Tag: Collier County

General election endorsements for 2024: The most critical election of our lifetimes

The United States flag flying over the beach in Naples, Fla., on Aug. 18, 2017 during a vigil for Heather Heyer, a demonstrator murdered by white supremacist James Alex Fields during a peaceful protest in Charlottesville, Va., six days earlier. (Photo: Author)

Sept. 30, 2024

This is the most important ballot you will ever cast.

No matter your age, you have never before voted in an election this historic. Its outcome will establish your future and that of all your descendants.

This is a defining election. It will determine whether the United States of America remains a democracy or tumbles into dictatorship. It will determine whether Americans remain free, “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” or become slaves and servants to an autocratic, unrestrained tyrant. It will determine whether America remains a great power in the world or a shriveled vassal of other nations.

And every position on every ballot is critical. Down-ballot positions will determine who will hold power, who can get things done, who will govern—or, if democracy is abandoned, who will rule. Amendments and referenda will determine how you will be governed. Amendment 4 will determine whether women in Florida retain the right to choose their healthcare and make their own decisions or not.

Accordingly, The Paradise Progressive is making these endorsements for ballots appearing in the state of Florida and especially the Southwest region of Collier and Lee counties.

Uncontested or decided elections are not included. National and statewide elections, including for judges and constitutional amendments, come first. County offices for Collier and Lee counties follow.

The Paradise Progressive has always maintained that endorsing candidates is the duty of any publication or media outlet that regularly and responsibly covers elections, governance and representation. It is in this spirit these endorsements are being made.

As with all endorsements, these are only recommendations. They were entirely determined by The Paradise Progressive without consultation or input from any political party or organization. They favor candidates who support democracy regardless of formal party affiliation.

This post appears in two sections: the endorsements presented as a list followed by their explanations below. Voters should remember that they can consult this list on their mobile electronic devices at any time, even while voting.

The List

President

Kamala Harris-Tim Walz – DEM

United States Senator

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell – DEM

Representative for Congress, District 17

Manny Lopez – DEM

Representative for Congress, District 19

Kari Lerner – DEM

Representative for Congress, District 26

Joey Atkins – DEM

Justice of the Supreme Court

Renatha Francis – No

Meredith Sasso – No

Sixth District Court of Appeal

Paetra Brownlee – No

Roger Gannam – No

Joshua Mize – No

Jared Smith – No

Keith White – No

Constitutional Amendments

Amendment 1 – No

Amendment 2 – No

Amendment 3 – Yes

Amendment 4 – Yes

Amendment 5 – No

Amendment 6 – No

Collier County

State Representative, District 80

Mitchel Schlayer – DEM

State Representative, District 81

Charles Robert “Chuck” Work – DEM

State Representative, District 82

Arthur Oslund – DEM

Board of Commissioners, District 3

Burt Saunders – REP

Collier County Referendum

Yes

Lee County

State Senate, District 33

Christopher Proia – DEM

State Representative, District 77

Cornelius Fowler – DEM

State Representative, District 78

Howard Sapp – DEM

State Representative, District 79

Denise McCleary – DEM

City of Fort Myers, Ward 6

Cindy Banyai – NON-PARTISAN

Discussion and explanation

As its name implies, The Paradise Progressive approaches its coverage from a particular political perspective. For thorough, unbiased and neutral information about all these races and candidates, see Sparker’s Soapbox, whose author, Sandy Parker, does an outstanding job providing a comprehensive and objective overview.

For President

Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Timothy Walz (D-Minn.) have the experience, maturity, intelligence, commitment to democracy and loyalty to the United States, the Constitution, and American values to fulfill the duties and the responsibilities of the two highest offices in the country.

For Senate

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D) will make an outstanding United States senator who will effectively and energetically represent the interests of Florida and all its people. (See: “Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, ready for the Senate and on a roll.”)

The incumbent, Sen. Rick Scott (R), has repeatedly failed to pursue the interests of the state and the people of Southwest Florida, especially in the wake of disasters when his votes most counted. He has advocated sunsetting important social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. (For coverage of Scott’s record, see: “Rick Scott meets the Peter Principle” and “Rick Scott, already in a hole, digs deeper.”)

For Representative for Congress, District 17

Manny Lopez will bring much-needed civility, reasonable compromise, bipartisanship, and concern for the common good to this district covering Charlotte County and part of Sarasota County. He provides a needed contrast to the extreme ideological rhetoric and policies of its current holder.

For Representative for Congress, District 19

Kari Lerner will bring care, concern and attention to the issues facing this district covering coastal Southwest Florida from Cape Coral to Marco Island. She will ably represent its people in Congress. (To read more about Kari Lerner, see “Kari Lerner: The courage and conviction to serve in Congress.”)

In contrast, the incumbent, Byron Donalds, has proven incompetent, ineffective and indifferent to the district and its people while using it as a stepping stone for unrealistic personal ambitions that were of no benefit to his constituents. (Click here to see The Paradise Progressive’s coverage of Byron Donalds since his candidacy in 2020.)

Representative for Congress, District 26

Joey Atkins is a lawyer and former sports agent and was raised in West Palm Beach, giving him a commitment to the area of eastern Collier County, Immokalee and Miami’s western suburbs that is now the 26th Congressional District. He intends to concentrate his efforts on improving life for constituents in the district, restoring infrastructure and making life more affordable.

Justice of the Supreme Court

Justices Renatha Francis and Meredith Sasso are two justices on the Florida state Supreme Court who concurred with the argument that the wording of Amendment 4 was too vague to go to voters. The majority of the court found the wording clear and understandable. If the words of what is a very plain, simple and obvious amendment are too complex for these two justices they don’t merit retention.

 Sixth District Court of Appeal

Florida has an ideologically conservative judiciary that for all intents and purposes does not serve as a check or balance on the executive branch and the legislature. All the judicial candidates up for retention are members of the Federalist Society and share its conservative philosophy. They cannot be counted upon to rule impartially and objectively. Gov. Ron DeSantis has packed the courts with his ideological soulmates.

As a practical matter, if these justices are rejected, the likelihood is that they will be replaced by similar ideological believers, perhaps more extreme ones. Nonetheless, a significant vote of rejection would send the message that Florida voters are wise to these games and want fairer, more open-minded judges staffing their judicial branch.

Constitutional Amendments

Amendment 1: Voters can vote “yes” or “no” on this amendment. However, there should be a third option: “HELL NO!” Amendment 1 seeks to make school board elections in the state partisan. It was proposed by Southwest Florida’s own state Rep. Spencer Roach (R-79-Fort Myers), who is leaving elected office after this year. This is beyond a bad idea; it is pernicious, malicious and atrocious. Not only would currently non-partisan school board positions be politicized throughout the state, it would likely lead to partisan curricula in classrooms. This is a terrible idea and should be rejected decisively.

Amendment 2: No. This amendment to the Florida Constitution establishes hunting and fishing “as a public right and preferred means of responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife.” If passed it would likely be used by gun advocates to challenge all laws regulating hunting, restricting gun ownership or mandating background checks. There are very reasonable, constitutional regulations on hunting and fishing now and no need for a constitutional amendment that would lead to extensive litigation and controversy.

Amendment 3: Yes. This allows the sale and possession of recreational marijuana to adults over 21 years. This is endorsed with some trepidation: it will likely, as critics charge, complicate enforcement of sober driving laws and some people, as with any substance, will abuse it. However, it will also regulate marijuana sales, provide revenues to the state and reduce the number of arrests for petty, non-violent crimes.

Besides, there are a lot of people in this state who really need to mellow out.

Amendment 4: Yes. This clear, simple and understandable amendment returns the right of choice to women, where it belongs, and gets government out of a role it should not be playing.

Amendment 5: No. This amendment would increase the homestead exemption for property taxes, allowing it to rise with the rate of inflation. The homestead exemption was created to attract people to settle in Florida. However, it is no longer necessary for that purpose, it is adequate as is, and it does not need to be expanded.

Amendment 6: No. This amendment would repeal public financing for political campaigns for statewide positions like Governor, Attorney General and Cabinet offices. Public financing is a useful option to ensure the widest possible spectrum of candidates.

Collier County

State Representative, District 80

Mitchel Schlayer’s commitment to fighting corruption, protecting freedom of choice, protecting the environment and opposing censorship merits his election.

State Representative, District 81

Charles Robert “Chuck” Work, is a very experienced attorney who has held high office in the US Justice Department and is now ready to put his experience and expertise in the service of this district’s constituents. For a full profile of Work, see “Chuck Work: From prosecuting Watergate to campaigning for Florida’s District 81.”

State Representative, District 82

Arthur Oslund is committed to the right to choose, protecting the region’s water and defending local autonomy. When it comes to voting rights and ballot access he states: “eroding democracy is not conservative, it is treasonous!”

Board of Commissioners, District 3

Burt Saunders is a veteran lawyer, lawmaker and Collier County commissioner. He has frequently taken lone, sensible stands against extreme, damaging proposals from more radical commissioners. He merits re-election.

Collier County Referendum

Yes. This school district referendum would “continue tax-neutral flexible funding for Collier County Public Schools.” It will enable school administrators to move money between capital accounts and operational ones, giving them greater flexibility in budgeting and spending.

Lee County

State Senate, District 33

Christopher Proia is pro-choice, supports increasing affordable housing, universal healthcare, ending medical bankruptcy and improving public health and disease prevention.

State Representative, District 77

Cornelius Fowler is a union leader committed to upholding living wages, affordable housing, and quality education.

State Representative, District 78

Howard Sapp is a retired air traffic controller who supports quality education, affordable housing, addressing homelessness and preserving clean, quality water.

State Representative, District 79

Denise McCleary  is a veteran of the US Army National Guard and Reserves who was deployed during Operation Desert Storm and Enduring Freedom. She served as Chief of Audit Operations with the New Jersey National Guard. She wants to bring her extensive accounting and organizational experience to bear in service to the constituents of District 79. She is committed to making insurance affordable, providing access to affordable housing and expanding healthcare for Floridians, including Medicaid.

City of Fort Myers, Ward 6

Cindy Banyai is a committed activist who has previously run for Congress in the 19th District. She’s now seeking to put her experience and knowledge in the service of Fort Myers. Her priorities include investing in the community and putting families first, keeping development smart and affordable, mitigating the effects of climate change, supporting small business and ensuring clean water.

Liberty lives in light

© 2024 by David Silverberg

Chuck Work: From prosecuting Watergate to campaigning for Florida’s District 81

Chuck Work. (Photo: Author)

Sept. 15, 2024 by David Silverberg

On Jan. 6, 2021 Charles “Chuck” Work was, like millions of other Americans, watching the certification of the election of Joe Biden as president. Like those millions of Americans, he was horrified to see an inflamed, furious mob attack the United States Capitol and the Capitol Police

But his experience and knowledge and background only intensified the horror he felt.

