the primary outcome, there’s also little mystery about what a Trump presidency will mean should he accede to the presidency by electoral or other means. If there’s any doubt, people need look no further than the Republican National Committee (RNC) in Washington, DC.
On March 8, Ronna McDaniel (née Romney) stepped down as chair of the RNC. Despite being described as “unfailingly loyal to Trump” by The New York Times, all her past fundraising, hard work and promotion of Trump wasn’t enough. Among her many sins was her insistence on holding debates open to all the Republican candidates, none of which Trump attended.
“It is a little bit bittersweet to be with all of you here today as I step down as chair after seven years of working with you all,” she said in her parting remarks.
Taking her place was Michael Whatley, chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, and Lara Trump, wife of Trump’s son Eric, as co-chairs. Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump campaign advisor, was named the RNC’s chief operating officer. It put the RNC entirely in Trump’s hands.
Observers should regard the takeover of the RNC as a dress rehearsal for a Trump presidency. The way that Trump is treating the organization is the way he will treat the United States—and non-Trump Republicans, or as he calls them, Republicans In Name Only (RINOs)—if elected.
So what are the takeaways from the RNC takeover?
The purge
The first thing that Lara, Whatley and LaCivita did was fire 60 members of the RNC staff and cancel numerous existing contracts. Those who wished to reapply for their jobs could do so and be vetted on the basis of their loyalty to Trump rather than the Party.
The political professionals working at the RNC are hardly radicals, Marxists or Democrats; these are dedicated lifelong Republicans committed to the Party and its goals. The most senior of them had already weathered the Trump presidency, the Big Lie, the insurrection and the midterm elections.
But it wasn’t enough. As Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA, the Trumpist youth organization, stated in a post on X on March 11, “Bloodbath at the RNC is underway. 60+ firings just today. This is excellent. The anti-Trump sleeper cells all have to go. The RNC is getting ready to win.”
Rick Wilson, a Florida-based veteran political operative, co-founder of the Lincoln Project and author of the book, Everything Trump Touches Dies had a very different take on the RNC purge. In a March 11 Substack post titled “The MAGA Mafia’s RNC Bust-Out,” Wilson wrote:
“The presumption that in 2024, nine years into Trump’s reign as the GOP’s dominant force, the RNC is stacked to the gills with secret RINO Fifth Column types is beyond ludicrous. Everyone in that building has survived the last few years by being as much of a Trump loyalist as can be imagined, but it does point to the Paranoid Style of MAGA politics. The Purity Posse is riding to the RNC, boys! Mount up!”
The war on competence
It is more than likely that the RNC staffers with institutional knowledge and professional competence will be replaced with people whose only qualification will be the depth of their fanaticism.
The same is likely to apply if Donald Trump attains the presidency. All of the proven knowledge, competence and capability of existing civil servants, diplomats and even—perhaps especially—law enforcement will be erased in favor of pure fanaticism in the service of Donald Trump. Unlike the clear qualifications that now govern government service, hiring will be done on the vague and subjective basis of personal loyalty and ideological purity. Even the military won’t be spared. The country and all Americans will suffer from the extreme loss of competence in running the nation’s affairs. The potential for corruption is immense and almost inevitable as has been proven repeatedly in Third World dictatorships.
This kind of behavior will leach down to the grassroots and it can already be seen in Southwest Florida with election challenges by ideologically driven, unqualified MAGA candidates to proven, veteran candidates for school boards, county commissions and election supervisors. The results have already resulted in School Board paralysis and in Collier County an extreme, MAGA-dominated Board of Commissioners that has passed anti-federal and anti-public health ordinances.
Nepotism and corruption
Like so many autocrats before him, Trump so needs personal loyalty from those around him that the only people he really trusts are family with blood or marriage ties. This was in evidence in his presidency when he entrusted a variety of sensitive tasks to his otherwise inexperienced and unqualified son-in-law Jared Kushner and elevated his daughter Ivanka to senior advisor.
Now with Lara as RNC co-chair, he can be secure in the knowledge that she will impose his will on the Republican Party.
As Wilson put it: “Lara Trump is there as the eyes and ears of the Family. Chris LaCivita is there to bleed every last drop of revenue and resources to a) the Trump effort and b) his friends and allies. Everyone who gets the jobs and contracts canceled en masse this week will be a LaCivita ally or crony. Lara isn’t sophisticated enough to understand what happens when all this rolls forward, but it won’t matter much.”
The same will apply if he becomes president. Donald Trump can be expected to draw on a variety of family members to do his bidding at the highest levels of the American government. This will run counter to American law and practice of prohibiting this kind of incestuous inside dealing, which violates American principles of merit, competence and honesty in government, replacing it with cronyism, corruption and outright theft.
If president again Trump will undoubtedly treat the United States Treasury as his personal piggy bank and all the previous Republican pieties about stewardship of taxpayer dollars and constraining government spending will be rendered null and void.
From a Party standpoint the change means starving the entire down-ballot ecosystem of the funds it needs to run candidates and campaigns at the state and grassroots levels.
As Wilson put it: the new RNC leadership “will bleed the RNC to a desiccated husk. They will break it, kill off any institutional knowledge or expertise in their desire to root out what human-flounder hybrid Charlie Kirk called ‘RINO sleeper cells.’ They will merge the operations into Trumpworld, and everything in Trump World exists to serve only Trump.”
Grassroots mayhem
More than anything else, what this dress rehearsal means for grassroots-level, conservative Republicans—like the Midwestern Republicans who reside in Southwest Florida—is that a lifetime of party loyalty and adherence to principle is now a hindrance.
A Republican—in Southwest Florida or anywhere—now has to be a total Trumper to comfortably remain in the Party. As an example of the consequences of apostasy, last year state House Rep. Spencer Roach (R-76-DeSoto, Charlotte and north Lee counties) had a bullet fired into his home when he dared to challenge the MAGA takeover of the Lee County Republican Party. In a January 2022 op-ed in the newssite Florida Politics titled “No Coronation for Donald Trump in ’24,” he dared to say that while he wasn’t a never-Trumper he also wasn’t an only-Trumper.
There will now be no non-Trumper Republicans of any kind in Trump’s party. There is no diversity or free thought there. Party members must totally endorse any Trump pronouncement, delusion or crime that he commits. The choice is between being a total-Trumper or RINO.
If there was any question of this before, Trump’s actions at the RNC make it official.
Again, Wilson puts it best: “This wholesale slaughter in the RNC is one more sign that the MAGA GOP isn’t simply post-partisan; it’s post-organizational, post-rational, and just another opportunity to monetize Trumpism.”
He continues: “This case of institutional [everything Trump touches dies] means the end of the line for the old GOP. The state committeemen and committeewomen, the state organizations themselves, the major donors, the people who work their way up to get convention seats and tickets are all in for a crashing disappointment. The RNC’s work in voter registration, research, digital, communications, and turnout will wither and die before summer. All that will remain is the RNC’s ability to sluice money (minus a little handling fee and the vig) into Trump’s gaping maw.”
If Trump accedes to the presidency either by election or other means these practices and proclivities will go nationwide.
At the organizational level, Trump will undoubtedly carry out a similar purge of what he and former advisor Steve Bannon have called the “deep state;” i.e., all the experienced, professional civil servants who make the government run to serve the American people. Because their loyalty is to the nation and the Constitution and not to Trump personally, they will be purged, en masse and immediately. The functioning of the country will come to a halt.
Taking their place will be pure Trump loyalists, people who will carry out Trump’s orders no matter how illegal, unconstitutional or even insane.
The country’s needs and priorities will be ignored; the only needs and priorities that will count will be those of Donald Trump himself.
In a way, Trump’s takeover of the RNC is a good thing: it provides such a clear preview of what a Trump presidency will mean.
And that also gives loyal patriots of all party affiliations the time and incentive to organize, mobilize and defend America from what is obviously a clear and present danger from within.
Then-candidate Donald Trump (center) takes the stage in what was then Germain Arena in Fort Myers, Fla., on Sept. 19, 2016. (Photo: Author)
Nov. 22, 2023 by David Silverberg
“How did we get here? Ten years ago Collier County wasn’t like this.”
That was one of the questions posed to Rev. Paul Raushenbush and a panel of community leaders on Nov. 9 at an event titled “Christian Nationalism 101: What is it? And Why Does it Matter?”
In a testament to the degree of alarm over current trends, a crowd of over 275 people packed the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Naples to hear Raushenbush and other speakers try to address those questions.
Though one of just three questions asked by the audience, the question of how Collier County arrived at its current situation was the most pertinent and perceptive of the evening.
It was especially poignant given that 2023 marks Collier County’s centennial year.
How, in ten years, did Collier County, Florida, go from an open, welcoming, relaxed place chiefly known for beautiful beaches, warm winters and a charming downtown, to a Petri dish of political and cultural extremism and intolerance?
Rev. Paul Raushenbush speaking at the Naples Unitarian Congregation (Image: Interfaith Alliance)
Raushenbush is an ordained Baptist minister and president and chief executive of the Interfaith Alliance, a national non-profit advocacy group committed to American religious freedom. While he was concerned with the rise of the political ideology of Christian nationalism nationally, a panel of local community leaders testified to their own local experiences of intolerance before the packed audience.
Rabbi Adam Miller of Temple Shalom in Naples recounted being berated for his views and Jewishness following a Collier County School Board meeting and expressed alarm at the rise of local anti-Semitism.
Rev. Barrion Staples, pastor of Service And Love Together Ministries in neighboring Lee County, saw a return to a time when history was twisted to serve Christian nationalist ends. He recounted past racial discrimination and compared current attempts to rewrite history to the “Slave Bible” of the pre-Civil War era, which excised all references to freedom or exodus from slavery.
Cori Craciun, executive director of Naples Pride, described how the town’s annual Pride festival was initially welcomed in Naples’ public spaces but after the COVID pandemic was increasingly restricted by local officials.
Kathy Curatolo, a former member of the Collier County Public Schools Board of Education, recounted that, “What has emerged to the dismay of many is the emergence of a one-sided ideology that is being infused into public education,” in Collier County.
