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In the 2022 Sumter County commission race, two camps of Republicans have unmistakably emerged: One that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Gov. Ron DeSantis, and one thats sharpening a knife for his back.

The line has been clearly drawn by four men with an R next to their name on the ballot but an anti-GOP agenda in their pocket.

The objective: oust DeSantis appointees and reverse his economic policies.

Spitting in the eye of a governor with a 59% approval rating in a state in which only 49% of voters are Republican is a gutsy gambit for Reed Panos, Andrew Billardello, Jeff Bogue, and Daniel Myslakowski.

But the squad, running in districts 1, 2, 4 and 5 respectively, is doubling down.

Theyve united under the banner of Panos political action committee, whichpromises a one-two punch:

One:unseat DeSantis appointed commissioners, even though theyve won praise from the Sumter County Republican Party Executive Committee.

Two: undo DeSantis law protecting new businesses from uncapped impact fee hikes, even though it was supported by 100% of GOP senators and 97% of GOP house members.

(The law was opposed by 100% of Democratic leaders along with Panos PAC.)

So why are Panos picks, who are so obviously misaligned with GOP party leadership, even running as Republicans?

Because its the only way to win.

Registered Republicans in Sumter County outnumber Democrats more than 2-to-1, and the number of non-party affiliated voters is too small to close the gap.

No commission candidates are running as Democrats, and no endorsements are coming from the Sumter County Democratic Party Executive Committee, said Chairman Bob Berg.

The only way to get a seat at this commissions table is to convince Republicans you belong there.

Thats not going to be easy for Panos posse.

Republicans who backed his prior crew are still feeling the burn from a disastrous year of scandal and political embarrassment.

Panos, 67, a CDD 5 supervisor and retired Air Force surgeon, is the operative who brought 2020 commissioners Gary Search and Oren Miller together.

Search, whose first political win was on a Democrat ballot, and Miller, a failed Democratic candidate for the Florida House, wooed voters with a promise of a 25% property tax rate cut.

Instead, theyspiked the countys annual spending by 25%;championed failed tax increases;moved to restrict voting rights;botched a hospital deal; advanceda $4 million animal center while bungling ambulance funding;got arrested in a criminal probe and were suspended from office facing a felony

perjury charge.

All within one year.

Now, Panos wants DeSantis replacements for Search and Miller out.

The better people for their job, he says, are himself and an ex-Democratwhos done jail time for assault.

Panos PAC claims to be independent of Search and Miller since the completion of the 2020 election.

However, in January, Panos pleaded for public donations to the mens legal defense.

In March, he sat with their supporters in a Marion County courtroom.

This month, hes defended the men invoter forums and been publicly endorsed by Millers wife.

Last week, Panos told Villagers for Trump that I have no interest in Democrats.

He must have thought none of them had seen an email he sent to random voters promoting his picks. It ends with a plea to please forward this email to non-Republicans in SumterCounty.

In PanosLand, the real dirty politician is DeSantis.

According to Panos conspiracy theory, Search and Miller are innocent of lying under oath to investigators.

He claims that DeSantis and the state attorney are colluding in an orchestrated effort with big business donors to punish Search and Miller for trying to raise road impact fees.

In fact, at least five other counties raised their road impact fees in 2021 and yet none of their commissioners were arrested.

That includes Orange County, which almost tripled road impact fees on all new and expanding businesses.

That wasnt exactly great news for DeSantis donors like the Walt Disney Co. that had just given him $100,000 and yet no Orange County commissioners were arrested.

The rest of Panos2022 slate has its work cut out for it, too.

Billardello, 65, a CDD 12 supervisor, Air Force veteran and retired police chief, doesnt live in the district he is running to represent, as would be required if he is elected.

Bogue, 57, an EMS director at Advent Health near Tampa, has been vocal about abolishing what I call the parochial view of keeping The Villages fire department. His position is at odds with DeSantis, whosupports the agencys bid to start operating outside of county control.