“All of a sudden on January 6th I was watching this unfold and I started shouting at the TV,” he recalled in an interview with The Paradise Progressive. “Where was the intelligence? Why did they not know this was happening? I considered it a gigantic intelligence failure.”

Work had particular insight into the dynamics and operations of Washington, DC demonstrations.

As a DC-based federal prosecutor in the 1960s and ‘70s, he’d been in charge of prosecuting anti-Vietnam War demonstrators and protecting government buildings, while still providing access to lawmakers and government institutions and allowing demonstrators to express their grievances.

“I knew how [demonstrations] could be properly managed so that people were not hurt, not arrested, people were listened to, members of Congress wanted to talk to them. I knew how that worked when it worked properly,” he said.

In contrast, “One of the problems with this January 6th demonstration was—it was easy to observe—was that the access was all over the place and basically, the Capitol Police were unprepared. And it was just horrible to see. I was sickened by what I saw.

“And so after the demonstration I looked at my wife and a couple of days later we said, ‘We’re no longer Republicans.’ And we went down to the Orange Blossom government center and we changed our registration to Democrats.”

Chuck Work didn’t just change his registration; he made a commitment. Today he is running as the Democratic candidate for Florida House District 81, hoping to represent the people living in the coastal area from Immokalee Road in north Naples to Marco Island, in the state capital of Tallahassee.

No ordinary Neapolitan

At a 1975 meeting, Chuck Work (left, at lectern) briefs Attorney General Edward Levi, President Gerald Ford and Deputy Attorney General Harold Tyler on a concept for cutting down career criminality, while a staffer looks on. (Photo: Campaign)

In Naples, Fla., dressed casually and enjoying a game of golf, Work might be mistaken for a typical retiree. But that would be wrong.

He’s engaged, alert, articulate and very active. One can see why during his government career he was at the center of history—big history.

He was the prosecutor on the scene when police responded to a break-in at the Watergate Hotel and office complex in 1972. He signed the search warrants that allowed them to investigate the crime.

The reason he was on duty then was because he was the United States attorney who oversaw the prosecution of local crime in the District of Columbia—no small responsibility.

He oversaw the prosecutions of anti-Vietnam War demonstrators, helping to manage the law enforcement response. When Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 and the city erupted in riots he was in charge of the legal response.

“We kept the courthouse open for five days 24 hours a day, processing more than a thousand looters; basically, people who tore apart stores and burned part of the city,” he recalls.

Work was again at the center of history when President Richard Nixon attempted to evade justice in what became known as “The Saturday Night Massacre.”

Work was good friends with Attorney General Eliot Richardson. When Nixon ordered Richardson to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Richardson refused and resigned. When Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox he refused and resigned as well.

Work was one of the Justice Department attorneys who were in the room when Richardson announced that he had resigned. “Some of you will be tempted to follow me but the department has to run and I don’t want you to resign,” Work recalls him saying. “He said, ‘Bob Bork will be a fine attorney general.’” Robert Bork was the third person in the Justice Department hierarchy and the person who ultimately fired Cox.

After the Nixon administration Work went on to serve as deputy administrator of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration of the Justice Department.

After his government service, he joined the prestigious DC law firm of McDermott Will & Emery, where held a succession of senior positions, heading its regulation and government affairs department and ultimately serving as the partner in charge of the DC office.

He also ran in his first election and won, becoming president of the DC Bar Association. In a city housing the highest-powered lawyers in the land with one of the largest Bars in the United States, that was no small achievement.

He met his wife, Veronica Haggart, on a blind date in 1982 when she was a commissioner on the US International Trade Commission. In 1984 she was named director of international trade relations for the electronic giant, Motorola Corp., eventually rising to be vice president, head of government affairs and president of international trade.  

“We held presidential appointments in three different Republican administrations; the Nixon administration, the Ford administration and the Reagan administration,” Work explained. “Those were presidential commissions, mine was confirmed by the Senate and so was my wife’s.”

Résumés like those put both spouses in a special class in Washington. It’s not what might be called “royalty” but they’re what were once called “wise men” or perhaps are better called “sages;” people whose knowledge, experience and achievements earn them respect, admiration and influence among lawmakers, policymakers and decisionmakers.

So, when a sage comes out of retirement in a little town like Naples in the Southwest corner of Florida to get involved in its politics, it is significant and not to be taken lightly.

An active non-retirement

In person, sitting on a golf club veranda, Work is relaxed, friendly and very forthcoming.

He and Veronica came to Naples full time after a retirement spent first on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and a winter residence on the Turks and Caicos Islands. They were seasonal condo residents in Naples starting in 2014. When seasonal travel became tiresome, they relocated full time to Naples in 2019, preserving their tropical lifestyle.

And here he could have remained; unburdened and carefree, spending his days with a golf club in one hand and a drink in the other.

But he could not be blind to events around him, especially with the rise of Donald Trump. In 2016 he and his wife contacted the Democratic Party in Naples and did volunteer work for the Hillary Clinton campaign.

“I was never a big Hillary fan, don’t get me wrong, but I hated the idea of Trump being president,” he recalled. “The first thing out of my brain was, ‘This person is completely unqualified.’ So that was my first reaction to Trump. You know, we didn’t know much about him other than he was completely unqualified.

“So, we then went to [Democratic activist] Judy Freiburg and said, ‘What can we do?’ She put us to work canvassing and my wife and I hit 60 doors but I brought my son out, my younger son, and his girlfriend and they stayed with us for like three weeks and they actually worked full time in a little office. The Democrats sent them out to Clewiston. They said, ‘You guys have Clewiston, get everyone you can out there to vote.’”

Like the majority of Americans, Work and his wife were jolted by the results.  

“We were, of course, surprised and deeply disappointed that Trump won,” he said, “but we remained Republicans until the insurrection.”

American vs. MAGA

Work’s opponent in District 81 is Yvette Benaroch, a Moms for Liberty owner of a landscaping business in Marco Island who won a bruising primary battle against Councilman Greg Folley. She’s running on a predictable Trumpist platform opposing immigration, “getting wokeism out of schools” and gun rights.

Gun violence is a particularly sensitive issue for Work and one with which he has personal experience.

“I had a very bad experience as an attorney in DC,” he explained. “A young woman was in our office. She was being abused by her husband and as she was being interviewed by a police officer the husband walked in and killed her right in our office.”

That and his experience as a local crime prosecutor make him particularly sensitive to the dangers of gun violence. He’s disturbed by the influence of the gun lobby and supports the need for common sense anti-violence measures. “I’m delighted that Kamala and Tim Walz are making that an important thing to say,” he said.

But that’s not the only issue driving his campaign. He is intensely supportive of the right of women to choose.

“This is a significant right that has been taken away,” he said of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. “Why would you take away a right? I am just livid about the jurisprudence of the Dobbs opinion. And I’m livid about the two-faced, insincere answers that Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh gave [at his confirmation hearing]; Justice [Amy Coney] Barrett was not quite as insincere. It was settled law and they refused to say how they would react. That is such bullshit. It didn’t take much time disposing of the settled law argument when they overruled [Roe v. Wade]. That was so offensive.”

Another key issue for Work and one that he would be able to directly affect in Tallahassee is the loss of home rule, the right of Florida cities, towns and counties to make local rules that directly affect them. Much of this authority has been pre-empted during the course of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) administration.

“Some 80 rules and regulations and acts of the legislature have come into effect that have diluted home rule,” he pointed out and his website calls this “another glaring example of government overreach.” Examples include banning local laws that protect people from working in extremely hot conditions, preventing local leaders from creating citizen review panels for police forces and forbidding the ability to change the minimum wage.

But when it comes to legislating, “The key is working across the aisle” and when sent to Tallahassee that’s exactly what he intends to do, especially on home rule, which transcends political party and ideology.

In contrast to Benaroch, “I would hope people realize that if they send my opponent to Tallahassee, she would just be a rubber stamp. They’d send someone who will toe the party line, who is against reproductive rights, who will not stand up for the local community.”

However, if elected, “I can promise that I will stand up to them, and I will try to make a difference in Tallahassee.”

Ultimately, though, he points out, “I’m a moderate. I believe in middle of the road solutions. I believe in the truth, I believe in expertise, I believe in facts.”

And retired or not, Chuck Work is ready to work again for what he believes.

Liberty lives in light

©2024 by David Silverberg

Veronica Haggart and Chuck Work at a Democratic rally in Naples, Fla. (Photo: Author)

Melissa Blazier officially elected Collier County Supervisor of Elections when ‘ghost’ candidate withdraws

Melissa Blazier, Collier County Supervisor of Elections. (Photo: CCSoE)

Sept. 6, 2024 by David Silverberg

Melissa Blazier has officially been elected Supervisor of Elections for Collier County, Fla.

The election was confirmed when Edward Gubala, who was running as an independent write-in candidate in the general election, withdrew his candidacy on Wednesday, Sept. 4.

Edward Gubala (Photo: CCSoE)

Blazier won the primary election on Aug. 20 against candidates Timothy Guerrette and David Schaffel. Gubala was a write-in candidate but since he is no longer running in the November general election, she has officially been elected.

“I’m thrilled to announce that I have officially been elected as your Supervisor of Elections for the next four years!” Blazier announced in a Sept. 4 Facebook post. “My opponent, a write-in candidate, officially withdrew today, making this victory official.”

Addressing supporters, she stated: “This moment results from a year of hard work and unwavering support from all of you. I couldn’t have done it without your trust and commitment to ensuring fair, ethical, and secure elections in Collier County.”

Gubala, 63, a 30-year veteran firefighter and since 2004 a Naples mortgage broker with MVP Realty, entered the race just prior to the June 14 deadline as a spoiler, or “ghost” candidate to aid Guerrette. As such he closed the primary election to non-Republicans, effectively disenfranchising 119,115 independent and Democratic Collier County voters.

Edward Gubala in Tim Guerrette campaign regalia.

Guerrette finished the primary race in third place with just 16.8 percent of the vote.

Gubala never collected or spent any money on his campaign, never posted a website or produced any campaign material and never gave media interviews or conducted campaign activities.

Ghosting candidates is a frequent, entirely legal, political tactic in Florida in order to exclude non-party members from primary elections.

Liberty lives in light

© 2024 by David Silverberg

Melissa Blazier at her desk in the Supervisor of Elections office. (Photo: Author)

Project 2025 takes aim at education—and Collier County, Fla.

Like all American schools, Southwest Florida’s classrooms would feel the impact of Project 2025. (Image: First Focus on Children)

Sept. 3, 2024 by David Silverberg

If it came to pass that Donald Trump won the election and his administration implemented Project 2025’s educational proposals, how would Florida’s parents, teachers, students and school staff be affected?

Project 2025 is the sweeping, 887-page volume of very specific policy recommendations for presidential and legislative changes to be made under a conservative president, in this case, upon the election of Donald Trump. It is a continuation of the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership program that has been issued every four years since 1980.