Given all this and the question asked at the gathering, the time has come to take a look back at the causes for Collier County’s radical turn, answer the question of how this came about and to discern the direction ahead.
Looking over the past 10 years, six factors stand out as leading causes for Collier County’s extreme devolution.
1. The Trump factor
Any history of Collier County’s radical rightward movement has to begin with Donald Trump. His influence has been intense and pervasive and felt down to the very grassroots of this community.
Before Trump’s 2016 candidacy, life in Southwest Florida was relatively “normal.” Politics, was a peripheral and distant concern for most people. But this single individual unleashed a wave of what he himself once characterized as “hatred, prejudice and rage.”
As a candidate in 2016, as president and after his presidency, Trump made overt expressions of hatred, prejudice and rage acceptable in public discourse. He encouraged those sentiments in his followers. His personal example of rule-breaking, disdain, insults and violent rhetoric infected the crowds that heard him. His division of the world into absolutely loyal, unthinking cultists and “radical” opponents destroyed any middle ground for civil discourse or compromise between differing parties. Though a physical coward himself, he encouraged violence in his followers.
That this impacted Southwest Florida was very clear from the time of his candidacy.
Trump made two visits to Southwest Florida during his 2016 campaign. The region had been largely overlooked during previous presidential campaigns given its low population and its established Republican majorities. In a break with past practice for presidential candidates, Trump held two rallies in the area, one on Sept. 19, 2016 in what was then Germain Arena and then on Oct. 23 at the Collier County Fairgrounds.
The Southwest Floridians who stood four hours in the heat and threatening weather to get into Germain Arena that September were everyday friends and neighbors, some already Trump believers, some curious, some offended by Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” remark. As they stood in line they were largely quiet, patient, peaceful, and very respectful of the sheriff’s deputies and security officers. A single black man in the crowd was amicably welcomed. A lone protester was left alone and largely ignored. It was a crowd of the kind of people who would come to a neighbor’s aid, who volunteered for food drives and did good works for their churches and communities.
Southwest Floridians wait on line to enter Germain Arena to hear Donald Trump on Sept. 19, 2016. (Photo: Author)
That day Trump brought a message that was by then familiar to national audiences: distrust of immigrants, whom he compared to snakes; attacks on his opponent, Hillary Clinton; resentment toward perceived liberal elites and hatred of the federal government. He was rapturously received by his audience.
When the crowd left after a roughly hour-long harangue, his attitude, behavior and approach had inflamed his listeners. He had given them permission to express hatred, prejudice and rage toward “others,” and stoked feelings of anger, resentment and grievance against the world, with an implication that violence in expressing those feelings was acceptable.
Those feelings and attitudes intensified over the four years of the Trump presidency and culminated in the violent insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.
These kinds of attitudes and behaviors continue to this day and found particularly fertile soil in Collier County.
2. The federal factor
Southwest Florida and Collier County are about as far south from the seat of federal government as it is possible to get on the American mainland.
The federal government has very little presence in Southwest Florida. There are some national parks and preserves in the region, there’s the US Coast Guard protecting boaters but otherwise, there’s very little consciousness of the federal government’s existence. Social Security is a federal program that tens of thousands of Southwest Floridians rely upon but they seem to have little awareness of it as a federal presence.
This distance makes the federal government seem like a remote and alien presence. There is a strong belief among a minority of Collier Countians that the federal government is intrusive, tyrannical and invalid, an oppressive “commanding hand” as an ordinance put it, encroaching on citizen rights and privileges. They would like to get federal benefits (Social Security), aid (disaster assistance) and protection (law enforcement, Coast Guard) but without strings, obligations or responsibilities.
There was also fury among local Make America Great Again (MAGA) followers that Trump lost the 2020 federal election. Like him, they clung to his lie that the election had somehow been rigged or stolen and they regarded—and still regard—the presidency of Joe Biden as head of the national, federal government as illegitimate.
This sense of alienation and estrangement increased because of the third factor that led Collier County to its current situation.
3. The pandemic factor
From 2020 to 2022 the federal presence in Collier County suddenly became immediate and pressing as the United States—along with the rest of the world—attempted to cope with the outbreak of COVID-19. The extreme right minority of Southwest Floridians and in particular Collier Countians took umbrage at federal efforts to protect American citizens from a global scourge.
In this they were following the example of Donald Trump. When COVID struck, Trump did not react well. Initially, he dismissed it, said it would “disappear,” called it a “hoax” and minimized its dangers. When it couldn’t be wished away he advocated bogus treatments like hydroxychloroquine and injecting bleach. He discouraged mask-wearing and the recommended precautions from public health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci.
While a minority of Southwest Floridians aped Trump’s responses, they made up in noise what they lacked in numbers. There was ferocious opposition to mask-wearing and to vaccinations when vaccines became available. The kind of rule-breaking and defiance that Trump encouraged also encouraged resistance to public health measures.
Local politicians jumped on this bandwagon, encouraging further rejection of public health protections and defiance of local and federal law.
These factors ingrained a strain of alienation and disaffection in this population and led to a persistent perception that COVID was a sinister, globalist hoax.
Once the pandemic was largely over, their resentment took the form of trying to pass an ordinance that would prohibit future public health mandates of any kind, whether public or private.
A draft resolution for the county laid out the accusations: “federal and state health agencies have demonstrated a clear inability to be truthful, transparent and consistent in protecting the citizens of Collier County,” they “violated” county citizens’ rights “through discrimination based on vaccine status” and subjected county citizens “to death and injury with little recourse” and stopped doctors from speaking freely or treating patients as preferred (i.e., with hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or other unproven and discredited remedies).
The experience of the COVID pandemic in Collier County further incentivized MAGA radicals to continue and accelerate their campaign against the federal government, against constitutional law and embrace the extreme fringes of political logic and practice.
4. MAGA mania
For the past 10 years—and long before that—Collier County’s population was predominantly Republican. Party registrations remained largely stable at 65 percent Republican and 35 percent Democratic.
The Republican coalition consisted primarily of residents whose roots went back to the beginning of settlement of the county around 1920 and relative newcomers, mostly from upper Midwestern states where Interstate Highway 75 originated at the Canadian border. Naples is the southernmost town before the highway turns east to Miami. It’s easy to drive down from Chicago or Detroit and just stop. While easterners settled Florida’s east coast, Midwesterners, many retirees, settled its west coast.
For the most part these people were mainstream Republicans from states like Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. They believed in limited government, restrained spending and a strong national defense. However, they never challenged or attacked the Constitution or the rule of law.
That changed with the onset of Trump in 2016 and his total domination of the Republican Party in the years that followed. In Collier County, as in the rest of the country, non-Trumpers were denigrated as Republicans In Name Only (RINOs) and kicked to the margins. Trumpers took over the county Party apparatus, pushing out or defeating longstanding Republican activists. The entire Party radicalized.
There was some resistance—sometimes lapsing into screaming matches and personal attacks during Party conclaves—but while non-Trumpers complained, they never organized or fought back as effectively as Trumpers. Ultimately, the county Republican Party really became the Trump Party. Personal loyalty to Trump became the yardstick of Republicanism rather than conservative ideas or positions.
This Trumpism has led the Party to keep pursuing extremes in its pronouncements and activities. Infused with Trump’s “hatred, prejudice and rage,” its most fanatical members have descended into anti-Semitism and promoted intolerance in all forms.
Before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, much of the MAGA energy was directed against abortion. After the Dobbs decision last year, that energy turned into a Christian nationalist religious crusade, with county MAGA officials on the Board of Commissioners and the School Board trying to impose religious dogma and stating overtly that there is no separation between church and state.
This kind of Christian nationalism leads to only one destination: the imposition of a state religion, which the Constitution’s founders explicitly sought to avoid. It will also lead to doctrinal conflict as different faiths try to impose their dogmas on public schools and the whole population. This is what happened for 200 years in Europe before the Enlightenment. In the New World, the American experiment began trying to leave that bloody legacy behind.
However, Collier County’s MAGAs appear determined to head down this Christian nationalist path, one that has the potential to pit Catholics against Protestants and different Protestant sects against each other. It has already manifested itself in the seemingly endless and inordinately time-consuming debate over whether to hold a religious invocation prior to the start of county School Board meetings.
At least the only thing being wasted in that controversy is time. History has shown that books and bodies come next.
5. The media factor
Collier County has an extremely weak media establishment when it comes to covering serious issues of governance, representation and elections and provides little to no counterweight to anti-democratic extremism.
The role of the press in a democracy is to provide a check on officialdom, examine official actions, point out wrongdoing or imbalances and provide the public with the information it needs to make rational, enlightened decisions. This was recognized by the Founders at the very beginning of American government. As the Virginia Declaration of Rights put it:“…the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.” A free press was enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
In Collier County there is little to no fulfilment of that role by existing media outlets. Only one television station, NBC2, has a dedicated political reporter with that title. In fact, local news directors seem to go out of their way to avoid reporting on anything even remotely political. Otherwise, television coverage focuses on car collisions, canal crashes and potholes, mostly in neighboring Lee County where the stations are based.
But the media fails most spectacularly in Collier County’s own Naples Daily News (or the Naples Delayed News or the Typo Times, as this author prefers to characterize it).
The Naples Daily News is suffering from the same malaise infecting local newspapers across the country. Its revenue base is down as advertisers seek new and more effective media outlets. It has been sold several times and every sale diminished its capabilities and coverage. Its staff has repeatedly been reduced, its deadlines shortened and functions like graphic design and printing assigned to remote locations.
In the past, like most local newspapers, the Naples Daily News published original editorials every day, hosted op-eds from outside authors and featured letters to the editor. It pursued a scrupulously fair and non-partisan editorial policy. However, on June 1, 2022 the newspaper’s management announced that it was dropping the daily editorials, op-eds and letters in the print edition. Instead, it created a tombstone letters page buried in the back of the book that appeared on weekends and then, begrudgingly, on Wednesdays. Cancelation of daily editorials and letters deprived the community of a common forum outside of stovepiped social media platforms.
As a result of this and the general failure of the regional media, important political developments, especially at the margins, go uncovered, allowing extremists to operate in darkness. Also, voters remain uninformed about the actions of the officials governing them and those representing them to higher bodies like the state legislature and the US Congress.