Myslakowski, 70, formerly served as a Democrat member of the Macomb County Commission in Michigan and in 2011 pleaded guilty to assault and battery in a case in which the victim was a police officer.

Crossing swords with DeSantis just doesnt make sense for anyone who wants Republicans to take themseriously in Sumter.

The governor is wildly popular here. He won 69.6% of Sumter Countys vote, compared to 49.6% statewide.

Less than 33,000 votes made the difference in that nailbiter race, and Sumter gave him 51,978.

Since taking office, hes visited Sumter County at least 14 times, praisingit as a vitaleconomic engine.

His policies work.

Even post-pandemic, Floridas unemployment rate of 3.2% has remained below the nations for the past 16 months.

And its private sector job growth has exceeded the nations every month for the past year.

DeSantis is the GOPs hottest rising star, a presidential front-runner whoseclout is swelling nationwide:

In February, attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference said that without former President Donald Trump on the ballot, DeSantis would win 61% of their vote. (With Trump on the ballot, DeSantis snagged 28% while no one else cracked2%.)

Also in February, a Suffolk University/USA Today poll projected that DeSantis would take 52% of Florida in a matchup against President Joe Bidens 44%. That was better than Trumps 47%.

In May, DeSantis beat Trump in a straw poll of Wisconsin Republicans with 38% to Trumps 32%. No other candidate reached double figures.

Two weeks ago, DeSantis won 71% of the vote to Trumps 67% in a straw poll taken during the Western Conservative Summit in Denver. Its the second year in a row he was picked over Trump.

Lastweek, DeSantis edged past Trump in a poll of likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters as their first choice for president in 2024.

DeSantis, an overwhelming favorite for reelection, already has raised more than $100 million.

Thats a record-setting pace for a single election cycle in Florida.

Its the kind of shine that any real Republican would want to share.

Not the Panos pack.

They still prefer the shade.

The Daily Sun welcomes your letters to the editor on local issues written in the spirit of civil discourse, and we will publish them on Sundays as space allows.

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In the 2022 Sumter County commission race, two camps of Republicans have unmistakably emerged - The Villages Daily Sun

Representative David Valadao, a Republican running in a strongly Democratic district in Californias Central Valley, will face off in November with his strongest challenger yet after primary voters gave the Republican and Democratic establishments the candidates they wanted.

Mr. Valadao, whose victory was called by The Associated Press weeks after the June 7 primary, is one of the most endangered House Republicans in the country.

He voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, then laid low and largely escaped Mr. Trumps wrath. He attracted two Republican primary challengers Chris Mathys, who ran as a pro-Trump voice, and Adam Madeiros, who campaigned as a traditional pro-agriculture conservative in the Central Valley.

Mr. Valadaos Democratic challenger Rudy Salas, a five-term assemblyman who is a popular fixture in the Fresno area cleared the Democratic field the night of the primary in a district whose lines shifted in his favor, away from the outskirts of conservative Bakersfield.

In the end, Mr. Valadaos two Republican rivals, Mr. Mathys and Mr. Madeiros, seemed to have split the anti-Valadao vote. That cleared the way for the strongest candidates to compete in one of the Democrats few pickup opportunities in the House in November.

Read the rest here:
In California, a Republican congressman who voted to impeach Trump survives his primary. - The New York Times

To the editor: On Jan. 6, 2021, as the insurrection mounted outside, the voting in Congress on whether to certify the 2020 election brought to mind the movie Judgment at Nuremberg. (These California congressmen betrayed voters on Jan. 6, editorial, June 22)

In one scene, a respected German jurist on trial for his role in the Nazi horrors of World War II tells the American judge on the tribunal that he thought he could thwart what was happening in his country by remaining as a judge in the system, and that I never knew it would come to that.

The American judge answers, It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.

On Jan. 6, 147 Republican representatives (seven from California) voted to object to an election they knew to be free and fair. Then a month later, 43 senators voted to acquit a man they knew to be guilty. They empowered the Big Lie and the liar.