This year Project 2025 includes recruitment of personnel, training for those people and a 180-day Playbook for immediate implementation should there be a change of administrations.

Donald Trump has disavowed any knowledge of, or familiarity with, Project 2025, although the Heritage Foundation organizers say that he implemented 67 percent of their recommendations in his first administration. Former Trump staffers have been heavily involved in Project 2025’s formulation, including Sen. James David “JD” Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate.

When it comes to education, the Project 2025 recommendation that has received the most attention is the disestablishment of the US Department of Education (ED).

The very first sentence of Project 2025’s education chapter states: “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”

That proposal has alarmed parents, teachers and education experts. It has energized Trump’s opponents, whether Democrats, independents or traditional Republicans who value learning. It is the first thing that critics cite when they attack Project 2025’s education ideas.

“We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools!” Vice President Kamala Harris declared in her speech to the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 23, to intense and prolonged applause.

Trump, despite his disavowals of Project 2025, has doubled down on ending the department.

During a rambling X interview with Elon Musk on Aug. 13 he pledged to “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states.” As recently as Friday, Aug. 30, he repeated his position at a Washington, DC conference held by Moms for Liberty—who also advocate eliminating the department.

Beyond the agency

Project 2025’s education recommendations go well beyond just ending the department.

They are contained in Chapter 11 (page 319), a sweeping chapter of 44 pages including citations, that covers a wide variety of education-related policies and proposals. It appears under the byline of Lindsey Burke, the Heritage foundation’s director of the Center for Education Policy. She has worked at the Heritage Foundation for over 16 years.

Project 2025 gathers up all the ideas that have been circulating in conservative circles, some of very long standing, and then puts them into tangible, concrete recommendations for action.

Among these ideas are many that are already in force in Florida, including expanding non-public school alternatives like charter schools, providing parents with vouchers to use in non-public schools, lowering accreditation requirements for non-public schools, passing legislation to prevent the teaching of critical race theory, and passing a “Parents Bill of Rights” that has led to practices such as book bans.

All of these would have significant consequences if implemented nationally.

But eliminating the Department of Education is Project 2025’s big idea, its headline and the one getting the most attention.

Looking ahead at the consequences of such an action is necessarily speculative, of course. But some results can be imagined—and the Collier County, Fla., public school district provides a microcosm that can give a sense of the impact at the grassroots level.

A quick history: the Department of Education

Republicans have sought termination of the current Department of Education ever since it came into being in 1980, when it was split off from the then Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

According to the department’s official history, a Department of Education was first created in 1867 to collect data about the nation’s schools. It had a budget of $15,000 and four employees. This happened in the midst of Reconstruction and the first wave of education for freed people and their children.

The next year the department was demoted to an Office of Education because of concerns that as a Cabinet department it would exert too much control over local schools.

However, starting in the 1950s public interest in education policy began to rise again along with the civil rights movement and the effort to end segregation. Segregated black schools in the South were woefully inadequate, underfunded, and discriminatory and along with the national effort to end segregation the nation made an effort to raise the general level of education for all students regardless of race.

In 1980, backed by the National Education Association, Congress passed, and President Jimmy Carter signed, the Department of Education Organization Act, making it a stand-alone Cabinet department again.

Project 2025 has a less benign view of the department’s creation. In its version, advocates of expanded education funding didn’t like the existing scattershot approach to education because “a single, captive agency would allow them to promote their agenda more effectively across Administrations. Eventually, the National Education Association made a deal and backed the right presidential candidate— Jimmy Carter—who successfully lobbied for and delivered the Cabinet-level agency.”

(Today, Project 2025 recommends rescinding the National Education Association’s congressional charter because it views it as “a demonstrably radical special interest group that overwhelmingly supports left-of-center policies and policymakers.”)

Ever since its establishment, Republicans have made ED a target and pledged to eliminate it. President Ronald Reagan, who took office immediately after Carter, was bent on ending it but the person he tapped to do the deed, Secretary of Education Terrel Bell, instead formed a commission that issued a report, A Nation at Risk, proposing reforms. Reagan liked the report so much he claimed it as his own and the department was saved, changing its focus to raising the quality of public education.

Ever since then abolishing the Department of Education has become part of the Republican mantra, an essential article of faith about which nothing has been done in actuality.

In 2016, during a campaign speech in—of course, Florida—then-candidate Donald Trump said “there is so much waste” at the department that he planned to cut it down to “shreds.”

When he became president he appointed Betsy DeVos to be secretary of the despised agency. Whatever else she did as secretary, she did not abolish the department—and as president, neither did he.

And so it stands today, a target of Project 2025.

Breaking the big bank

The US Department of Education has been described as “a big bank with a small policy shop attached.”

It’s an apt description. For all the rhetoric and misconceptions to the contrary, ED’s primary role is administering grants and financial aid to school systems and students around the country. While it tries to maintain and raise academic standards and eliminate educational inequities in school systems, it largely does this through the finances it administers.

Project 2025 would end the federal role in supporting education financially.

“To the extent that federal taxpayer dollars are used to fund education programs, those funds should be block granted to states without strings, eliminating the need for many federal and state bureaucrats,” it states. “Eventually, policymaking and funding should take place at the state and local level, closest to the affected families.”

Currently, federal funding can be a big boost to the school districts that receive it.

Collier County, Fla., illustrates this. In its tentative 2024-25 budget released on July 31, the Collier County School District estimated it would receive $7,243,150 in direct federal funding. Not all of this will come from ED; other federal agencies like the Department of Agriculture, which administers nutritional programs, also provide funding. However, it is a good indicator of the kind of federal support that primary and secondary school districts receive.

That’s not the only federal money Collier County receives. It also receives federal money passed on through state agencies and that’s much greater: $79,023,516. (Impressive as these figures might be, the vast majority of the district’s funding comes from local taxation: over $842 million.)

The funding goes for everything from salaries, to supplies, to services to furniture and more.

Breakdown of special, non-tax revenues and expenditures for Collier County Public Schools. (CCPS)

Below, where the money goes: Collier County grant recipients, amounts and officials overseeing the programs for the 2024-25 budget year. This includes grants from non-government, non-profit and philanthropic sources. (CCPS)

(Perhaps surprisingly, the federal Department has no local influence on curricula, which is entirely formulated at the local level.)

So assuming that Project 2025 was implemented as proposed and ED was terminated, the very first thing that would happen in Collier County is the school system would stand to lose up to $86 million in federal funding, whether directly or through the state.

It might make that money back, if the state—which would now have total control over all non-local educational funding—decided to be generous or at least maintain current funding levels.

The omens for this, however, are not favorable because DeSantis, i.e., the state, has a propensity and a preference for cutting appropriations for educational institutions. 

A glaring illustration of this occurred in the 2025 state budget when DeSantis vetoed $98 million in higher education funding. Florida Gulf Coast University, the local institution of higher learning, had $16.3 million excised from appropriations the legislature had otherwise approved.

Collier County public schools were not spared either: $2 million in approved appropriations were cut from its pilot education program for pre-kindergarten children.  

Collier lost 1,000 seats as a result of the pandemic and needed to ready young children from all backgrounds for kindergarten. The money would have been used for 10 new modular pre-kindergarten classrooms and modification of existing facilities so that 160 more 3 and 4 year olds and their parents could participate in school programs near their homes and elementary schools. Educators hoped it would establish strong bonds between the families and schools and prepare the children to enter the classroom. It would also train parents—from very diverse backgrounds, languages and cultures—to be school-ready, teach their children early literacy and prepare the children for schoolrooms.

The fact that the budget request was made by no less a personage than state Sen. Kathleen Passidomo (R-28-Naples), president of the Florida Senate, made no difference to DeSantis at all.

So on a practical level, terminating the Department of Education would at the very least inject great uncertainty into Collier County public schools’ cash flow. At worst it could result in a serious loss of revenue that would affect all aspects of school operations, resulting in a potentially significant reduction of capability and resources that would negatively affect students, teachers and staff. Furthermore, it would do this in a county that is rapidly growing and needs new school facilities and resources to handle the influx.

If Project 2025 were implemented these kinds of losses would apply across the country as all school districts lost federal funding.

Project 2025’s recommendation that money be provided to states “without strings” is also dangerous. The reason there are “strings” on federal money now is to ensure that the funds are used for their intended purpose and not misappropriated or diverted into private pockets. Project 2025 hates the “many federal and state bureaucrats” currently administering and overseeing federal education funds. However, the reason they’re there is to ensure that the money is spent properly. Without them there would be no oversight, regulation or enforcement.

Florida has already seen the fruits of this. The DeSantis “war on woke” in academia has also been a gold rush for favored politicians taking over academic positions for ideological reasons.

Nowhere was this clearer than at the state’s University of Florida, where former senator Ben Sasse, an outspoken conservative Republican, was appointed president in February 2023. Not only was he paid a million dollars in salary but he ballooned his office’s spending on favored consultants and provided high-priced remote positions for former staffers and Republican officials. When all this emerged, Sasse resigned and people he appointed were terminated.

Under Project 2025’s proposals, the removal of “strings” on federal funding would no doubt open the floodgates for a season of unrestrained corruption and turn ivory towers into feeding troughs.  

Analysis: Going back?

More broadly than just money, Project 2025’s measures would subvert the entire educational effort of the past 70 years to make American quality education more expansive, equitable and accessible to everyone. After all, it was an educational case, Brown vs. Board of Education that ended legal segregation in the first place.

Eliminating the department “would shutter thousands of public schools, end supports for low-income students, divert taxpayer funds to the private education of wealthy students and, ultimately, destabilize public education altogether,” argues Lily Klam, director of education policy at the First Focus on Children advocacy group. 

The reason that the federal government intervened in education in the first place was because the racial and economic disparities among different school systems, especially in the segregated South, were so great that only the federal government was capable of correcting them. Then, starting in the Reagan administration, it sought to improve public education’s quality and outcomes.

These have been the thrust of federal efforts, as embodied in the Department of Education, since its founding. It is premised on the idea that a uniformly educated, literate, thinking population benefits the nation, is essential for democracy, and makes the country stronger.

This is the notion that Project 2025 is challenging. Project 2025—and the whole anti-public education movement—whether consciously or not, would bring back the past disparities in education and make education uneven and uncertain. By undermining public education and putting the states entirely in charge, it would revive past abuses and disparities.

Ultimately, wrecking public education, as Project 2025 seeks, would lead, not just to racial inequalities, but to socio-economic and political ones as well. While the entire movement of American education since independence has been to make Americans more prosperous, educated and equal as citizens, Project 2025 would make them less prosperous, less educated and less equal. It would ultimately create an undemocratic class of literate masters ruling ignorant serfs.

When it comes to education, this is the “again” in the slogan “make America great again.”