An important source of information for voters is missing in Collier County. The county’s lurch toward unchallenged extremism is the result.
6. The activist factor
A history and analysis of Collier County’s political trends can’t overlook the role of key individuals in shaping its development.
Alfie Oakes at Patriot Fest, March 19, 2022 (Photo: Author)
Oakes is Collier County’s very own Trump, whom he strikingly resembles in a number of ways and whom he adores.
“I love our president and his family with every bit of my being! I love all that he has given for our country and all that he stands for!” Oakes posted on Facebook on Dec. 22, 2020 after speaking on the phone with Trump, who was fighting the results of the election. “May God bless our great President Donald Trump, his family, his team and all of the 75 million patriots that support him!”
Like Trump, Oakes is a businessman accustomed to risk-taking—and arguably more successful in his own realm than Trump. Also like Trump, he is known for his blunt outspokenness and broad-brush denigration of critics and opponents. He shares Trump’s affinity for extreme politics, insults and absolutism.
In the same way that Trump initially dismissed COVID as a hoax, so did Oakes who vehemently fought all forms of COVID precautions in his store, Seed to Table, and battled county officials who tried to protect public health through masking and distancing.
In an infamous June 2020 posting on Facebook, Oakes denounced the murdered George Floyd as a “disgraceful career criminal, thief, drug addict, drug dealer and ex-con who served 5 yrs in prison for armed robbery on a pregnant woman, and spent his last days passing around fake 20’s to store owners in Minnesota.” The post sparked outrage and protests throughout Southwest Florida.
During the run up to the Jan. 6 insurrection, Oakes sponsored two busloads of Trumpers to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally on the National Mall and flew up himself the day of the protest. Despite a video purporting to show him inciting rioters to attack the Capitol, Oakes vehemently denies that it was him and says he peacefully protested elsewhere. He blamed the riot on “the obvious six or eight paid actors (used in other events such as [Black Lives Matter] riots, hard to believe they would be that blatant and sloppy) … followed by a small group of aggressive Trump supporters caught up in the moment, these paid actors lead the charge.”
Just as Trump dominates the national Republican Party, so Oakes dominates the Collier County Republican Party where he was elected a state committeeman in 2020. Through his Citizens Awake Now Political Action Committee (CANPAC), he funded local MAGA candidates for county Board of Commissioners and the school board. They won and are now driving the county’s rightward direction. Although he has tempered his public pronouncements recently he still influences enough of a MAGA audience to determine the outcome of party primary elections, which are usually the deciding ones.
But also, like Trump, Oakes can be mercurial, inconstant, bullying and sometimes illogical. In September 2021 he was demanding a hand recount of the 2020 election in Florida, an election that all parties agreed Republicans had won. The effort got nowhere. He can also turn on former allies: when Kelly Lichter, chair of the Collier County School Board, whom Oakes had backed, had the temerity to vote for a school superintendent Oakes opposed, he called her a “traitor” and sued the school board.
In another similarity to Trump, Oakes has also endorsed clearly unqualified candidates for public office based just on their ideological purity and personal loyalty. “I don’t want to hear about what IQ someone has or what level of education someone has,” he said at PatriotFest, a gathering and rally that he sponsored in Naples on March 19, 2022. “I graduated from North Fort Myers High School—a bunch of rednecks. Common sense and some back is all we need right now.”
Given Oakes’ urging and the backing of CANPAC, these candidates won races for county Commission and School Board.
Oakes has been a significant figure driving Collier County in its current direction.
Keith Flaugh speaking before the Collier County Board of Commissioners in 2021. (Image: CCBC)
Another MAGA activist is Keith Flaugh, head of the Florida Citizens Alliance, a non-profit conservative organization founded in 2008 primarily to influence education. The organization argued that the liberal political trend of young voters was the result of indoctrination in their schools (which presumed that young voters couldn’t draw their own conclusions but had to have been somehow brainwashed).
Flaugh, 77, is originally from Montana where he received his Master of Business Administration degree from the state university, according to his LinkedIn page. After service in the US Army and a career in finance at IBM Corp., he retired to Marco Island.
According to his Facebook profile, (as posted) Flaugh “considers himself US Constitutionalist and is fed up with how our political system has been hijacked by both monopoly parties and the ubiquitous Federal Government. They have bankrupt us morally and financially to the brink of collapse. He is an organizer for Southwest Florida Citizens Alliance and the Florida Citizens Alliance, an Oath Keeper and an active supporter of SWFL 912, the Naples Tea Party, Save America Foundation, Fair Tax, Foundation for Economic Education, KrisAnne Hall’s Constitutional Ministry and Sheriff Mack’s County Sheriff Project.”
Flaugh is an active lobbyist for the causes he supports, frequently speaking at county Commission and School Board meetings. During the 2021 debate over Collier County’s anti-federal ordinance he demanded that commissioners pass the ordinance or resign. Flaugh and the Florida Citizens Alliance have also been active in opposing COVID vaccinations and in denying climate change, opposing measures to manage or prepare for its effects.
Oakes and Flaugh could not have shifted the county in the direction it has gone without the aid of numerous active supporters and followers.
However, their example illustrates the power of individuals and solo efforts in moving a community.
And that’s power that works both ways.
Commentary: Collier County, America and the next hundred years
No political turmoil or conflict is obvious to the visitors who come to Collier County and Naples during the winter season. The shopping malls light their Christmas trees and the season’s celebrations have begun. The stores are open, the beaches are warm and life is to be enjoyed.
However, for those who have chosen to live permanently in Collier County, who think about local affairs and especially for families with children in public school, the stakes are high.
Will Collier County’s next one hundred years be ones of hatred, prejudice and rage? Or will the next century be one of progress, promise and possibilities?
Collier County is not immune from the currents and storms afflicting the country as a whole. In large part these questions will be determined by the 2024 election.
The next year will without a doubt be one of the most significant in American history. The real, true bedrock issue that will be settled if the election comes off as planned is whether the United States will remain a democracy or become a dictatorship under Donald Trump.
There is no subterfuge about this. Trump’s plans are out in the open. If elected, he has stated that his regime will be one of revenge and retribution. He and his co-conspirators intend to destroy all checks and balances and impose an unlimited, unrestricted tyranny on the American people. All the abuses of one-man rule that the nation’s founders resisted and tried to prevent will come cascading forth.
If there’s a Trump tyranny in Washington there will be a similar tyranny in Collier County. Its enablers are already waiting in the wings.
What they don’t seem to realize is just what a dictatorship will mean; they show no appreciation or understanding of history’s lessons. A dictatorship imposes tyranny on everyone.
Last year American women learned what it means to lose a right when the Supreme Court took away their right to choose.
Under the dictatorship being contemplated by Trump, all Americans will lose all the rights they cherish: freedom of speech, thought, worship, assembly, petition, press, property—everything embodied in the Bill of Rights.
For example, under a dictatorship, if Donald Trump decided he wanted to seize and gift Seed to Table to Ivanka or Jared or Barron he’d simply be able to do it and no protest, process or court proceeding could stop him. In a dictatorship there’s no appeal, no reprieve, no redress. That’s what Russia’s oligarchs discovered when Russian President Vladimir Putin gave them similar ultimatums and then demanded half their wealth.
In a dictatorship, especially one based on a personality as sick and twisted as Trump’s, past loyalty is no guarantee of future favor. No matter how strenuous, how complete and how total a person’s subservience to the leader was in the past, any perceived slight or current whim of the dictator can mean punishment in the future.
A microcosmic example of the fragility of past loyalty came in Collier County this year when Oakes turned on Lichter for defying him on the appointment of Leslie Ricciardelli as school superintendent. Oakes had supported Lichter for election to the school board. But when she showed the slightest independence in basing her vote on what she regarded as the most qualified candidate rather than the one he demanded, he branded her a “traitor.” A traitor to what? What did she betray? Certainly not the students, teachers and parents of Collier County to whom she owed her real loyalty.
In a dictatorship any show of independent thought or commitment to a good greater than the dictator is cause for punishment.
That’s the way Trump governed as president—and it will be orders of magnitude worse if he’s re-elected.
Ironically, it’s the example of local MAGA activists that should inspire defenders of democracy to greater action.
Collier County’s MAGAs have shown that individual actions matter; that no act is too small or insignificant to make a difference. For those on the side of democracy, every envelope, or phone call made, or donation can help defend democracy in Collier County and the nation. Activism is the answer and that activism is needed like never before. The most impactful acts of all, of course, are voting, helping others to vote as well and protecting free, fair and accurately counted elections.
Like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings causing a hurricane, every action by every friend of freedom can generate a blue wave that can grow into a tsunami.
Right now Christian nationalism, MAGAism, Trumpism, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia and a host of other biases and bigotries and the willingness to act on them, potentially violently, are inspiring the kind of fear and concern expressed at the Interfaith Alliance gathering.
But while hatred, prejudice and rage can’t be banished, they can be contained and ultimately defeated. It takes everyone’s courage, commitment and consistency to do it but it’s worth the effort—in Collier County, in America and in the world.
And the willingness of people to take action is a reason to truly be thankful, in this season—and always.
“Freedom from want.” (Painting: Norman Rockwell, 1943)
Gov. Ron DeSantis, President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump. (Illustration: Neil Freese, UC Berkeley)
Sept. 9, 2023 by David Silverberg
Natural disasters create political winners and losers.
As a general rule, disasters favor incumbents—but only if they perform well.
Florida has just been through Hurricane Idalia. So how well did the three of America’s top politicians (two in Florida) perform in response? And what are the likely political consequences of their actions?
Joe on the spot
President Joe Biden, with a map of Florida, coordinates the federal response to Hurricane Idalia. (Photo: White House)
For a sitting president, disasters are dicey propositions. A responsible president wants to be alert and aware of all developments and take whatever actions are necessary to aid and support the victims and the response. He wants to do all this without seeming to exploit the situation for political or partisan benefit.