Today, as we watch the purge of Republicans willing to tell the truth, we now know that the threat is ongoing. These Republicans have failed to understand the dangerous moment we are in and the role they are playing. But I pray that the voters will not fail to vote out these compromised lawmakers.

Mari Bukofsky, Laguna Beach

..

To the editor: Your editorial, Texas GOP platform betrays historical Texan and Republican values, was relatively kind to the Texas Republicans who proposed a dazzlingly fanatical agenda for their party.

Their platform is a bigoted, racist, homophobic, theocratic rejection of our country, our president, voters of color, the LGBTQ community and those who do not embrace their dogma.

They booed their own Republican senator, John Cornyn, who has served their state and their party for 20 years, because he dared to work with Democrats on gun safety. They apparently reject any form of compromise.

These delegates are the antithesis of American values. They cloak themselves in their belief in God, the Constitution and our founding fathers. Nonetheless, they have declared that we do not have a legitimate president. This means they do not recognize the United States government as theirs.

These are not patriots with allegiance to our country. These are hypocrites who would propose undermining the United States by seceding.

Forgive me for agreeing with those who say good riddance.

William Goldman, Palos Verdes Estates

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Republicans are voting to end democracy, and they know it - Los Angeles Times

On a recent outing my wife and I took in a touring exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution titled Righting a Wrong. Within the modest confines of a single room at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul, the exhibit conveyed an epic tragedy: the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants as suspected traitors during World War II.

The exhibit made clear that not one such person was ever proved to be disloyal. To the contrary, more than 30,000 Japanese Americans served in the U.S. military during the war. Those who remained inmates in our countrys de facto concentration camps formed communities with their own newspapers, sports teams and arts programs.

The national disgrace of Japanese incarceration has long been acknowledged through bipartisan consensus. In 1976 the Republican President Ford revoked Franklin D. Roosevelts executive order that had authorized the wartime imprisonment. Twelve years later, an even more conservative Republican president, Ronald Reagan, signed into law a bill authorizing reparations payments to the 60,000 formerly incarcerated people of Japanese descent who were still alive. One of the displays in the Smithsonian exhibit quotes Reagan at the signing ceremony:

Yet no payment can make up for those lost years. So, what is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor. For here we admit a wrong; here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under law.

Given these formal acts of contrition one might be forgiven for believing that the injustice of Japanese incarceration in America is settled history. Some of us, after all, are convinced that the immorality and treason of the Confederacy and its slave system is also beyond rational debate.

But earlier this month a small school district in Wisconsin delivered the latest example of two interwoven threats to history: the purging of books that dare to gaze critically into the American experience and the mobilization of right-wing zealots on local school boards.

On June 13, a school board committee in the Muskego-Norway district in the exurbs of Milwaukee turned down a request from educators there to teach Julie Otsukas novel about the Japanese incarceration in an advanced-placement English class for 10th-graders. The reasons largely boiled down to complaints that the book, When the Emperor Was Divine, is not even-handed. That excuse brings to my mind an observation from the Holocaust survivor, novelist and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, Neutrality helps the oppressor. Never the victim.

As it happens, I am deeply familiar with Otsukas book. I wrote about it in 2005, in a column about high school English teachers studying the book. What I knew then has become even truer since. When the Emperor Was Divine is widely adopted by schools for much the same reason as books such as To Kill A Mockingbird are taught it is a literarily luminous work that forces readers to confront bigotry and unjustness.

Far from distorting or exaggerating truth to make her points, Otsuka built the book from the experiences of her mother, uncle and maternal grandparents having been incarcerated. Her research is so exemplary that I have assigned the novel several times to my graduate students at Columbia Journalism School.

Now, however, Otsukas book itself has become a captive of efforts by the Republican Party to literally and figuratively whitewash American history and literature. The effort began to gather force two years ago with the introduction and passage of state laws banning the use of the 1619 Project, an award-winning collection of articles and essays reassessing American history, economics, public health, transportation and other subjects through the lens of Black enslavement and Jim Crow.