And preventing this outcome is the “back” in the slogan “we won’t go back.”

This article is one of a series looking at the impact of Project 2025 on Southwest Florida and the nation. Others are:

Project 2025 remake of FEMA would hit communities hard after disasters

Project 2025 would end federal flood insurance, devastate Southwest Florida and coastal communities

Liberty lives in light

© 2024 by David Silverberg

Jessica Cosden, a teacher and Cape Coral councilmember, teaches a Cape Coral class in 2017. (Photo: Author’s collection)

Has MAGA fever broken? America’s joy and Republican rebellion in Collier County, Fla.

Kelly Mason, chair of the Collier County School Board, displays a flyer from the county Republican Executive Committee accusing schools of ‘indoctrination’ at the Aug. 21 meeting of the Board. (Image: CCPS)

Aug. 26, 2024 by David Silverberg

Has the Make America Great Again (MAGA) fever broken?

That certainly seems to be the case in Collier County, Fla., a very conservative, very Republican, extremely Trumpist corner of the Sunshine State.

It’s too soon to say that where Collier County goes, so goes the nation. But last Tuesday, Aug. 20, Republican voters’ weariness and disgust led them to defeat the candidates endorsed by a Collier County Republican Executive Committee (CCREC, referred to here as REC) that they regarded as having grown increasingly authoritarian.

It seems to show that even in this Trumpist stronghold, MAGA madness has reached its limits.

It also seems that the majority of Americans have had enough—enough of MAGAism and Donald Trumpism.

Both Collier County’s revolt, a statewide repudiation of candidates endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and a national wave of enthusiasm for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D) appear driven by the same things: weariness, disgust, outrage and now, a determination to do something about it. Americans have been living with Donald Trump’s “hatred, prejudice and rage” and they’re clearly ready to move on.

But to see it erupt among Collier County Republicans is truly a revelation.

The rebirth of joy

The national shift in public attitudes was best put by Walz, when he was introduced as Vice President Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate on Aug. 6 in Philadelphia.

“Thank you, Madam Vice President, for the trust you put in me,” he said. “But, maybe more so, thank you for bringing back the joy.”

Joy. That’s not a word that has been used at all in American politics since 2015. Clearly, it’s something Americans like and it’s what’s giving the Harris campaign the giddy momentum it’s enjoying in the race for the White House.

The four-year presidential election cycle not only marks political eras but emotional ones as well, with leading political personalities shaping the behavior and attitudes of the public.

That was certainly true in Florida. From 2016 to 2020 during Trump’s presidency, aspiring Republican politicians aped his attitudes and behavior both in campaigning and governing.

This was extremely apparent among Southwest Florida Republican candidates at that time. It could be seen in their dark conspiracy theories and delusional lies, their threats and insults toward their opponents and perceived enemies and also in their embrace of violent rhetoric and gunplay.

“There are individuals who fire this thing up and the biggest one of all, I think, is Donald Trump,” observed Francis Rooney, the former ambassador and congressman for Southwest Florida, at a panel to Reduce the Rancor, this year. “He exerts a magnetic influence over an awful lot of Republicans.”

The COVID-19 pandemic, which broke out in 2020, also had a profound impact on public attitudes. With Trump at first dismissing the danger and then fighting the experts and scientists who were trying to protect the public, his denigration of expertise, knowledge and competence leached down to the grassroots.

Trump’s attitudes really took root in Florida, his adopted state.

In 2018 Ron DeSantis, a former congressman, had his primary bid for the governorship supercharged by Trump’s endorsement. He won and as governor pursued Trumplike policies. It worked for him; in 2022 he was re-elected to the governorship with a decisive 20 point majority.

Starting in 2023, though, DeSantis tried to out-Trump Trump in his own bid for the White House. He launched a comprehensive “anti-woke” crusade in every aspect of Florida culture and society, hoping to ride it nationally to the presidency and “make America, Florida,” to use his own slogan. In this he was aided by a completely subservient Republican super-majority in the state legislature that raced to the rim of reason in devising ever more radical measures both to curry favor with him and pander to their most extreme constituents.

Ultimately, it didn’t work. Trump treated DeSantis as a traitor, belittled and insulted him and put an end to his presidential candidacy before it even got to the state primaries. But the legacy of DeSantis’ anti-woke war and Trump’s dominance in the state lingers on in its politics.

With Harris at the top of the national Democratic ticket and a pro-choice state constitutional amendment on the November ballot that seems to have mobilized the state’s pro-choice voters, Florida Democrats now sense a chance to turn Florida from seemingly overwhelmingly Republican to Democratic.

“Ron DeSantis has lost his culture war,” said Nichole “Nikki” Fried, the state Democratic chair after Tuesday’s primary results. “What we saw last night is that Floridians across the state are tired of the divisiveness. They are tired of the culture wars.”

“Floridians are tired of extremism, and we’re ready to bring back some sanity, integrity, decency and true public servants,” agreed Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the Democratic candidate for Senate.

Not everyone is sanguine about flipping the state. As political operative and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson put it in an Aug. 8 blog post: “I’m not saying Florida is in play. I’m not saying Florida is in play. I’m not saying Florida is in play. I’m not saying Florida is in play. I’m not saying Florida is in play. I’m not saying Florida is in play. But maybe you could see a sliver of a tiny edge of a glimmer on the horizon of Florida being in play, given the abortion rights and recreational weed ballot initiatives and a souring MAGA base.”

The case of Collier County, Fla.

This year Collier County Republicans rose in revolt against the official MAGA leadership of their Republican Party in the REC. It was a quiet revolt. There were no barricades in the streets. No one got shot. It happened in voting booths.

First, in the City of Naples on March 19, Republican voters defeated the REC-endorsed candidate for mayor, Ted Blankenship, who came in last in a three-way race.

Then, in the county at large, Republican voters defeated a whole slate of REC-endorsed candidates with the exception of one. With only a 25 percent turnout of the county electorate, it could hardly be said to be a wave. But make no mistake: it was a complete repudiation of MAGA directives and domination.

It needs to be emphasized just how remarkable this repudiation is because until now, Collier County has been dominated by its own mini-Trump and the dynamics of the electorate’s relationship to him reflects in microcosm the nation’s larger relationship to Donald Trump.

In Collier County, the mini-Trump is Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, a prominent farmer and grocer.

First gaining notoriety with his 2020 denunciation of George Floyd on Facebook, which brought accusations of racism, Oakes really rose to prominence in fighting public health measures and denouncing vaccines during the COVID pandemic. He gained fame among anti-vaccine and anti-mask activists, defied county health regulations and authorities and using his newly-opened store, Seed to Table, as a platform, began shaping local politics to his liking, which meant promoting the most extreme, Trumpist, MAGA candidates and policies.

The parallels between Oakes and Trump are truly striking. Both are businessmen and entrepreneurs. Indeed, it can be argued that Oakes at this point is more successful than Trump because his businesses, while suffering setbacks, are not mired in anything like the debt, litigation and criminal prosecution that face Trump’s.

Both men are loud, outspoken, mercurial, unpredictable, rebellious, litigious, bullying, insulting and petty. Both are extreme in their beliefs and language. Both have been accused of racism. Both have flirted with political violence. Both indulge in bizarre conspiracy theories. Both value fanatical loyalty over competence. Both cultivated an adoring personal following. Both are active politically, endorsing and boosting candidates who share their beliefs. Both verbally attacked scientific findings and public health officials during the COVID pandemic. Both denied the results of the 2020 election. Both were present in Washington, DC on Jan. 6, 2021. Both praised the rioters who attacked the Capitol. Both have been accused of lawbreaking: Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies; Oakes was issued citations for non-compliance with county regulations but never paid any penalties when Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) issued an executive order cancelling fines and pardoning violations of local COVID-related regulations.

And Oakes worships Trump. “I love our president and his family with every bit of my being!” Oakes posted on Facebook after a phone call with the then-President in December 2020. “I love all that he has given for our country and all that he stands for!”

Oakes was elected a state committeeman on the REC in 2020, which gave him an official Republican Party platform for his beliefs. He founded Citizens Awake Now Political Action Committee (CANPAC) to support candidates he favored.

It was effective. In the 2022 elections he won with a full house: he ousted a commissioner who voted for mask mandates against his wishes and two of his candidates won seats on the Collier County Board of Commissioners, giving it a MAGA majority. Three of his endorsed candidates won seats on the School Board of Collier County.

The victories paid off with governing successes at the county level: ordinances to exempt the county from federal law, to prevent future mask mandates or vaccine requirements (a duplication of state law), a resolution denouncing public health measures, a resolution opposing Amendment 4 to the state constitution guaranteeing reproductive rights, and termination of fluoridation of the county’s water.

While these measures had the willing support of Oakes’ MAGA followers, there was occasional defiance and that defiance was met with the full arsenal of litigation, denunciation, insult and rage.

When Kelly Mason (formerly Lichter), the Oakes-backed chair of the School Board, cast the deciding vote for a superintendent candidate against Oakes’ wishes, he denounced her as a “traitor.”

Then, this year, Oakes and his REC again backed a slate of candidates. These included a candidate for Board of Commissioners who would have ousted the incumbent Commissioner Burt Saunders (R-District 3), two school board candidates, and candidates for supervisor of elections and property appraiser. Oakes himself intended to run to keep his seat as Republican state committeeman but failed to file his paperwork on time and was disqualified.

It needs to be emphasized how unusual it is to have a county Republican Party endorse primary candidates. Most normal local parties—regardless of their partisan labels—are careful never to choose among competing local candidates; indeed, Party rules forbid it. But Collier County’s REC has ignored that.

What is more, Oakes and the REC employed a full arsenal of Trumpist weapons against what it perceived, not merely as fellow Republicans it opposed, but as full-blown enemies. These people, all Republicans of long standing and often very conservative, were blasted as Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) or—more terrible—as Democrats.

But even more galling to non-MAGA Republicans was the REC’s imperiousness in simply ordering Party members how to vote and employing what they regarded as lies and threats to get its way. In this it closely imitated Trump’s own wild and unfounded accusations against his perceived enemies. There was an actual threat of bringing criminal prosecution against the Collier County Citizens Value Political Action Committee (CCCVPAC), an independent Republican organization, for daring to defy the REC and endorse its own slate of candidates.

In assessing the results of the primary election for the county supervisor of elections race, Oakes himself posted on Facebook that, “The reason we lost EVERY single [Supervisor of Elections] race in the state of Florida is because our party will not unify.”

He concluded (as posted): “I pray that ALL of you learn from this and unite behind our party in the future should our father God even allows us to keep this Constitutional Republic in place after this election.”

(The Paradise Progressive reached out to Oakes for comment on this story but had not received a response as of posting time.)

School Board controversy

The most recent example of someone standing up against false REC accusations came the day after the election, last Wednesday, Aug. 21, at a meeting of the Collier County School Board.