A good example of this occurred in 1969 when President Richard Nixon stayed in touch with affected governors in the run-up to Hurricane Camille. As the storm approached the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama Gulf coasts, Nixon appointed Vice President Spiro Agnew to personally handle states’ needs. Mississippi Gov. John Bell Williams received a phone call from Agnew. “…The Vice President of the United States wanted us to know in advance that they stood ready and anxious to assist us in any way that they could,” Bell said afterwards.
Today the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) handles all the preparing, prepositioning, mobilizing and coordinating when a storm is about to strike. (Of course, sudden, unexpected disasters like the Maui wildfires pose different challenges.) There are well-established protocols before, during and after the event.
Once the disaster has occurred all officials face new choices. High-profile executives like presidents, governors and mayors want to get a sense of the scope of the disaster with a personal visit and provide comfort and show concern for the victims. Against this is the concern that a visit will interfere with operations and rescues. Moreover, failing to visit in person or waiting too long can seem to signal indifference or neglect.
Biden has seen many disasters and responses during his time as a US Senator, Vice President and President, so Hurricane Idalia was nothing new. Just ten days before Hurricane Idalia hit, he visited wildfire-stricken Maui.
Before the storm, Biden was in contact with all the governors of the likely affected states. After speaking to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) he prepared an emergency declaration so Floridians would get the federal support they needed once the hurricane struck.
With Biden’s approval, FEMA surged emergency personnel into the affected area and got endangered residents out.
“As a matter of fact, I have asked that [FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell] get on a plane and leave for Florida this afternoon,” he announced on Aug. 31. “She will meet with Governor DeSantis tomorrow and begin helping, conducting the federal assessment at my direction.”
He also told the press corps: “I let each governor I spoke with know that if there’s anything — anything the states need right now, I am ready to mobilize that support of what they need.”
He also convened a Cabinet meeting to make sure that all federal departments and agencies contributed to a “whole-of-government” response.
That may seem like an obvious action to take but that hasn’t always been the presidential response in past disasters.
Particularly dicey was Biden’s relationship with DeSantis, who as a Republican presidential candidate had been relentlessly criticizing and attacking him. However, the two had experience working together on other disaster responses: the Surfside building collapse in 2021 and Hurricane Ian in 2022.
Biden was asked directly about this by a reporter: “Mr. President, Governor DeSantis is also running for president. You are running for reelection. Do you sense any politics in your conversations with him about this issue?”
Biden answered: “No, believe it or not. I know that sounds strange, especially how — looking at the nature of politics today.
“But, you know, I was down there when…the last major storm. I spent a lot of time with him, walking from village to — from community to community, making sure he had what he needed to get it done. I think he trusts my judgment and my desire to help. And I trust him to be able to suggest that he’s… .This is not about politics. This is about taking care of the people of his state.”
Biden came to Live Oak, Fla., on Saturday, Sept. 2 to see Idalia’s damage for himself.
“I’m here today to deliver a clear message to the people of Florida and throughout the Southeast,” he said, standing in front of a home with a massive, downed tree in the background. “As I told your governor: If there is anything your state needs, I’m ready to mobilize that support — anything they need related to these storms. Your nation has your back, and we’ll be with you until the job is done.”
Of course, DeSantis wasn’t present to hear those words.
Ron returns
Gov. Ron DeSantis gives one of his press conferences regarding Hurricane Idalia. (Photo: NBC)
On Saturday, Aug. 26, while still campaigning in South Carolina, DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 33 Florida counties. This allowed the Florida National Guard to mobilize 1,100 troops and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to assign officers and mobile command units to hurricane response. Throughout the state, government agencies prepared for the impact, including the Florida Highway Patrol and the departments of Commerce and Transportation.
On Sunday, Aug. 27, DeSantis suspended campaigning and returned to Florida to oversee the Idalia response.
“We’re locked down on this. We’re gonna get the job done. This is important, so people can rest assured,” DeSantis told reporters during a briefing at the state Emergency Management Center. Asked where he’d be for the next week, he replied: “I am here. I am here.”
DeSantis wasn’t just returning to a hurricane; on Aug. 26 a racist gunman in Jacksonville randomly killed three black shoppers at a Dollar General store before committing suicide. On Sunday DeSantis was booed when he attended a vigil honoring the dead.
But the hurricane was an ongoing and impending threat that demanded attention. In the days that followed, as Idalia strengthened, traveled up the coast and made landfall in the Big Bend region, DeSantis focused on his gubernatorial duties, regularly briefed the media, and warned Floridians of potential dangers and urged precautions. He seemed in command, both of the forces on the ground and of the facts.
DeSantis didn’t just suspend his in-person campaigning, he also suspended his hostility to Biden.
“When you have situations like this, you’ve got to put the interests of the people first,” DeSantis told reporters in Tallahassee the next day. “There’s time and a place to have [a] political season, but then there’s a time and a place to say that this is something that’s life-threatening. This is something that could potentially cost somebody their life, that could cost them their livelihood. And we have a responsibility as Americans to come together and do what we can to mitigate any damage and to protect people.”
He appeared authoritative and knowledgeable and when Idalia made landfall and moved on, the DeSantis campaign was ready to make the most of it.
Andrew Romeo, DeSantis campaign communications director, issued a campaign memo praising DeSantis in for “Strong Leadership” and a “Swift Response.”
In the memo, obtained by Florida Politics reporter Jacob Ogles, which provided talking points for DeSantis supporters, Romeo stated: “The DeSantis Administration helped guide the state through another historic storm.” He noted that, “As part of that effort, Ron DeSantis appropriately left the presidential campaign trail to focus on the needs of Floridians.”
Democrats were unimpressed. “It’s the bare minimum,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-42-Orlando). “In the context of responding to a hurricane, of course you’re supposed to be here and to help communicate what first responders are doing. In the context of innocent people being murdered for the color of their skin by a racist gunman, the bare minimum is to express condolences with loved ones.”
After Idalia passed, DeSantis faced a new choice: how to react to Biden’s visit? Now that the immediate emergency was over, it was time for politics.
On the one hand, DeSantis and Biden had seemed to reach a truce in order to serve Floridians.
Much depended on where and when the President would visit.
According to FEMA Administrator Criswell, the White House took operational issues into consideration when choosing the place and time and informed DeSantis in advance.
“When the president contacted the governor to let him know he was going to be visiting … the governor’s team and my team mutually agreed on a place that would have minimal impact into operations,” Criswell said on the program CNN This Morning. “Live Oak, you know, the power is being restored. The roads aren’t blocked, but there’s families that are hurting there.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed Criswell’s account, saying: “The president spoke with the governor. It was an understanding. The president said to him he was coming to Florida. We never heard any disagreement with it.”
Biden said he expected to meet DeSantis when he arrived.
But the day before, DeSantis announced that he wouldn’t be present.
“We don’t have any plans for the Governor to meet with the President tomorrow,” Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’ press secretary, announced in a press statement. “In these rural communities, and so soon after impact, the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts.”
Once he was in Live Oak, Biden was asked if he was disappointed that DeSantis was absent.
“No, I’m not disappointed,” Biden responded. “He may have had other reasons because…but he did help us plan this. He sat with FEMA and decided where we should go, where it’d be the least disruption.”
In pointed contrast, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a bitter rival of DeSantis, was present and had fulsome praise for Biden.
“First off, the President did a great job with the early declaration before the storm hit the coast. That was a big deal. It helped all these first responders,” said Scott, who as governor had weathered Hurricane Irma. “And then with how fast you approved through FEMA the individual assistance, the public assistance and debris pickup is a big deal to everyone in these communities.”
Biden, for his part, said he was “very pleased” that Scott was present even though politically they do not agree on “very much at all.” That was especially gracious given that last year after Hurricane Ian and just before his visit to Southwest Florida, Scott called Biden “a raving lunatic.”
Another of DeSantis’ political rivals had sharp words for his absence from the president’s visit—and he spoke from hard experience.
Then-Gov. Chris Christie greets President Barack Obama in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy struck New Jersey. (Photo: NJ Governor’s Office)
On Oct. 29, 2012, amidst a presidential campaign, Hurricane Sandy came ashore in Brigantine, NJ as a Category 3 storm and did tremendous damage to the Garden State and neighboring New York City. Republican Chris Christie was then the governor and was considered a leading vice presidential candidate for nominee Mitt Romney and a potential contender in 2016.
When Democratic President Barack Obama, running for re-election, offered help to the stricken state, Christie eagerly accepted it and praised the president, whose assistance he called “outstanding.”
“I want to thank the president personally for his personal attention to this,” said Christie at the time, adding later that Obama kept all his promises. When Obama arrived on the last day of October to see the damage for himself, Christie hugged him and faced scorn and vituperation from fellow Republicans ever afterwards.
So Christie, a presidential candidate this year, knew whereof he spoke when it came to disasters and presidential visits.
“Your job as Governor is to be the tour guide for the President. It’s to make sure the President sees your people, sees the damage, sees the suffering, what’s going on, and what’s going to need to be done to rebuild it. You’re doing your job. And unfortunately, he put politics ahead of his job. That was his choice,” Christie said of DeSantis in a television interview.
He continued: “I’m not the least bit surprised that that’s what he chose to do. You’re the governor of the state. The President of the United States comes and you’re asking the President of the United States or the Congress for significant aid, which Ron DeSantis is doing, and especially if you voted against it ten years ago for Sandy aid, you should have been there with the President to welcome it.” That last reference was a bit of payback for DeSantis’ vote when he was a congressman to deny an appropriations bill that helped New Jersey.
DeSantis maintained he spent the day touring other places. “I was in the communities that were the hardest hit by the storm. And Joe Biden didn’t go to those areas, I think correctly, because the whole security apparatus would have shut down the recovery. So I was exactly where I needed to be,” DeSantis said in a television interview at the end of the day.
Missing man
Former President Donald Trump.
Former President Donald Trump did not have any executive authority or operational responsibilities during Hurricane Idalia. However, he was a Florida resident and a presidential candidate, so his actions and pronouncements were in the public domain.