That certain legitimate historians intellectually sparred with the projects creator fell well within the norms of scholarly discourse. The statewide bans were something else entirely, an effort at eradication. Those laws anticipated the more recent ones outlawing instruction in Critical Race Theory, by which right-wing activists essentially mean anything about racism that might cause a student to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress, as Floridas recent legislation, often referred to as the Stop WOKE Act, put it.

The censorship is coming so fast that its nearly impossible to keep track. Between last July 21 and March 31, PEN America counted 1,586 banned books in schools serving about 2 million students. Overwhelmingly, the banned books featured nonwhite protagonists, dealt with racism, or addressed the LGBTQ experience.

Back in the Muskego-Norway district, hundreds of residents have petitioned for the school board to reverse its ban on Julie Otsukas book. They might want to cite the recent words LeVar Burton, beloved host of Reading Rainbow: Read the books theyre banning. Thats where the good stuff is. If they dont want you to read it, theres a reason why.

Samuel G. Freedman is the author of nine books and currently at work on his 10th, about Hubert Humphrey and civil rights.

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Op-Ed: Republicans are banning books about historical truths their own leaders have apologized for - Los Angeles Times

Leonard Pitts, Jr.

ABC News thought it was in the words of George Stephanopoulos too ugly and too dangerous and declined to show it on air. So Rep. Adam Kinzinger tweeted it Sunday night, letting us all see the threatening letter that recently came to his wife. Sofia, at the home where they live with Christian, their 5-month-old son.

It greets her with a profane sexual slur. Then it gets worse:

That pimp you married not only broke his oath, he sold his soul. Yours and Christians too! Adams activities have hurt not only this country, but countless patriotic and God-fearing families. Therefore, though it might take time, he will be executed. But dont worry! You and Christian will be joining Adam in hell too!

Asked by Stephanopoulos about the threat Sunday on ABCs This Week, Kinzinger had an ominous reply. Given this countrys trajectory, he said, There is violence in the future.

But truth is, violence the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump is the only reason many of us even know Kinzingers name. The Illinois congressman is one of just two Republicans Rep. Liz Cheney is the other who had the moral fortitude to serve on the House committee investigating that attempted coup. Hence, the threats from fellow Republicans.

The 2017 shooting of GOP Rep. Steve Scalise and four others and the arrest this month of a man who allegedly sought to murder conservative Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh foreclose any claim that violence is unique to the political right. No, violence remains, as H. Rap Brown said in 1967, as American as cherry pie.

But the embrace of violence, the cultivation of violence, the tacit encouragement of violence, have become, distinctively and disturbingly, Republican staples. So Jan. 6 was no accident. To the contrary, its what youd expect from a party that endorses guns as a remedy for political disagreements, one whose leader explicitly encourages and condones thuggery, one where seemingly every candidate for office runs a TV spot co-starring a firearm. Indeed, former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens is seeking a Senate seat with an ad that shows him wielding a long gun alongside a team in tactical gear as they breach a house. Today, were goin RINO hunting, he says.

Story continues

The acronym stands for Republican In Name Only which is, not incidentally, what Republicans like Greitens call Republicans like Kinzinger. The ad appeared online the day after Kinzinger revealed the threats against his family.

This is now our norm. Republicans no longer talk policy or ideas. Republicans only threaten.

Isaac Asimov famously called violence the last refuge of the incompetent. But violence self-defense excepted is also the last refuge of the loser, the last gasp of those who have no more words, the tacit confession of those who know, but are loathe to admit, that they got nothin. If you cant win the argument, win the fight. A mantra for thugs, bully boys and other Republicans.

There is violence in the future, said Kinzinger. And it felt not unlike someone saying, There is a storm in the future, as rain pelts the window and lawn furniture goes skittering across the yard.

Yes, things could get much worse. They are, however, already quite bad. One of our two major political parties is a threat to the very nation. And absent a dramatic course correction, it seems likely dissolution is in the future, pain is in the future, regret is in the future.

But violence? Thats already here.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Republicans are the threat using violence as easily as talking points

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Republicans are the threat - Yahoo News