Kelly Mason, the Board chair, complained that an REC-issued campaign flyer had accused the School Board of “indoctrinating” students.

The printed flyer from the REC included a quote from John Meo, the REC chair, accusing the School Board of indoctrinating students with believing the media, supporting President Joe Biden and advocating Communism and endorsing two opponents to incumbent School Board members.

The REC flyer (front and back) referenced by Kelly Mason. The two candidates listed both lost their races for the School Board in the Aug. 20 primary election. (Flyer: CCREC)

Mason challenged two members of the Board, Tim Moshier (District-5) and Jerry Rutherford (District-1), both of whom are members of the REC, to provide specific examples of student “indoctrination.”

“I think it’s an opportunity, with this indoctrination that’s going on that we need to be aware of, that the superintendent needs to be aware of, and we can address this head-on,” she said. “So, can you please provide the Board with the examples that this has been going on? And then after tonight I would like to be done with this conversation.”

Moshier fumblingly mentioned that there had been “a couple of little issues” and then an incident, which he could only vaguely recall, of a sticker in a classroom (there had been extensive controversy over “safe space” stickers in Florida classrooms in the past two years). A supposedly offensive image on the School Board website that he mentioned turned out to be a Planned Parenthood image entirely unrelated to Collier County that was used in local campaign propaganda.

Rutherford, for his part, wasn’t even capable of turning on the microphone on his desk. He did not provide any examples of “indoctrination.”

At the end of the discussion Mason said: “Since November ’22, we all got here at the same time, this [indoctrination] is not happening. So, I’m asking you tonight and Mr. Moshier, what examples [do we have] that this is going on because we need to address it—and it sounds like it’s not happening. Is that correct?”

Moshier replied: “I don’t know whether it is or not.”

The dialogue highlighted, not only the MAGA REC’s use of reckless and unsupported accusations and falsehoods but also the incompetence, incapability and inexperience of REC-endorsed candidates.

(The entire discussion can be seen in a 6-minute, 2-second video on YouTube.)

“Angry, inexperienced individuals”

The only criteria for a REC/Oakes endorsement has been fanatical MAGAism and personal loyalty and obedience to the REC; not qualifications, experience or education.

As Oakes himself put it at his Patriot Fest rally on March 19, 2022: “I don’t want to hear about what IQ someone has or what level of education someone has,” when it comes to candidate qualifications. “Common sense and some back is all we need right now.” As he also said before the Board of Commissioners on Feb. 13 in regard to science-based public health measures: “We don’t trust the white coats anymore.”

The result has been the election of glaringly unprepared and incapable people to county bodies. When this was going to be extended to technical positions affecting the operations of the county—the Supervisor of Elections and the Property Appraiser—even the most loyal Republicans had enough. Michael Lyster, endorsement chairman of CCCVPAC called the REC-endorsed candidates “angry, inexperienced individuals.”

This valuing of fanaticism over competence is a feature of Trumpism at the national level. It was an aspect of Trump’s term as president and it is an aspect of Project 2025, which is building a database of obedient loyalists to take on the nation’s most sensitive positions regardless of their qualifications, preparation or expertise—or lack thereof.

A tropical tremor

As this is written, there are 71 days to Election Day, Nov. 5. That’s an eternity in politics and a lot can happen that could change the entire political equation.

But what can be said with some certainty is that at the moment, Harris and Walz seem to be riding a wave of joy and enthusiasm that looks like it will carry them to the nation’s highest offices.

What’s also clear is that they’ve broken through the dark menace of what Trump in his 2017 inaugural address called “American carnage.” Americans are tired of that carnage and being threatened, lied to and intimidated.

And the depth of that weariness can be seen in Collier County where Republicans were fed up with being bullied and battered by their own leadership, which seemed to have ridden off the rails of normal political dialogue and entered a delusional world of dictates, threats and insults.

Collier County is a little place. What happens here usually stays here.

But sometimes, just sometimes, political tremors very far down in small, obscure crevices can join with other tremors and rise high enough to cause earthquakes— and those earthquakes can change everything at the surface.

Liberty lives in light

© 2024 by David Silverberg


Kelly Mason, fourth from left, challenges Jerry Rutherford (second from left) at the Aug. 21 School
Board meeting. (Image: CCPS)

MAGA candidates routed in Collier County primary election—Updated

Campaign workers outside the Collier County Public Library headquarters in Naples today. All the candidates named on the signs lost their races. (Photo: Author)

Aug. 21, 2024 by David Silverberg

Updated 5:50 pm with Johnny Fratto information. Updated Aug. 23 with judicial results.

In a nearly complete rout, Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republican candidates endorsed by the Collier County Republican Executive Committee (CCREC, referred to here as the REC) were defeated in yesterday’s primary election.

With all 67 precincts reporting, results posted by the Collier County Supervisor of Elections office showed candidates endorsed by the REC and local farmer and grocer Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III going down to defeat, a stunning reversal of 2022’s results.

Overall voter turnout was 24.9 percent with only 64,465 ballots cast out of a pool of 258,528 eligible voters.

Because this was a closed primary and the county is overwhelmingly Republican, the local Republican primaries effectively counted as the election.

In major local races Melissa Blazier, current county Supervisor of Elections, kept her seat, winning with 48.5 percent of the vote, or 20,726 votes. David Schaffel, who was backed by the REC and Oakes, followed with 34.8 percent, or 14,881 votes and Tim Geurrette, a retired law enforcement officer, came in third with 16.8 percent or 7,165 votes.

As of 11:00 pm Vickie Downs led the race to keep her seat as Property Appraiser by a mere 389 votes, or 43.7 percent over her nearest rival, Jim Molenaar, with 42.7 percent. Molenaar was backed by the REC and Oakes.

In the race for Republican State Committeeman, Douglas Rankin, who was ousted by Oakes in 2020, made a comeback, winning back his position with 56.3 percent of the vote over his rival Frank Schwerin, with 43.7 percent. Oakes had intended to run for the seat but was disqualified when he failed to file his paperwork on time.

In Collier County District 3, Burt Saunders, the incumbent commissioner who had been targeted for ouster by MAGA Republicans, defeated three challengers, winning by 47.1 percent. His nearest rival, Frank Roberts gained only 29.3 percent.

Stephanie Lucarelli, the School Board member for District 2, won her race by 53.9 percent over challenger Pam Cunningham, with 46.1 percent.

Erick Carter, the other incumbent School Board member, also kept his seat by 56 percent over Tom Henning’s 44 percent.

In a race for Republican State Committeewoman, the Oakes-backed candidate Kristina Heuser was a rare MAGA success, winning with 52.6 percent of the vote over longtime conservative activist JoAnn DeBartolo with 47.4 percent.

In the hotly contested and bitter Republican battle for state House District 81, covering southern coastal Collier County, Yvette Benarroch edged out retired businessman and Marco Island councilman Greg Folley by 56.3 percent to 43.7 percent.

In the major statewide race, Sen. Rick Scott retained his party’s nomination over two challengers with a whopping 88.8 percent of Republican votes.

However, in the Democratic nominating race for US Senate, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell also won her race with an overwhelming 77.9 percent of the vote.

Mucarsel-Powell and Scott will face off in November.

In the race for the congressional District 26 Republican nomination, incumbent Republican Rep. Mario Diaz Balart maintained his dominance, winning with 73.2 percent of the vote. Johnny Fratto, who was endorsed by Oakes, came in a distant second at 16.5 percent.

Incumbent judge Elizabeth Krier in the 20th Judicial Circuit, Group 28 kept her seat with 53.4 percent of the vote. Judge Erik Leontiev, although winning in Collier County, ultimately lost to Tracey Redd in the five-county 20th Judicial Circuit, Group 6, getting 48 percent of the vote to Redd’s 52 percent.

Liberty lives in light

© 2024 by David Silverberg

Election endorsements: Winning the war for competence in Collier County, Fla.

The flag of Collier County, Fla.

Aug. 7, 2024

A war on competence has been waged in the United States for the past eight years and nowhere has it been pursued with more intensity than in Collier County, Fla.

In this year’s primary election, the citizens of Collier County will decide what they value more: expertise, experience, and integrity or anger, fury and fanaticism.

Early voting begins this Saturday, Aug. 10 and runs one week until next Saturday, Aug. 17. It culminates on Election Day, Aug. 20. A full list of early polling places can be seen here.

The issue of ability and fitness for office is one that transcends party or political philosophy. Do people want their local government and school board run well or badly? Do they value people who have dedicated their lives to public service or people who have never before handled public affairs?

The dividing line in making these endorsements is not political party or ideology; rather, it is competence versus non-competence, or uncertain competence or, in the case of at least one current officeholder, proven incompetence.

That is not to say there aren’t larger issues at stake as well: Do voters want to maintain the Bill of Rights’ wall of separation between church and state in their government and schools or allow religious indoctrination and dogma to reign? Do they want public health decisions made on the basis of science and research or suspicion and ignorance? Do they want to move forward in time or retreat into an imagined past?

Since its launch in 2018, The Paradise Progressive has argued that endorsing candidates is the duty of any publication or media outlet that regularly and responsibly covers elections and those who seek office.

That especially holds true today.

And so, in keeping with that principle, this article presents endorsements for candidates on the ballot on Aug. 20 and the reasoning behind them.

What is unique is that these endorsements cover both the Republican and Democratic primaries, since some offices will be determined in the closed primaries of their respective parties (and since readers are members of both parties).

This article does not endorse in all primary races but does provide some notes and observations on the candidates in the races where it does not take a position.

As its name implies, The Paradise Progressive approaches its coverage from a particular political perspective. For thorough, unbiased and neutral information about all these races and candidates, see Sparker’s Soapbox, whose author, Sandy Parker, does an outstanding job providing a comprehensive and objective overview.

These endorsements cover Collier County. A subsequent article will cover endorsements in Lee County. They are in the order that they appear on ballots.

US Senate

Republican nominee for US Senator

There is no endorsement for a Republican nominee. The incumbent, Sen. Rick Scott, has repeatedly demonstrated egregious incompetence in ways that harmed the state and people he represents. He has also called for sunsetting the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs on which many Southwest Floridians depend.

(For more on Scott’s record, see: “Rick Scott meets the Peter Principle” and “Rick Scott, already in a hole, digs deeper.”)

Democratic nominee for US Senator

  • Endorsement: Debbie Mucarsel-Powell

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is a committed, articulate, energetic activist who has served in the US House of Representatives. She can be expected to do an outstanding job representing Florida and all its citizens in the US Senate.

(For a profile of Mucarsel-Powell, see: “Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, ready for the Senate and on a roll.”)

Collier County

Property appraiser

  • Endorsement: Vickie Downs

Downs is the incumbent Property Appraiser and has served in that office in one capacity or another since 1994. She has demonstrated competence and a steady hand, making incremental improvements to the office that will continue if re-elected.