Like both Biden and DeSantis he had experience with disasters. On Sept. 14, 2017 he visited Fort Myers and Naples after Hurricane Irma, accompanied by his wife Melania and Vice President Mike Pence. He offered words of thanks and encouragement to first responders and in East Naples handed out sandwiches. This followed a visit to Texas and Louisiana to see the effects of Hurricane Harvey, which had struck 16 days earlier. Then, on Oct. 4, he visited Puerto Rico, which had been struck by Hurricane Maria. It was on that occasion that he infamously tossed paper towels to a church full of hurricane victims.
This year, Trump did not take any actions or make any statements related to the hurricane, which bypassed his Palm Beach home, Mar-a-Lago.
He did, however, maintain a drumbeat of criticism of DeSantis on his Truth Social media platform, ranging from floating a false statement that DeSantis had dropped out of the race to attacking him for Florida’s high insurance rates.
“Trump ignored the storm for days, instead posting a litany of insults aimed at his political adversaries while highlighting positive poll numbers for his campaign,” reported Max Greenwood in the Tampa Bay Times on Aug. 31.
“By the time Trump mentioned Hurricane Idalia in a Wednesday afternoon post, he had already posted more than 140 times on Truth Social since Monday on a multitude of subjects, even dredging up an old letter the late actor Kirk Douglas sent him in 1998. (The count of Trump’s posts includes times in which he reposted messages from other accounts.)
“Kirk was a real Movie ‘Star,’” Trump wrote Wednesday, before mentioning the hurricane. “Not many left today. They are mostly woke and weak!”
When asked about Trump’s hurricane-related silence at one of his press conferences, DeSantis shrugged it off. “Not my concern. My concern is protecting the people of Florida, being ready to go,” he said.
Analysis: Winners and losers
Of the three politicians, DeSantis faced the most difficult choices: one was to decide whether to suspend his campaign and return to Florida and the other was whether to meet Biden when he visited.
The decision to return to Florida was relatively easy: First, he belonged in Florida at that moment. Secondly, if he had not returned, he would have faced blistering criticism from all quarters and been hammered for not being presidential. It would have also damaged the state and its people. While the lieutenant governor could have handled the crisis, an absent governor would have seemed cowardly and hurt the response. His already declining poll numbers would have plummeted. It might have meant the end of his candidacy. Returning was the obvious and proper thing to do.
The Biden visit presented a very different challenge. With the storm passed, political considerations were paramount. DeSantis and his people had to worry that perhaps the governor’s relationship with the President had become too close and might alienate Republican primary voters. After all, they had the example of Christie’s 2012 embrace of Obama as an example of extreme Republican voter retaliation for a momentary human act of bipartisan cooperation (as well as Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s 2014 Obama embrace).
Also, greeting the president might have made the defiant, anti-Biden DeSantis seem too subservient to a president he had repeatedly insulted and denigrated and might be running against. And Biden would have completely eclipsed the governor, who would have had to respectfully and silently stand behind him as he spoke.
So the choice was: greet the president for the sake of Florida and face Republican primary voter retaliation, or avoid the president and face media and opposition criticism.
Whatever the exact calculation, DeSantis chose to snub Biden—and snub it was, the DeSantis camp’s lame excuses notwithstanding. It made DeSantis seem petty, overly political and irresponsible, as Christie pointed out. It added to his image of meanness and arrogance.
The snub has already overshadowed an otherwise capable performance as governor in a crisis. People expect calm, command, and competence from their leaders during events like hurricanes and in this DeSantis delivered. His job was to make the emergency declarations, authorize the proper state agencies to take action and facilitate the response. From all evidence, he did this.
The question for DeSantis is not whether this will find favor with Floridians since they’ve already voted and he won’t be running again for governor. The real question is whether an effective performance as governor in Florida will have any resonance at all with Republican primary voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. South Carolinians know from hurricanes; Iowans and New Hampshirites, not so much. They’re more likely to remember a presidential hug than a hurricane response, so snubbing Biden came at less cost to DeSantis than the value of a meeting for the state of Florida.
Whether Idalia made DeSantis a winner or loser will be told in polls in the days to come and especially in the primaries and caucuses next year, which will determine his presidential fate.
For Biden, Idalia completely confirmed the truth that disasters, if competently handled, favor incumbents
From the outset, Idalia posed no political threat to Biden unless he utterly flubbed the response—which he certainly did not.
In natural disasters, presidents are expected to offer and authorize support for affected areas, coordinate among states and governors, ensure as smooth a federal response as possible and provide comfort and encouragement to victims. Biden did all these things.
While Biden is being criticized for his age, his long governmental experience, political savvy and past disaster management showed in his competence and responsiveness to the Idalia challenge. He knew to stay out of the way of the operators in FEMA and on the ground. He offered a non-partisan hand of cooperation to DeSantis despite the latter’s previous attacks on him. He was high-minded and gracious in the face of an obvious, though petty, snub. He showed care and concern for everyday Floridians hurt by the storm.
It’s not as though he couldn’t get his partisan digs in but they were subtle and dignified yet telling. For example, by making perfectly clear that his visit had been coordinated with DeSantis beforehand he reinforced the perception of DeSantis as petty and politically-obsessed. But Biden did it without anger or rancor.
Clearly, Biden emerged from the storm a winner.
As noted before, Donald Trump had no operational responsibilities or command authorities during the storm. Nonetheless, he is a presidential candidate, a public figure and a Floridian. Despite this, his response, as is so characteristic of him, was deranged, narcissistic and divorced from the reality of a crisis afflicting what is now his home state. Unless the storm had damaged Mar-a-Lago, it’s doubtful he would have noticed it at all.
What is more, at a time when all the other Republican candidates suspended their attacks on DeSantis while he faced the crisis, Trump barely skipped a beat. His attacks “underscore the degree to which Trump, in ways that often escape notice anymore, forgoes the traditional, sober-minded approach of nearly every other Republican and Democratic politician in times of crisis in favor of a style that keeps the focus on himself rather than imperiled communities,” Greenwood observed in the Tampa Bay Times.
“The former president overcame that unorthodox approach to win a presidential race in 2016. But it does still carry some political risk for the candidate, including from some conservatives who bristle at his decision to stay on the attack against DeSantis even amid Florida’s recovery efforts,” he wrote.
As though the indictments, impeachments, past incompetence and insults did not already make clear that Trump is unfit for any office, his response to Idalia should remove any doubts—if doubts anyone can still have.
This particularly applies to Floridians who should remember it when it comes to the presidential primary next March or if, as seems likely, Trump is the Republican nominee in the general election in November. Trump currently leads DeSantis in presidential polling in Florida. But when Florida specifically was threatened, Trump just did not care even though he lives on the same peninsula and shares its fate.
If Joe Biden had Floridians’ backs, Donald Trump turned his back on Floridians.
By any objective measure, Trump should be classified an Idalia loser—but there’s no telling if it will play out that way when the votes are counted in the early primary states and Florida.
Hurricane season is not over. Climate change is producing wild and unpredictable weather. There will be other storms, there will be wildfires, there will be roasting heat, there will be plagues.
Elected leaders will have to cope with all these challenges. A good leader in a crisis saves lives, manages well and provides comfort. The electorate should know what to look for in those who seek to lead them— and make their selections accordingly.
Hurricane Idalia as it approached Florida. (Photo: NOAA)
A doctor and nurse attend to a COVID patient during the height of the pandemic. (Photo: US Navy)
April 3, 2023
During the worst moments of the COVID-19 pandemic, Collier County’s healthcare heroes, its doctors, nurses, medical professionals, first responders and support staff, labored heroically to serve, save and treat those who suffered from the disease.
They worked under very difficult circumstances and at great risk to their own health and wellbeing.
Now that the worst of the crisis has receded and the pandemic seems to be over, Collier County, Florida should honor these heroes in a tangible way, with a monument that pays tribute to their efforts and remembers those who passed through no fault of their own.
It would be very fitting in a community with as robust and capable a medical and healthcare establishment as Collier County.
How many people died from COVID? Estimates of COVID deaths in Collier County during the course of the pandemic range from 551 to 1,175 people.
These lost lives should not be forgotten or reduced to mere statistics. They were friends, neighbors, parents and children, brothers and sisters. A single death from COVID was one too many.
The temptation to move on and forget this painful episode in American history is very strong. But it should not be buried. A local memorial would inspire future efforts toward disease prevention, research, treatment and public health protection, both in Collier County and worldwide as well as provide comfort and closure to those who experienced loss.
Similar memorials have already gone up or are being planned.
The Collier County memorial should be placed on county land, in a prominent and accessible spot. An open competition could be held to determine its design, size, shape and inscription.
The Heroes of Healthcare memorial in Collier County could be supported by a partnership of the county and private donors. It takes time to pull something like this together. There’s much to organize and many choices to be made. However, if there’s a will and determination to do it, approval of the concept and determination of the location and design could be completed by the end of the year.
A planned memorial to COVID victims in Long Beach, Calif. (Art: City of Long Beach)Artist’s conception of a memorial to COVID victims in Baltimore, Md. (Art: Lake Roland Nature Council)The planned memorial to COVID victims in Frederick County, Md. (Art: County)The memorial to the victims of COVID in Olimpia, Brazil. (Photo: City of Olimpia)
Memorial to the victims of COVID in Union City, NJ. (Photo: Union City Police Dept.)
A draft resolution for such a memorial has been submitted to the Collier County Board of Commissioners. (The full text is below.) If you would like to urge the Board to consider it at its next meeting on April 11, the commissioners can be contacted at their email addresses or by phone, with individual, personalized messages.
Draft resolution honoring Heroes of Healthcare and Remembering Victims of COVID-19
WHEREAS, the pandemic phase of COVID-19 is now widely regarded as being over, and
WHEREAS, over 86,000 Floridians and over 500 residents of Collier County died as a result of the disease, and
WHEREAS, Collier County’s doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals, first responders and support staff labored heroically under very difficult circumstances and at great risk to their own health and wellbeing to serve, protect and treat those who suffered from the disease, and
WHEREAS, their extraordinary efforts deserve praise, recognition and honor, and
WHEREAS, the victims of this disease should be respected and never forgotten, and
WHEREAS, recognition of these heroes of health and the toll of COVID-19 will inspire future efforts toward disease prevention, research, treatment and public health protection, both in Collier County and worldwide,
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that Collier County, Florida, should establish on county property, in a prominent and accessible location to be determined, a fitting memorial honoring the Heroes of Health and remembering the victims of the COVID pandemic, of a design, size, type and material to be determined by open competition, with county support and private donations, the approval and determinations of said memorial, location and design to be completed no later than Dec. 31, 2023.