(For additional coverage of another candidate, Jim Molenaar, see the article: “From education to enrichment: Sweetheart deals, feeding frenzies and Florida’s war on learning.”)

Supervisor of Elections

  • Endorsement: Melissa Blazier

Blazier has the experience, knowledge and—most of all—integrity to continue to conduct clean, honest and accurately counted elections in Collier County.

This position has turned into one of the most hotly contested local races. It has been extensively covered in these pages, most notably and comprehensively in “This is what integrity looks like: Melissa Blazier for Supervisor of Elections.” (All articles related to Melissa Blazier can be seen here.)

The judges (on all ballots)

Endorsements:

  • Erik Leontiev (20th Judicial Circuit, Group 6)
  • Elizabeth Krier (20th Judicial Circuit, Group 28)

It’s very difficult to render judgments on judges who are supposed to make objective, unbiased decisions based on the law on a case-by-case basis.

In this instance both sitting judges have records unblemished by accusations of ethical lapses or improper behavior. Nothing in their records indicates any unfitness for office or reasons for discontinuation of their service.

Krier briefly came into political prominence in Southwest Florida from 2020 to 2022 when she adjudicated a lawsuit brought by congressional candidate Casey Askar against Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.). Askar charged that Donalds had defamed him but Krier ruled that he hadn’t done so with malice and Askar lost the case. Her ruling appeared sound and reasonable. (The full story and coverage of the ruling can be read at “The Donalds Dossier: Putin’s pal; an address mess; and a legal laurel—Updated.”)

School Board (non-partisan)

Endorsements:

  • Stephanie Lucarelli (District 2)
  • Erick Carter (District 4)

Both of these incumbent candidates have demonstrated expertise, care and commitment to the education of Collier County students. Both have served responsibly and conscientiously and attended to the nuts and bolts of the county schools. Both are rational, reasonable and sensible. Their service is informed with the experience of office and their own backgrounds.

Lucarelli was a professional teacher before moving to Naples in 2002. She taught in Collier County schools as a guest teacher and volunteered in a variety of capacities. She has a long and proven interest in education.

Erick Carter’s interest in education traces back to his experience as a ballroom dance instructor and training at Lorenzo Walker Technical College.

Their opponents are typical of an uninformed, ideologically-driven opposition threatening sensible, secular Florida public education that prioritizes the best interests of Collier County students.

Notes on other races (without endorsements)

US House District 26

Incumbent Republican Mario Diaz-Balart is running for his 12th term in this district, which stretches from Hialeah and Doral in Miami-Dade County in the east to inland Collier County, roughly along I-75 in the west and includes the towns of Immokalee and Ave Maria.

Diaz-Balart has been in office so long he is the longest-serving member of all of Florida’s congressional representatives. He was first elected to the US House in 2002. He has risen to chair the powerful Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs, which oversees all US foreign aid programs.

He is running against opponents who have no prior legislative or political experience.

Florida House District 81

Florida House District 81 runs along the coast in Collier County from Immokalee Road in Naples to Goodland south of Marco Island. Its western boundary is I-75, Collier Blvd., and Rt. 41.

The candidates are Yvette Benarroch and Greg Folley.

Benarroch is co-owner of a landscaping company with her husband. She’s a US Air Force veteran. She heads the Collier County chapter of Moms for Liberty. She claims to have previously worked on political campaigns for Ron DeSantis and Byron Donalds.

Greg Folley, a retired corporate executive and lawyer, has served on the Marco Island City Council since 2020, worked on the White House staff under President Ronald Reagan and has served on numerous corporate and charitable boards. Folley has far more management and government experience than Benarroch.

Collier County Republican State Committeeman

Douglas Rankin is running for State Committeeman. He’s a longstanding, traditional Republican who was very active in the county Party and served in the committeeman position from 2008 to 2020. In 2020 he was ousted as State Committeeman by Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, who was riding high on his defiance of COVID-19 precautions and county public health measures.

Rankin is running against Frank Schwerin, a retired doctor. Schwerin is endorsed by Oakes.

Collier County Republican State Committeewoman

JoAnn DeBartolo, the incumbent, is an actively pro-Trump, long-time conservative Republican activist.

Her opponent, Kristina Heuser, a lawyer, twice drafted anti-federal nullification ordinances of dubious legality, one of which passed the Collier County Board of Commissioners, and which may ultimately harm the county in unexpected ways. She was personally endorsed by Oakes.

Liberty lives in light

© 2024 by David Silverberg

Sleaze, slime and slander in Collier County: Accusations, falsehoods split Republicans as primary looms

Supporters of Collier County Supervisor of Elections Melissa Blazier march this year in the Naples, Fla., July 4th parade. Blazier has been the target of disinformation from opponents. (Photo: Author)

July 28, 2024 by David Silverberg

Updated July 30 with full image of CCREC posting.

As the days count down to the August 20 primary election in Collier County, Fla., the campaigning is getting uglier, nastier and more unforgiving.

In this overwhelmingly Republican county (139,305 Republicans, 52,342 Democrats and 66,915 others as of July 27) the Republican primary will serve as the general election for a number of important races.

As a result, the outcome is more unpredictable than usual in what is normally a quiet and sleepy tropical corner of the Sunshine State—and as the stakes rise, the discourse sinks.

In particular, there is a rift between many longstanding Republicans who say they are in the majority versus Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans on the official Collier County Republican Executive Committee (CCREC, henceforth referred to here as the REC).

The REC is dominated by Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the extremely conservative grocer and farmer, and chaired by John Meo, a Naples financial manager.

The dissenting Republicans are expressing themselves through a variety of means and organizations, most notably the Collier County Citizens Values Political Action Committee (CCCVPAC, henceforth referred to here as the PAC). (For previous coverage see “Collier County, Fla., Republican PAC breaks with Alfie Oakes and Party Exec Committee; cites ‘authoritarian stance,’ slams ‘angry, inexperienced individuals.’”)

The battle has become bitter, personal and in some cases, overtly fraudulent.

False flyers and fake texts

The Collier County Supervisor of Election race is a key contest. After all, as Josef Stalin once said: “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything”—so the battle is on to be the one who counts the votes.

The race pits current Supervisor of Elections Melissa Blazier against challengers Tim Guerrette and David Schaffel. (For a more complete discussion of the race, see: “This is what integrity looks like: Melissa Blazier for Supervisor of Elections.”)

All are Republicans. In particular, Blazier is a member of the Naples Republican Club, Republican Women of Southwest Florida Federated, and the Women’s Republican Club. Guerrette has been a Republican for over 30 years.

But that hasn’t stopped the REC, which backs Schaffel, from sending out a text messsage accusing Blazier of being a Democrat and Guerrette of being a RINO (Republican in name only).

The REC-issued text message putting false labels on Supervisor of Elections candidates it opposes. (Image: CCREC).

The false labeling story was covered by Dave Elias, political reporter for NBC2 News in Fort Myers in a July 18 report, “Collier County voters receive election text messages with false information.”

“Tens of thousands of Republican voters received confusing and fraudulent messages meant to dupe voters,” Elias reported.

In the report both Blazier and Guerrette denied being anything other than Republicans.

However, “The attacks don’t stop there,” Elias pointed out. “Another flier went out to voters, making it appear that the Republican Party endorsed Guerrette instead of Schaffel.”

When the PAC sent out its list of endorsements on June 27 and denounced REC-endorsed candidates as unqualified for the positions they were seeking, REC Chair John Meo sent out his own text message to Republicans on July 17.

John Meo (Photo: CCREC)

In it he denounced the PAC and another conservative political action committee, Collier First PAC, which endorsed Guerrette in the Supervisor of Elections race. He also alleged that the dissident PACs were violating the law by making endorsements without REC approval.

“While these clear violations are under investigation by law enforcement and the Republican Party of Florida, I feel it is imperative to remind you that you should ONLY trust messages coming directly from the Collier County Republican Party,” he wrote.

“Unfortunately, these Never-Trump dark money groups are pushing candidates who have NOT been endorsed by the Republican Party,” he stated.

This message prompted a blistering response from Diane Van Parys, a Naples resident, president of Republican Women of Southwest Florida Federated and the immediate past president of the Florida Federation of Republican Women.

“Last time I checked, John, neither you nor the CCREC control who Republican’s vote for,” she wrote in an e-mail that was copied to 300 other local Republicans.  “In the United States the ballot and the Democratic process of elections takes place.  A primary is the process of vetting all the Republican Candidates and many of us are able to make a decision on who we choose as the best candidate(s) and vote accordingly without the CCREC’s assistance. 

“The fact that you libeled yourself by labeling a Collier County Constitutional Officer /Supervisor of Elections a Democrat is reason enough to request you to resign your position as Chairman of the CCREC.  You have proven once again that your lack of knowledge and blatant lies should not be tolerated by the CCREC any longer.  Labeling another candidate a RINO who is a 30 year registered Republican is disgraceful.”

She made a particular point of contesting Meo’s point that the independent PACs had somehow broken the law.

“Chairman Meo, the fact that you are threatening fellow Republicans –‘We trust that law enforcement will bring the perpetrators to light and expose the frauds that have been posing as our party.’Exactly who do you think you are?  You must be a liar, prove me wrong and produce the evidence of your filings on behalf of the CCREC with Law Enforcement.”

Parys also questioned the funding for the REC messages and the fact they were sent out during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, when many of the county’s top Republicans were away from Florida.

She pointed out that in neighboring Lee County, in contrast to Collier, the party executive committee was careful not to endorse candidates in contested intra-party primary elections, although other organizations were free to do so.

Meo’s allegation that “dark money” was being employed and that possible crimes were committed also opened up a whole other area for new allegations and investigation by law enforcement. Van Parys questioned the legality of REC’s spending money to promote its endorsed candidates against other Republicans legitimately seeking Party members’ approval. She also noted that while the REC was threatening the independent PACs it said nothing about Oakes’ Citizens Awake Now (CAN) PAC, which is backing the REC-endorsed candidates.

As of this writing there is less than a month to go until the primary. When it comes to the Collier County Republican Party, activities to watch are whether there will be new potential falsehoods, fraudulent propaganda, accusations, and whether law enforcement investigates possible illegal activity.

The sin of Pride?

The political bitterness has also infected the increasingly heated race for two seats on the Collier County School Board.

In this non-partisan race, incumbents Stephanie Lucarelli (District 2) and Erick Carter (District 4) are being challenged by Pamela Shanouda Cunningham and Tom Henning, both of whom have been endorsed by the REC.

Stephanie Lucarelli. (Photo: CCPS)

Cunningham, 49, who is running against Lucarelli, 50, in District 2, is advocating traditional educational principles. “I am committed to moving CCPS [Collier County Public Schools] away from its progressive educational framework and implementing a traditional educational model,” she states on her campaign website.