Rep. Byron Donalds, former President Donald Trump, Melania Trump and Erika Donalds at a Naples fundraiser, Dec. 3, 2021. (Photo: Donalds Office)
Nov. 20, 2022 by David Silverberg
Former President Donald Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump are scheduled to come to Naples, Fla., on Dec. 4 for a fundraising event, titled “A Trump Classical Christmas.”
The event will take place at 7 pm at an undisclosed location that is “30 minutes from Southwest Florida International Airport – Fort Myers (RSW); approximately 15 minutes from the Naples Botanical Garden; approximately 15 minutes from downtown Naples,” according to the organizers. Details will only be released to ticket purchasers.
Family tickets are $30,000, which allows a family of four access to the party and a single picture with the Trumps. Couples get a single picture with the Trumps for $20,000 and individual tickets with a single picture cost $10,000.
The event is being mounted by the Classical Education Network, a private and charter school scholarship program. It is partnering with the Optima Foundation, an organization headed by Erika Donalds, wife of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.) that helps set up and run private and charter schools.
According to the event’s website, “Proceeds will fund new school choice options and provide additional support to our incredible educators who are shaping the minds and hearts of future American leaders, primarily in the Fort Myers area ravaged by Hurricane Ian. A portion will also be allocated to assisting hurricane victims across the SWFL community.”
The event is closed to the public and media. Secret Service background checks will be conducted on all guests, who must also surrender their mobile phones at the door. The Trumps will also not be signing any autographs. “Please leave all items at home – nothing will be allowed past security at the venue,” the announcement warns.
The event was announced by Donalds in a tweet today, Nov. 20: “Without education, there is no freedom,” he wrote. “Meet the Trumps for a holiday celebration in Naples on Dec. 4th to advance the freedom of school choice.”
Trump last came to Naples for a fundraising event on Dec. 3, 2021, which was held at the Naples Airport and at a home in Port Royal. Ticket prices for that event were the same as this one.
Collier County residents hold a candlelight vigil at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation to protest hate and bigotry in the wake of violence in Charlottesville , Va., on Aug. 14, 2017. (Image: Author)
Sept. 21, 2022 by David Silverberg
Full disclosure: The author is the drafter of the resolution described below.
The Collier County, Florida, Board of Commissioners will be taking up a resolution condemning bigotry, hate crimes and anti-Semitism at its next general meeting next Tuesday, Sept. 27.
The resolution is officially on the meeting’s agenda as item 10A, although that could be changed if deemed necessary by the county manager. The general business portion of the meeting begins at 10:00 am.
In its operative paragraph the resolution condemns anti-Semitism, discrimination, prejudice and hate. It states that the county resolves to pursue and prosecute hate crimes against people, property and institutions and, to paraphrase President George Washington, “will provide to bigotry no sanction and to persecution no assistance.”
(The full text is below.)
Commissioner Bill McDaniel (R-District 5) and chair of the Board, is expected to introduce the resolution.
Although the resolution is an expression of opinion rather than an ordinance imposing penalties, it nonetheless puts the county on the record opposing all forms of hatred, bigotry and discrimination.
In its entirety the resolution states:
WHEREAS, Collier County, Florida is an open and welcoming place to residents, guests and visitors from all over the world; and
WHEREAS, Collier County, Florida adheres to the laws and regulations and upholds the Constitution and Amendments of the United States of America; and
WHEREAS, Collier County, Florida provides equal justice under law and protection to all law-abiding residents and visitors; and
WHEREAS, Collier County, Florida supports democracy and democratic forms of government; and
WHEREAS, Collier County, Florida abhors bigotry, discrimination, prejudice and all forms of hate against all people regardless of faith, race, gender, creed, sexual orientation or national origin.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA: condemns anti-Semitism in all forms and expressions; condemns all forms of discrimination, prejudice and hate against any person or group of people regardless of faith, race, gender, creed, sexual orientation or national origin; condemns any call to violence or use of violence for any purpose at any time; and resolves to actively and vigorously oppose, investigate and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law any advocacy of violence, acts of violence or crimes manifesting hatred against any person, property or institution based on faith, race, gender, creed, sexual orientation or national origin, and will provide to bigotry no sanction and to persecution no assistance.
The Board of Commissioners will be meeting at 9:00 am on the third floor of the Collier County Government Center, 3299 Tamiami Trail East in Naples. Public petition speakers are limited to ten minutes and general address speakers to 3 minutes.
Rep. Byron Donalds at CPAC on Feb. 25 of this year in Orlando. (Image: YouTube)
Sept. 13, 2022 by David Silverberg
“Folks, I like money,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.) told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) convention in Orlando on Feb. 25 of this year. “Can we be honest about this? I like money!”
Indeed, he does. And Donalds is very good at raising it. This year he entered his general election campaign with $4.8 million (or exactly $4,805,548.69) in receipts, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Donalds’ public fundraising appeals are insistent and incessant, stoking and exploiting fear and anxiety of Democrats, socialism, Dr. Anthony Fauci and all the ghosts, goblins and specters that keep extreme MAGA maniacs awake at night.
There’s no denying it—it works.
As of Aug. 8, $4 million ($4,036,842.37 to be exact) of Donalds’ contributions came from individuals and the efforts of Winred, a professional, conservative fundraising service.
But $325,302.41 came from a variety of political action committees (PACs) that are not so easily swayed by emotional appeals. These PACs represent a wide variety of industries, associations, corporations and fellow politicians. The biggest sectors contributing to Donalds’ primary and general election campaign are insurance, finance, banking and energy.
They are the organizations and businesses to which Donalds is beholden. Voters should be aware of the sources of this cash and its influence on his decisionmaking on Nov. 8 when they vote for him—or Democrat Cindy Banyai.
In 2021, after Donalds denied that he was influenced by his donors, The Paradise Progressive did a two-part analysis of his ideological and industry backers.
As the 2022 general election campaign season kicks into high gear, it’s time to take another look at Donalds’ corporate backers. These are the companies and industries whom he will be serving if returned to Congress in November.
Donalds sits on House committees and subcommittees that have a direct impact on these industries.
These subcommittee assignments give him influence that attracts corporate contributions.
(Of note: none of the facts reported below allege illegality or criminality. They are activities reported to the FEC as required by campaign finance laws and regulations. All numbers are year-to-date figures as of Aug. 8.)
Big Insurance
The insurance industry is heavily regulated and generally unpopular in the public imagination (think of all those personal injury attorneys inveighing against greedy insurance companies in local television commercials).
Whether they agree with individual lawmakers’ policy positions or not, at the very least, it’s worth it to the insurance industry to invest in political campaigns to keep potential investigations and new regulations at bay.
Insurance-related PACs have been very good to Donalds, both trade associations and individual companies.
Over the past year, Donalds’ most generous contributor was the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies PAC, which contributed $22,000 to his general election campaign.
That was followed by the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors PAC, which contributed $10,000 to his primary election campaign.
The Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America, Inc., PAC kicked in $8,500 to his general election campaign, while the American Council of Life Insurers PAC gave $2,500 to his primary campaign.
The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. Federal PAC contributed $4,500 to his primary campaign.
Cigna Corp. PAC, which supported Donalds’ 2020 campaign, contributed $3,500 to his primary campaign this year.
New York Life Insurance Company PAC contributed $2,500 to his primary campaign.
Big finance
The financial industry is heavily affected by congressional actions, so Donalds received contributions from a variety of finance-related companies and trade associations:
Regions Financial Corporation PAC contributed $5,000 to Donalds’ primary campaign and $22,000 to his general election campaign.
ACPAC ACA International PAC (The Association of Credit and Collection Professionals) represents credit reporting and collection agencies. It contributed $5,000 to Donalds’ primary campaign and $10,000 to his general election campaign.
The Credit Union Legislative Action Council PAC of the Credit Union National Association gave $5,000 to Donalds’ primary campaign and $7,500 to his general election campaign.
Navient Corp., provides education loan management and business processing solutions. Its PAC contributed $5,000 to Donalds’ primary campaign. Perhaps not accidentally, Donalds was a ferocious critic of President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. A large part of Navient’s business is managing and collecting existing student loans.
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association PAC contributed $1,000 to Donalds’ primary campaign.
When it comes to investment-related associations and companies, Donalds has the backing of LPL Financial LLC PAC. LPL is a registered investment advisory firm that contributed $5,000 to his primary campaign and $7,500 to his general campaign.
In terms of investor-related associations, the Small Business Investor Alliance PAC contributed $4,000 to his primary campaign and the American Investment Council PAC contributed $2,500. The latter represents private equity investors who invest in companies that don’t offer shares on public stock exchanges. The move to private equity has been blamed by critics for looting otherwise healthy companies and harming workers.
Big Banking
Among banks, Community Bancshares of Mississippi Inc., PAC is the only individual bank PAC to contribute to Donalds, donating $3,000 to his primary campaign. Claiming to be one of the fastest growing banks in the southern United States, Community Bancshares, formerly Farmers and Merchants Bank, based in Brandon, Miss., claims $4.5 billion in assets, 54 offices, and over 850 personnel in four states.
While that may be the only individual contributing bank, that doesn’t mean the banking industry has overlooked Donalds.
The American Bankers Association PAC has been a particularly enthusiastic backer, kicking in $17,500 for the general election campaign.
Also contributing to the general election campaign was the Mortgage Bankers Association PAC, which contributed $10,000.
Another banking-related contributor was the Independent Community Bankers of America PAC, which contributed $3,000 to the primary campaign.
Big energy
Donalds doesn’t discriminate between money from fossil fuel and electric power companies—he takes money from both.
Marathon Petroleum Corporation Employees PAC contributed the largest allowable amount to Donalds’ general election campaign: $7,500.
Another fossil fuel and energy company, Valero Energy Corp. PAC, based in San Antonio, Texas, gave the next largest amount among the energy companies: $5,000 for Donalds’ primary campaign.
Nextera Energy Inc., claims to be the world’s largest utility company. Its PAC contributed $2,500 to Donalds’ primary campaign.
Duke Energy is an electric power and natural gas holding company headquartered in Charlotte, NC. Its PAC contributed $2,000 to Donalds’ primary campaign.
The PAC of the Tampa Electric Company (TECO) Energy Inc., Employees’ PAC, contributed $1,000 to Donalds’ primary election campaign.
All these were the PACs of individual companies. But in the energy sector, Donalds did receive a contribution from a single trade association: the Solar Energy Industries Association PAC contributed $1,000 to his primary campaign.
Big tobacco
Two major tobacco PACs contributed to Donalds’ campaigns:
The Swisher International Inc., PAC Fund is the PAC of Swisher International Inc., a tobacco company based in Jacksonville, Fla. Swisher has been in business since 1861 and according to its website, ships more than two billion cigars a year to more than 70 countries.
Altria Group, Inc. PAC is the PAC of one of the world’s largest producers and marketers of tobacco, cigarettes and related products. Altria companies include Philip Morris, US Smokeless Tobacco Co., and John Middleton, a producer of pipe and cigar tobacco.
Other PACs of note
In addition to these industries, some additional contributors stand out.
Koch Industries, Inc., PAC contributed $5,000 to the primary campaign. This is the company of the well-known and extremely conservative Koch brothers.
Florida Sugar Cane League PAC contributed $3,500 to the primary campaign. The sugar industry has been criticized for allegedly polluting Lake Okeechobee, a criticism sugar companies reject.
Publix Super Markets, Inc. Associates PAC contributed $1,000 to the primary campaign. (More about Publix’s political activities can be read here: “Publix: Where politics bring no pleasure.”)
Candidates for the Collier County School Board appearing at a forum tomorrow night, June 21.
June 20, 2022 by David Silverberg
Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 21, Collier County, Florida, will have its only formal, neutrally-moderated forum for all candidates running for three places on the Collier County School Board.
The in-person forum will be at the Naples Conference Center in the Naples Board of Realtors building, 1455 Pine Ridge Road at 5:30 pm. It will be netcast and streamed by public television station WGCU at WGCU.org and covered by both the Fort Myers News-Press and the Naples Daily News.
The forum is being sponsored by a spectrum of mainstream, good-government organizations: the League of Women Voters, the Collier Citizens Council and Greater Naples Leadership.
The primary election is scheduled for Aug. 23, with early voting beginning on Aug. 13. Candidates will win if they receive 50 percent of the vote plus one. If not, they will proceed to the general election on Nov. 8.
Given the intensity of interest and the passions that have been generated over education governance during the past two years, this forum has a significance way beyond the usual specialized and relatively obscure contest that it has been in the past.
The policies, oversight and administration of education now constitute a battlefield between competing worldviews and political agendas. In addition, although school board elections are non-partisan, the Collier County Republican Party has weighed in with endorsements, as have other groups and individuals.
It is this clash of worldviews, their implications for Collier County public education and the likely impact on students’ minds that voters should monitor and evaluate as they watch this forum.
From an analytic standpoint, this year’s slate of candidates can be divided into three categories: educators, newcomers and ideologues.
The educators
The educators are already serving the Board of Education. All are running on their records and expertise, which collectively is quite considerable. All have spent time in different educational positions, from teachers to administrators. Further, all have experience with the nuts and bolts of school system administration, from budgeting, to purchasing, to contracting, to personnel management, which is really what represents the bulk of school board duties.
But more importantly, all represent a service-oriented, secular, objective, apolitical approach to public education.
District 1: Jory Westberry
District 1 covers Lely Elementary, Lely High, Manatee Elementary, Manatee Middle, Marco Island Academy, Marco Island Charter Middle, Parkside Elementary, Shadowlawn Elementary, and Tommie Barfield Elementary.
Originally from Wyoming before moving to Naples in 1989, Westberry, vice chair of the school board, has a long history in education. In addition to undergraduate and master degrees in education she holds a doctorate in educational administration with honors from the University of Miami. She’s served as both an elementary and middle school teacher, and is a winner of the prestigious Golden Apple Teacher award. She went into administration and served as an assistant principal and principal at Tommie Barfield Elementary for 14 years. After retirement she mentored new teachers through the C-Certs Program.
Westberry was elected to the board in 2018 when she ran unopposed. But this year she’s facing two challengers.
“Over the past months there has been a vocal minority that disrupts school board meetings, not only in Collier County, but coordinated across the US, ostensibly to make changes in policies and procedures,” she states on her campaign website. “However, most of the policies and procedures they want to change are controlled by the State of Florida, the Florida Department of Education and the federal government. I will follow the laws.”
Westberry is promising continuity and says she wants to work with “a fully functional Board” and calls for flexibility, communications, trust and support for teachers to “continue to make positive progress.”
District 3: Jen Mitchell
District 3 consists of BridgePrep Academy of Collier, Calusa Park Elementary, Golden Gate Elementary, Golden Gate Middle, Golden Gate High, Golden Terrace Elementary, Gulf Coast High, Laurel Oak Elementary, Mike Davis Elementary, Oakridge Middle, and Vineyards Elementary.
Originally from Lafayette, Indiana, Mitchell, chair of the school board, has lived in Naples for the past 21 years. She has a degree in elementary education from Purdue University and taught for a year at Naples Park Elementary. She remained home as a full-time mother after having her first child but was active in a variety of educational advisory boards and committees. She returned to the workforce in 2014 as a real estate agent before running and being elected to the school board in 2018.
Mitchell is relying on her school board record in her run for re-election. Her message rests firmly on the nuts and bolts of school administration. She points to a district strategic plan that she helped draft, expanded career and technical education options for students, raising grades and testing results, sound financial management and budgeting that has passed numerous audits and increased teacher pay and raised standards.
Weathering the two previous years of pandemic was perhaps Mitchell’s greatest achievement and also point of vulnerability. The school system faced challenges that were daunting by any standard: pivoting to online learning, steering through debates over masking and mandates, and even ensuring that students were fed properly.
“While districts around the country were throwing in the towel, we were innovating to create opportunities and to ensure the best possible learning outcomes for our students, which continues today,” she writes on her campaign website.
It was precisely the battles over mask mandates that first generated the most heat at school boards in Southwest Florida and created the wave of opposition that continues today. Exactly one year ago on June 21, after an initial mandate, the board unanimously voted to make masks optional for the next school year.
Essentially, Mitchell wants to continue the work she has already done and take it up a notch. “We need a school board that will continue to set politics and personal agendas aside, collaborate, and focus on the nearly 48,000 students who are counting on us to get it right,” she states.
District 5: Roy Terry
District 5 consists of Bethune Education Center, Big Cypress Elementary, Collier Charter Academy, Corkscrew Elementary, Corkscrew Middle, Cypress Palm Middle, Eden Park Elementary, Estates Elementary, Everglades City School, Highlands Elementary, Immokalee Middle, Immokalee High, Immokalee Technical Center, Lake Trafford Elementary, Naples Classical Academy, Palmetto Elementary, Palmetto Ridge High, Pinecrest Elementary, RCMA Immokalee Community Academy, Sabal Palm Elementary, and Village Oaks Elementary.
Originally from Maryland, Terry received his master’s degree in education from Colorado State University and began working as a teacher in Baltimore, Md., before moving to Naples. For the past 35 years he’s held every position in the education system, from teacher to assistant principal to principal before joining the school board. He was extensively involved in athletics, serving as a coach and athletic director and winning numerous “coach of the year” awards in baseball and football.
Terry has extensive experience with the physical complexities of Collier County’s education system. He supervised and designed Lely High School’s athletic field renovation and helped to plan, design, and supervise construction of Palmetto Ridge High School.
In running this year, Terry is seeking his fourth term on the board. He’s seen a lot of controversy and challenges during that time and he’s looking for a constructive approach and cooperation among school board members.
One is Arthur Boyer. A native of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Boyer has lived the past 30 years in Immokalee. He has a doctorate in education from Argosy University and has been involved in educational activities in and around Immokalee for the past 18 years. During the worst of the pandemic, he organized a free virtual tutoring program for students that attracted other educators and helped students.
On his campaign website, Boyer calls for equitable education, a commitment to special education, teacher recognition and support, parental involvement and classrooms that reflect the whole community.
“Collier County Public School should consider a learner-driven education system,” he states. “CCPS Policies should reflect the vision, the challenges, the assets, and the best interests of Collier County.”
Jacqualene “Jackie” Keay is also seeking the seat in District 5.
Born in the Bahamas, Keay moved to Naples as a young child and graduated from Lely High School in 1988. She served in the US Army, living in Germany for 17 years before returning to Southwest Florida in 2015. With a master’s degree in psychology, she homeschooled her children for 10 years and taught for two years at Mason Classical Academy. She’s been deeply involved in community organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Empty Bowls and served on the board of Audubon Western Everglades.
“My aim is to motivate informed understanding by connecting the parents, educators, and elected officials,” she states on her campaign website. “Our mission will be to ensure our students have the education, skills, and tools needed to compete for and secure jobs in the global world.”
The ideologues
The other challengers for seats on the Collier County school board this year are driven by ideological passions, whether religious or political.
The challenger with the most educational experience is Kelly Lichter, who is running in District 3. She served as a high school teacher and founded Mason Classical Academy charter school and from 2014 to 2018 sat on the Collier County School Board.
At that time Lichter and fellow board member Erika Donalds aggressively pushed charter schools, which though private, were under the oversight of the board.
As reported by the Naples Daily News, during her tenure, “Lichter has frequently engaged in shouting matches during board meetings, prompting negative feedback from education advocates online, at board meetings and in the Naples Daily News opinion and Letters to the Editor sections.” The same article stated that “…Lichter received criticism for sending emails to other board members accusing them of collusion and lying.”
Lichter also had a falling out with Erika Donalds, wife of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), accusing her and others of what she said appeared to be “an unlawful and hostile takeover of Mason Classical Academy, Inc.”