An earlier version of the website stated that she was an “unapologetic conservative” and claimed that Collier County children’s futures are “being sold out to big government bureaucrats who want to indoctrinate, not educate; career politicians who want to teach them what to think, not how to think.” She wanted to put “parents in classrooms, not the liberal elite” and “restore greatness to the American classroom.”

Pamela Cunningham. (Photo: Author)

In a recent campaign newsletter Cunningham targeted two Collier County parents who had received awards for their volunteer work from Naples Pride, a volunteer-based grassroots nonprofit organization supporting the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and questioning community.

Megan Titcomb and Amy Perwein had posted a photo of themselves holding awards to their Facebook page.

In a recent campaign newsletter Cunningham targeted two Collier County parents who had received awards for their volunteer work from Naples Pride, a volunteer-based grassroots nonprofit organization supporting the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and questioning community. Megan Titcomb and Amy Perwein had posted a photo of themselves holding awards to their Facebook page.

Megan Titcomb and Amy Perwein display their Naples Pride awards in the photo used by Pam Cunningham. (Image: WINK News)

Cunningham used the photo in her campaign newsletter, stating “my opponent and her supporters on the radical left are fighting to fundamentally transform our schools into centers of progressive indoctrination, meanwhile allowing true education to wither.”

Both women were outraged and alarmed by the newsletter and reached out to local media.

“Naples Pride has no affiliation with Collier County public schools,” Titcomb told Naples Daily News reporter Ellessandra Taormino. “The event where the picture was taken was not a school event, and it most certainty had nothing to do with Pam’s opponent, Stephanie Lucarelli.”

“I do not post often on social media and rarely publicly, but I could not remain silent,” Perwien said. “I spoke out because I do not want any other parents to be put in this situation; I sincerely hope that Cunningham reconsiders her campaign tactics.”

Cunningham belatedly responded to the parents in an interview with WINK TV’s Jillian Haggerty.

Of the two women, she said: “One of them was at the Naples Pride Fest this year on stage making a speech specifically naming me and my platform and asking the people at the Pride Fest to get out to vote for School Board.”

She said the two weren’t just ordinary parents but were “left-wing activists and are active volunteers for my opponent’s campaign.” Cunningham said she was sent the photos by another party, whom she did not name.

Titcomb and Perwein told WINK TV that they had filed an incident report with the Collier County Sheriff’s Department.

Cunningham’s action sparked a furious backlash in the community as reflected in letters to the editor in the Naples Daily News.

“In political contests these days, many of us believe in the phrase, ‘When they go low, we go high,”’ wrote one county resident, Lisa Freund, in a letter. “Well, in this year’s school board election, incumbent Stephanie Lucarelli’s opponent Pam Cunningham has gone lower than low in attacking two friends of mine who are parents and community advocates for equality and education, all in the service of advancing her candidacy. Attacking parents who work with and for the children of CCPS is no way to run an election campaign.”

Analysis: Don’t trust and be sure to verify

As the campaigning clock ticks down to primary Election Day, it seems clear that MAGA REC Republicans are on the defensive and increasingly relying on outright falsehoods, innuendo, intimidation and insults to achieve their ends since a significant, perhaps majority, of county Republicans are rejecting them.

This was put very clearly by PAC Republicans when they issued their own endorsements on June 27 and stated: “While Collier County enjoys competent local governance, replacing experienced officials with angry, inexperienced individuals to address national issues could undermine our community’s standards.” They also rejected the REC’s “authoritarian stance”—i.e., its insistence that Republicans vote only for REC-backed candidates.

This is not the first pushback against REC dictates. In May 2023 School Board Chair Kelly Mason (formerly Lichter), whose election had been supported by Oakes and his CAN PAC, voted to install Leslie Ricciardelli as school superintendent despite Oakes’ opposition. He called her a “traitor” for her vote and sued the school board. This year, the Collier First PAC, whose registered agent is Lauren Maxwell, wife of Commissioner Kowal who was elected with Oakes’ endorsement and support, is supporting Guerrette for Supervisor despite the Oakes endorsement of Schaffel.

The REC is clearly basing its endorsements on loyalty to MAGA ideology rather than proven competence, experience or education. As Oakes put it on the Alfiespatriots.com website and in campaign flyers: “These are the only true patriots I trust to protect Collier County and get America back on track.”

Oakes’ pursuit of ideological loyalty overrides all other considerations and he most directly stated this at his Patriot Fest on March 19, 2022 when he told the assembled crowd: “I don’t want to hear about what IQ someone has or what level of education someone has,” when it came to candidate qualifications. “Common sense and some back is all we need right now.”

In the 2022 election cycle, ideologically loyal candidates were elected: Chris Hall on the Collier County Board of Commissioners in District 2, Dan Kowal in District 4 and Kelly Mason, Jerry Rutherford and Tim Moshier on the School Board.

The result has been a flurry of ideologically-driven legislation from the Board of Commissioners, introduction of religion into the deliberations of the School Board and a variety of outlandish and bizarre notions like introducing corporal punishment in the schools.

Now the REC is trying to further install inexperienced, ideologically-driven candidates in positions that could deeply disrupt the effective functioning of Collier County government, elections and schools.

The use of false allegations, innuendo, intimidation and insults appears to be a reflection of a growing desperation by the MAGA-dominated REC. It’s very unsophisticated campaigning that seems impulsive, emotional and even childish.

It also imitates tactics debuted by Republican nominee Donald Trump in the past.

However, while these were novel tactics when Trump used them in his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, this year traditional conservative Collier County Republicans appear to be rejecting them at the local level. This rejection may also reflect simple weariness with the constant barrage of lies, paranoia and authoritarianism that has come to characterize MAGAism.

Ultimately, primary voters will have to exercise rigorous skepticism, discernment and alertness in trying to determine the truth of the candidates, their statements, policies and endorsements. And of course, the real test of the contest between truth and falsehood, and the strength of MAGAs versus traditional Republicans, will be rendered at the ballot box on Aug. 20.

Liberty lives in light

© 2024 by David Silverberg

(Illustration: Anthony Russo)

Project 2025 would end federal flood insurance, devastate Southwest Florida and coastal communities

Florida National Guardsmen evacuate flood victims in Arcadia, Fla., in the wake of Hurricane Ian on Oct. 3, 2022. (Photo: US Army/Spc. Samuel Herman)

July 7, 2024 by David Silverberg

Project 2025, a blueprint for post-election decisionmaking in a second Donald Trump administration, is recommending termination of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

All of Southwest Florida and its residents rely extensively on NFIP for affordable insurance in the face of events like hurricanes, storm surge and flooding.

“The NFIP should be wound down and replaced with private insurance starting with the least risky areas currently identified by the program,” states Project 2025.

It’s a radical proposal that could have a devastating fiscal impact on Southwest Floridians.

A quick primer on Project 2025

Project 2025 is a sweeping, 887-page tome of recommendations for presidential and legislative changes to be made under a conservative president, in this case, upon the election of Donald Trump.

The Project is actually a continuation of an effort by the conservative, Washington, DC-based Heritage Foundation think-tank that began in 1981. Then, the Foundation published a book called Mandate for Leadership with conservative policy recommendations. These were largely adopted by President Ronald Reagan, who handed out the book at his first Cabinet meeting.

Since then, a Mandate has been published every four years.

Project 2025 is a continuation of the Mandate series, only broader, more comprehensive, more radical and entirely Trumpist. It has also expanded beyond just the book and policy recommendations to include recruitment of personnel, training for those people and a 180-day Playbook for immediate implementation should there be a change of administrations.

Because of the radical nature of its current recommendations and Trump’s avowed pursuit of retaliation, revenge and retribution, Project 2025 is getting much more attention than previous Mandates.

It is sweeping in that it includes a complete reorganization of the federal branch, installment of ideological loyalists in place of non-political civil servants and reorientation of government toward unchecked presidential rule.

A quick primer on the National Flood Insurance Program

In 1968 Congress passed the National Flood Insurance Act, spurred by losses in Florida and Louisiana caused by Hurricane Betsy and its storm surge. The bill was signed by President Lyndon Johnson and led to establishment of the NFIP to protect Americans from the financial hardships of flooding.

The program, which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), takes three forms.

One is mapping flooding risk along rivers and coasts. By 2018, the fiftieth year of the program, NFIP had mapped all of the nation’s populated areas, or 1.1 million miles. Among other things, these maps help mortgage lenders determine flood insurance requirements.

A second goal is to mitigate risk by supporting local flood prevention and management measures. The program’s managers estimated this saves the country over $1.6 billion each year in flood losses.

The third pillar—and the one closest to everyday property owners in Southwest Florida and across the country—protects insurance policyholders from financial flood losses. In 2018, 5 million people held NFIP policies in 22,000 communities across the country.

Under NFIP, homeowners who meet its requirements can get flood insurance for most buildings and dwellings of all sorts, including condominiums, mobile homes on foundations, rental units and more. Policyholders are charged lower than market rates to make it affordable. Many commercial insurers don’t offer flood insurance and NFIP is the only option.

While homeowners are not required to purchase the insurance, some federally-backed mortgages require it if the building is in a Special Flood Hazard Area—places especially prone to flooding.

Given Florida’s susceptibility to storms, its flat terrain and its extensive coastline along the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, NFIP is crucial to protecting Floridians and making life affordable.

In Southwest Florida, the City of Naples and Everglades City joined NFIP in 1970. Charlotte County joined in 1971. Collier County followed in 1979. Lee County joined in 1984 when it did its first flood insurance study and created maps to establish flood zones and determine elevations. Today, there are 51,103 NFIP policyholders in Lee County (statistics are unavailable for Collier and Charlotte counties).

Participation in the program “is crucial for coastal communities such as Lee County because most standard homeowner’s insurance policies do not cover flood damage, and without access to NFIP coverage, property owners would have to bear the full financial burden of flood-related losses or pay higher premiums from private insurers,” states the Lee County website.

Project 2025 versus NFIP

Project 2025 has no use for NFIP.

In its chapter on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), it deals with FEMA and dismisses NFIP in a single paragraph on page 153:

“FEMA is also responsible for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), nearly all of which is issued by the federal government. Washington provides insurance at prices lower than the actuarially fair rate, thereby subsidizing flood insurance. Then, when flood costs exceed NFIP’s revenue, FEMA seeks taxpayer-funded bailouts. Current NFIP debt is $20.5 billion, and in 2017, Congress canceled $16 billion in debt when FEMA reached its borrowing authority limit. These subsidies and bailouts only encourage more development in flood zones, increasing the potential losses to both NFIP and the taxpayer. The NFIP should be wound down and replaced with private insurance starting with the least risky areas currently identified by the program.”

Project 2025 has numerous authors and, as Edwin Feulner, founder of the Heritage Foundation, is proud to point out in an afterword, it draws on the expertise of 360 experts and 50 organizations. The recommendation to terminate NFIP is under the byline of Ken Cuccinelli.