Lichter’s positions on school board issues include ending the teaching of “socialist dogma” like “social justice, transgender bathrooms, global warming, climate change, Critical Race Theory.”
She’s been endorsed by the Collier County Republican Party, Patriot Parents, the Christian Conservative Coalition, Rogan O’Hadley, whose stage name is “DC Draino,” and conservative farmer and grocer Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III.
(During a speech at Patriot Fest on March 19 in Naples’ Sugden Park, Oakes gave his criteria for school board endorsements: “I don’t want to hear about what IQ someone has or what level of education someone has,” he said. “Common sense and some back is all we need right now.”)
Among the other ideologically-driven challengers Jerry Rutherford, an insurancesalesman and painter,is running in District 1. Rutherford has been attending school board meetings for 35 years. His slogan is “rectitude, reliability, resilience” and on his campaign website he states (capitalization his) that “Constitutionalism, Acknowledgement of Natural Law in the affairs of Government, and traditional American Culture need to be returned to the classrooms of Collier County, Florida,”
When he endorsed Rutherford at Patriot Fest, Oakes noted that while Rutherford might be too old to know how to use a computer, Thomas Jefferson also didn’t know how to use a computer.
Also running in District 1 is Kimberly Boobyer, a golf teacher and coach, who states on her campaign website: “I am a conservative, Christian mother who believes in civic responsibility, and taking action” and wants to restore the education system “to its former glory.”
Jana Greer is a candidate in District 3. She’s a businesswoman who states on her campaign website that “While the radical left continues to push their agenda onto our children, we need a bold conservative School Board to stand up for our values.”
In District 5 Timothy Moshier, a former trucking company executive, is running on a platform of ensuring that schools teach “what really matters.” Interestingly, while his campaign website is entirely dedicated to himself, it has nothing at all related to education, the schools or his vision, positions or solutions on school board issues. Moshier has been endorsed by the Collier County Republican Party and Alfie Oakes.
Also running in District 5 is Ana Turina, whose slogan on her campaign website is “Dedication, Passion, Rectitud” [sic, as spelled]. She states that she wants to be the protector of parental rights and keep “inappropriate materials, media and [critical race theory] out of our schools!”
Analysis: Education or indoctrination?
Traditionally, public education in the United States was more or less based on Enlightenment ideals of promoting independent critical thinking, democratic values, objectivity and respect for facts and science in a secular environment.
For a long time this approach in public education has been under attack but never more so than since the presidency of Donald Trump. The counter argument now is that such values represent “indoctrination” and need to be countered. In Florida no organization has promoted this idea more than the Florida Citizens Alliance, which argues that “Florida children are being indoctrinated in a public school system that undermines their individual rights and destroys our nation’s founding principles and family values.”
It seems as though the critics can’t believe that a young person’s own rational thought, objective observation and sense of fairness could lead to a liberal political outlook. Clearly, in their minds, that’s impossible because any sane person would naturally be politically conservative. They suspect there’s a culprit at work and that culprit is public school “indoctrination.”
In the past the arguments over education might have remained confined to educational circles but two years of pandemic and fights over mask mandates and lockdowns, a sense that ideologically-driven parents were not being heeded and the hyper-politicization of all American life has sharpened the divides over education.
But it’s also clear that in this Collier County election there is a stark difference between the incumbent educators with experience and expertise and challengers who are fueled by passion, doctrine and ideology. The latter seem more focused on restricting students’ minds than broadening them.
One has to wonder what kind of people Collier County’s public schools would produce if the ideologues have their way.
These will be the underlying—and overt—issues that can be expected to be aired at the forum tomorrow night.
Whatever else that forum may be, at the very least, it shouldn’t be boring.
May 31, 2022: The last Naples Daily News daily Opinion page? (Photo: Author)
June 2, 2022
The decision announced yesterday, June 1, by the Naples Daily News to cease running weekday opinion pages in its print edition—and, apparently, online—removes an essential public forum from the citizens of Southwest Florida. By doing this the newspaper is failing democracy, its community and most of all, its readers. It’s an action that smacks of cowardice, abandonment and flight.
As the editors explained on the front page yesterday, June 1: “Recently, our company conducted research on how residents view opinion material published by our news outlets. What we learned is that our readers don’t want us to tell them what to think. You’ve grown weary of divisive political commentary that has no bearing on local issues, and as a result, we have worked to eliminate ‘one-sided editorials’ and syndicated national columns. But there is a healthy appetite for thoughtful local commentary, as well as respectful discussion on truly local issues in the form of letters to the editor.”
Frankly, that’s garbage. Of course there are strong opinions and divisiveness on both national and local issues. But it’s precisely in the pages of local newspapers—and media outlets of all types—that these opinions need to be aired and discussed.
And opinion pieces do not tell people what to think. They provide outside perspectives of what other people think so that readers can make up their own minds. Opinion pieces seek to inform and persuade, not dictate. Anyone who feels that a printed opinion is dictating what he or she should think is probably too feebleminded to be reading a newspaper in the first place.
Such feebleminded readers may think when the opinion pages are no longer published they’re not being indoctrinated by op-ed writers. But ceasing to publish opinion also cuts off the outlet for local voices, institutions and agencies that may have urgent or compelling messages for the community—or who simply inform readers of their good works.
What really appears to be behind this is a continuing cutback in the size and cost of the newspaper. It’s what’s behind the smaller size of the newspaper itself and its thinner stock. It’s what’s behind moving the printing to Sarasota and the design out of Florida. It’s what’s behind reducing the comics to two pages from three. It’s behind ceasing to publish on holidays (and so completely missing the big local story of the death of Eko the tiger at the Naples Zoo as it happened at New Year’s.)
Now management is eliminating two pages of opinion in the weekday edition. That means not having to pay for syndicated columnists and cartoonists or having to write original editorials or editing letters to the editor, or, for that matter, having to take a stand on any issue, local or national, that might make some readers uncomfortable.
As for eliminating “one-sided editorials,” that happened some time ago when Allen Bartlett retired as editorial page editor and the newspaper stopped publishing original editorials. Instead it substituted columns and op-eds, including one time a verbatim essay from the conservative Cato Institute, presented as an original editorial.
While saving costs and skirting controversy, ending original editorials was not a cost-free proposition. The newspaper no longer functioned as an independent, informed voice on local events and issues, surrendering its role as a knowledgeable outside observer.
At one time the letters to the editor page seemed absurdly broad. Virtually every letter submitted was published and covered every imaginable subject from the ordinary to the outrageous, from people giving thanks that their cats were rescued from trees to calls to impeach the president, no matter which one was in office. They could be ridiculous; they could be monotonous—and they could also be amusing and enlightening.
But an unfettered, daily letters to the editor column also provided the community with a safety valve and a connection that made readers feel it was their newspaper.
Importantly, the letters to the editor have provided a neutral, non-partisan forum for the airing of concerns, grievances, and most of all, reader opinion. If the concerns have become more national and even global in recent years, if they seem “divisive political commentary that has no bearing on local issues,” well, that’s what’s been on the minds of readers as driven by outside events. A letter to the editor in the Naples Daily News is indeed unlikely to move a president or deter a dictator but it’s at least an expression of a reader’s thinking and together these opinions can show the pulse of the community on important public topics.
Beyond providing a neutral ground for community expression, the opinion pages served as an open forum unbound by the stovepipes of digital media. There’s a huge cascade of opinion in digital and social media, from opinion-based websites to individual comments on Facebook and Twitter but the chief value of a generalized forum like the newspaper is that readers are exposed to opinions they might not otherwise see on their narrowly selected social media feeds or cable TV channels.
The decision to end the daily opinion pages promotes ignorance, prejudice and blinkered thinking—the exact opposite of responsible media’s mission in a democracy. And while there may be letters to the editor on the weekends, the daily ebb and flow of popular thought will be cut off, to the detriment of all, including the newspaper itself.
As it is, over the years the Naples Daily News has chosen not to cover politics in any way. Its last dedicated political reporter was Alexandria Glorioso, who left in 2017 to cover healthcare for Politico in Tallahassee. She was never replaced. The newspaper has simply ignored or avoided doing any original political reporting even while critical debate raged nationally, American democracy was nearly crushed and Southwest Florida was treated to one of the biggest brawls in local politics as a dozen candidates at one point fought for its congressional seat in 2020.
But nature abhors a vacuum. If the major, established media institution in Naples failed to do its job of informing the public of vital news of governance, representation and elections, others would take up the slack.
That’s what sparked creation of The Paradise Progressive, as it says in its About page. It also engendered a conservative counterpart. These digital outlets provide news, analysis and interpretation—as well as polemics and propaganda—from their partisan perspectives but the community is healthier intellectually and politically when there’s a neutral, objective institution defining the middle. If the right and left are to be balanced, there has to be a fulcrum at the center.
So what should the Naples Daily News do?
First, rescind the decision and restore the daily Opinion pages, including an open letters to the editor policy.
Secondly, if page count is the problem then drop the Business section and make it a daily Perspective section instead, even if it’s just a four-page folio. As it is, original local business and real estate reporting usually appears in the front news section. What appears in Business these days are weak syndicated feeds that have little or no local connection—and don’t attract advertising.
Third, get some backbone and restore original locally-oriented editorials, written and/or overseen by an Editorial Page Editor rather than a committee.
Fourth, invite some of the regular letter writers to become columnists to add locally-oriented, regular op-ed columns.
There’s no doubt that the Naples Daily News is in the same economic crunch as its print counterparts across the country. Print advertising is eroding in the face of cable and digital competition and the medium is declining. The prospect is in sight when a print edition won’t be published at all and the newspaper, if it survives in any form, will go all-digital.
But even with that prospect, the answer is not to become less relevant by cutting off an important public forum and weakening Southwest Florida’s already beleaguered democracy—especially on the eve of a critical election. The answer, rather, is to become more vital and more relevant, so that if the Naples Daily News does become just a website it will be an essential one in which the community has a voice and a stake.
As the Washington Post says, “democracy dies in darkness.” And as The Paradise Progressive says…
The Paradise Progressive 