Cuccinelli has long been known as an ideological extremist. He ran for governor of Virginia in 2013, losing to Democrat Terry McAuliffe. He had a tempestuous tenure as Virginia’s attorney general from 2010 to 2014 where he denied climate change and fought research into it, even launching an investigation of a climate scientist whom he accused of fraud for his scientific conclusions. In this case, Cuccinelli was rebuffed by the Virginia Supreme Court.

He’s an anti-immigration hardliner who has advocated repeal of birthright citizenship. Under Trump he was appointed acting director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services directorate of DHS. However, his appointment was disputed and resulted in suspension of all his directives. At the same time he was appointed acting deputy secretary of DHS but this too was determined to be improper by the Government Accountability Office. He was the subject of whistleblower complaints for his decisions regarding handling DHS intelligence.

After Trump’s departure from office, Cuccinelli joined the Heritage Foundation as a visiting fellow and last year in Florida he launched the Never Back Down Political Action Committee on behalf of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid.

Analysis: A fiscal fiasco

Termination of NFIP would be as fiscally catastrophic for Southwest Florida as the worst, most destructive hurricane—in fact, much worse. It’s not enough that Florida is facing an insurance crisis anyway—this would dump yet another cascade of woe and expense on homeowners.

It would immediately impoverish existing homeowners who wouldn’t be able to afford commercial flood insurance—if companies even offered it. More than likely, most would have to leave the state for less expensive areas.

It would create two classes of Floridians: the uninsured and the ultra-rich. The uninsured would be wiped out every time there was a storm or flooding event because they would have no backstop or support. The ultra-rich, already paying high premiums for property insurance, would be the only ones able to afford what would be staggering flood premiums at commercial rates. Not even the merely wealthy would be able to keep up.

Flood insurance for Southwest Florida’s most flood-prone areas, its barrier islands like Gasparilla, Pine, Captiva and Sanibel, would be astronomical. Rates for property on larger islands like Estero and Marco would hardly be better.

This would come amidst the ravages of climate change, which is incontrovertibly causing more frequent and intense storms, greater storm surge, sea level rise, tidal inundation and more frequent flooding—and nowhere is this truer than in Florida, which is perhaps the most climatically vulnerable state in the union.

Lee County is already in a crisis because it failed to meet FEMA requirements for permitted rebuilding after Hurricane Ian and faced the loss of its discount under the Community Rating System. That’s a FEMA program providing discounts on flood insurance premiums to communities that exceed NFIP minimum requirements.

Without the discount, affected homeowners are looking at hikes of $300 to $500 in their insurance bills. Potential loss of the discount has caused distress, fear and anger among Lee County property owners and officials.

NOW IMAGINE THE COST IF THERE IS NO FEDERAL FLOOD INSURANCE AT ALL! THAT’S WHAT PROJECT 2025 IS PROPOSING.

This disaster wouldn’t just affect Southwest Florida: the end of NFIP would hit every community on every body of water that could flood: oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, even canals. Even places inland and as landlocked as South Dakota, Nebraska, Arizona and New Mexico would be affected.

In 2018 FEMA estimated that 13 million Americans lived in flood zones. However, that same year a study, “Estimates of present and future flood risk in the conterminous United States,” by seven scientists called the FEMA estimates too low. They put the number at 41 million. That has probably risen in the years since and is expected to rise even further in the years ahead.

The scientists also noted that “…It is evident that the absolute value of assets on the Floridian floodplain is also particularly high at $714 billion: Florida is thus a hotspot of flood exposure.”

Imagine over 40 million Americans stripped of access to affordable, government-backed flood insurance as Project 2025 envisions.

Project 2025 is scornful of NFIP’s “subsidies and bailouts” that “only encourage more development in flood zones, increasing the potential losses to both NFIP and the taxpayer.”

However, there’s another way of looking at this: NFIP policyholders are getting the benefit of the tax dollars that they paid to the US Treasury.

It always needs to be remembered that taxes aren’t a one-way street. The taxpayer puts money into the national treasury—but the taxpayer also gets benefits from the taxes he or she paid and those benefits take many different forms.

In this case, taxpayers living in flood zones get the benefit of their tax dollars in the form of subsidized federal flood insurance at lower than commercial rates. It isn’t a handout or a bailout; it’s a purchase made through taxes.

As for encouraging building in flood zones, as Lee County residents have discovered, FEMA is very strict and alert to building and construction in flood plains and communities participating in NFIP have to rigorously adhere to FEMA standards.

Rather than encouraging unregulated building, NFIP provides an incentive for communities and individuals to prepare for climate change, build resilience, strengthen homes and adhere to firm standards.

Commentary: The consequences of Project 2025

In the past, presidents and political parties didn’t rely out outside entities like Project 2025 for these kinds of sweeping proposals. Instead, they laid out their ideas for the entire electorate to see in the party platforms that they adopted through consensus and party input at their national political conventions.

In 2020 the Republican Party surrendered its political platform to Donald Trump, not bothering to adopt a set of proposals from Party members as it had in the past. Instead it stated that “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” It adjourned without adopting a new platform “until the 2024 Republican National Convention.”

In the absence of a Party platform, there is Project 2025 to provide the world with a roadmap of Republican intentions.

As alarm has spread over the Project’s recommendations, Trump has disavowed any knowledge or awareness of it.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” he posted on his Truth Social platform on July 5. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

However, as Edwin Feulner noted in his afterword to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation Mandates have had Trump’s attention since 2016. That one “earned significant attention from the Trump Administration, as Heritage had accumulated a backlog of conservative ideas that had been blocked by President Barack Obama and his team.”

Feulner continued: “Soon after President Donald Trump was sworn in, his Administration began to implement major parts of the 2016 Mandate. After his first year in office, the Administration had implemented 64 percent of its policy recommendations.”

Since it’s safe to say that Trump lies with every breath he takes, his protestations of ignorance of Project 2025 and its origins ring hollow. Furthermore, since his word is worthless, so is any pledge he makes not to implement Project 2025.

Even if Trump has not or will not read all 887 pages (hard to imagine him reading anything longer than an X posting!), his cultists will be looking to Project 2025 for guidance if he’s elected. In keeping with the Heritage plan, they’ll seek to implement its proposals in the first 180 days of his administration, many through executive action.

This article looks at just one small slice of Project 2025 that directly affects Southwest Florida. But if implemented as a whole, Project 2025 will be a disaster for all of America. Coupled with the total presidential immunity just granted by the Supreme Court, it will result in a radical reordering of the United States and American society. It’s a roadmap aimed at enabling a total dictatorship of unchecked power enforced by advanced technologies. Or as Winston Churchill put it when speaking of the Nazis, “all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

The world knows America is at an inflection point. The battle is on between democracy and dictatorship. Project 2025 makes clear what’s at stake—for every Southwest Floridian and every American citizen.

This is the first in an occasional series of articles examining the implications of Project 2025 for Southwest Florida and the nation.

Liberty lives in light

© 2024 by David Silverberg

Collier County, Fla., Republican PAC breaks with Alfie Oakes and Party Exec Committee; cites ‘authoritarian stance,’ slams ‘angry, inexperienced individuals’

Alfie Oakes at his re-election announcement on April 4 at his restaurant, Food & Thought 2.

June 30, 2024 by David Silverberg

Two powerful groups within the Collier County Republican Party have taken opposing stands on the future of the local Party, endorsing very different slates of candidates for local positions in the Aug. 20 primary election.

In a break with past practice, the Collier County Citizens Values Political Action Committee (CCCVPAC, referred to here as the PAC) has chosen to make endorsements rather than rate candidates as it has in the past.

Many of these endorsements are at odds with those of the Collier County Republican Executive Committee (CCREC, referred here as REC), the official county body of the Republican Party of Florida.

The REC is dominated by Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, a local grocer, farmer and extreme political activist and Donald Trump supporter.

“The local Republican Executive Committee (CCREC) has adopted a more authoritarian stance, aiming to oust many current elected officials, revoke charters of established Republican clubs, and implement divisive tactics against those with differing opinions,” wrote Mike Lyster, the PAC’s endorsement chairman, in a mass e-mail sent out Thursday, June 27 and again today. “This approach has driven away many long-standing members and could deter potential candidates, ultimately weakening our conservative representation.”

Mike Lyster (Photo: CCCVPAC)

The PAC “consists of dedicated, long-standing Republicans, including three former Republican Party chairmen and representatives from the five Collier County Republican Clubs active last year,” according to Lyster.

In response to what it perceived as the authoritarianism and lack of qualifications of the REC candidates, the PAC made its own endorsements to offer “conservative voters an alternative perspective that may differ from the CCREC. It’s important to note that the CCREC represents only a small fraction of Collier County Republicans.”

He continued: “While Collier County enjoys competent local governance, replacing experienced officials with angry, inexperienced individuals to address national issues could undermine our community’s standards.”

Chief differences between the PAC and the Executive Committee include the PAC’s endorsement of Melissa Blazier for county Supervisor of Elections over the REC’s endorsement of David Schaffel.

On the county School Board, the PAC endorsed Stephanie Lucarelli for District 2 and Erick Carter for District 4 in contrast to the REC’s endorsement of Pamela Cunningham and Tom Henning.

The PAC endorsed Vickie Downs for county Property Appraiser while the REC endorsed Jim Molenaar.

The PAC is also endorsing Douglas Rankin for state Committeeman. “We see Doug as the best opportunity to bring reason to the local party and lessen the deep divisions and rancor that currently exists locally, and also at the state and federal levels,” Lyster wrote.

Rankin served in the office from 2008 to 2020 when he was ousted by Oakes for being insufficiently pro-Trump. Oakes had intended to run for re-election to be state committeeman this year but was disqualified when he failed to file his candidate qualification forms on time.

During Oakes’ service he was criticized for missing numerous meetings. In contrast, Lyster pointedly noted that Rankin “never missed a meeting during his years of service.”

The PAC is endorsing Burt Saunders for county commission in District 3. “He stands head and shoulders above his Republican opponents,” wrote Lyster. The REC has not posted an endorsement for that seat.

It did, however, endorse Rick LoCastro for commissioner in District 1. Both groups endorsed William McDaniel for county commissioner in District 5.

The PAC also endorsed JoAnn DeBartolo for state committeewoman and Kristina Heuser for state committeewoman. Clarification from earlier reporting: Kristina Heuser was personally endorsed by Alfie Oakes, not the Collier County Republican Executive Committee.

In addition to these endorsements, the PAC endorsed:

  • Yvette Benarroch for representative, Florida House District 81;
  • Erik Leontiev for 20th Judicial Circuit Court Group 6;
  • Elizabeth Krier for 20th Judicial Circuit Court Group 28.

To receive a PAC endorsement, candidates had to receive a 60 percent vote of its members.

Efforts to reach Oakes for comment had not received a response at publication time.

Liberty lives in light

© 2024 by David Silverberg