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Our picks: Josh Johnson, Kristin Dozier, David O’Keefe

Candidate Recommendation Cheat Sheet:

Mayor: Kristen Dozier

County Commission: Josh Johnson (at-large Group 2), David O’Keefe (District 5), No Vote (District 2)

School Board:  Alex Stemle (District 4)

After the resounding reelection of reformer Jeremy Matlow to the Tallahassee city commission in the August primaries, the November general election promises to add gains to local government in areas like accountability, transparency, and, well, just good, balanced policy decisions. For that to happen, the old guard needs to be repudiated at the polls—and in the process weaken and in some cases break the webs of special interest that unfortunately have had undue influence over this city for too long. Specifically, this means voting Mayor Dailey out of office, along with Nick Maddox at the county commissioner level.

As we noted in our August voter’s guide, regardless of how you feel about issues like no-bid sales of public land, the pathological way our mayor has gone out of his way to avoid instituting true ethics reforms, and similar issues, we feel it’s important to have special interests as far removed from decisions affecting communities as possible. Similarly, we think that good governance and responsible management of our abundant natural resources requires elected officials with as few conflicts of interest as possible.

With all of that in mind, here are our final picks in the local Tallahassee/Leon County elections, with our opinion on one stinker of race outside of our district also given. At the state level, there are no Republicans running for office who have shown the ability to jettison politics for good policy and commonsense, so we recommend voting for the Democratic candidates all the way down the slate. �� Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

School Board—A Pivotal Race

In District 4, Laurie Lawson Cox is a rightwing extremist who would do immeasurable harm to many of the students she purports to want to help—do not vote for her. We’re voting for as the best choice for the board: someone who is knowledgeable, reasonable, and for good policy. And, unlike Cox, Stemle has stated he has confidence in the outcome of the 2020 elections.

Tallahassee Mayor—Vote for

Kristin Dozier has served ably and well as a county commissioner. She has a vast amount of experience in addition to being a policy wonk. Dozier would restore a sense of balance to city politics and work toward greater accountability. Dozier would also bring back true civility to city government, which would allow for meaningful compromises. On the campaign trail, Dozier has shown an ability to gracefully but firmly rebuke Mayor Dailey for his negative campaigning, which also augers well for her mayorship.

Incumbent John Dailey has actively re-upped on the methods and outlook embodied by disgraced former mayor Scott Maddox while demonstrating an uncanny knack for finding photo ops; he often takes credit for the labor and ideas of others. Dailey has nurtured a lack of transparency in city government and given the city manager carte blanche to consolidate power in ways harmful to representative democracy—and even shut down meetings to avoid talking about real ethics reform. There are also questions of conflict of interest in his wife having Florida Power & Light as a client while Dailey takes meetings with Florida Power & Light (for reasons that have not been divulged)—not to mention the conflicts of interest inherent in his relationship with VanCore Jones. Several accounts of bullying businesswomen in the community should be taken seriously. There’s a reason Ruth’s List has pointedly endorsed his opponent.

County Commission Races—Vote for Josh Johnson and David O’Keefe

, At Large Group 2. Johnson pushes for sensible and community-oriented policies while opposing boondoggles like the millions of dollars in tax-payer money given to FSU for their stadium. Not only has Johnson run a smart campaign and put in the hard work going door-to-door to talk to voters, his background as an educator and his clarity about Tallahassee issues make him far and away the best candidate. He has deep ties to the community that he honors in both his conduct and his vision for the future.

Unfortunately, the incumbent, Nick Maddox, is backed by special interests and dismissed a sexual harassment charge against him in a debate as “a personal issue.�� This occurred at the Boys and Girls Club while he was serving there and he was dismissed from his service because of it–then lied about the reason in a recent debate. There are legitimate questions about Maddox’s character and his judgment—with alleged complaints about his behavior from several women.

, District 5. O’Keefe has a strong grasp of the issues, a strong fiscal responsibility background, and has been on point re the waste of taxpayer money on the FSU stadium. O’Keefe would be a sensible, policy-oriented voice on the county commission and we believe he would work well with other commissioners as well.

O’Keefe’s opponent, Paula Deboles-Johnson, has expressed support for Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on the grounds he’s been good for business. However, this stance really ignores the plight of workers trying to find affordable housing, the environmental cost, the healthcare costs of his indifference to Covid and a ton of other issues related to that support. She also, as a county employee, seems too wedded to supporting county staff decisions–that’s not what we need in a commissioner right now. We need checks and balances on unelected influencers across the board. That’s really supposed to be part of the job of a commissioner.

No Vote, District 2 Our “no vote�� is symbolic as we are not in District 2, but having two rightwing extremists vie for the county commission seat means we cannot recommend either candidate. That one, Christian Caban, is running as a Democrat doesn’t make the situation better: Why in any way support a cuckoo laying its egg in another bird’s nest? That the Leon County Democratic Party has gotten behind Caban demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. Rumors that Caban offered to pay for the LCDP’s voter’s guide and/or similar mailers just pours rancid milk into what’s already weak tea.

The Republican, Hannah Crow, is an extremist backed by the political hack Skip Foster who runs Hammerhead Communications and is behind the extremist political site 4TLH. He’s also a climate change denier and his mentorship of Crow and her unwillingness to step down from Hammerhead Communications if elected just underscore the ethical rot occurring in the  

The “Democrat,�� Christian Caban, is Grow Tallahassee’s selection and also supported by the Chamber of Commerce. His close relationship with developer Bugra Demeril, , is of special concern—as are his ties to other developers. Caban has bought his way into the conversation with no political experience and has switched political parties from Republican to Democrat seemingly for the cynical purpose of having a chance in this election.

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Is it unfair to blow up this city-credited photo of Dailey for this post? Well, it’s the kind of tactic he’s familiar with, so�� yes

Editorial �� Jeff VanderMeer

John E. Dailey has proven himself unfit to lead Tallahassee, in both his first term as mayor and in his negative campaigning for reelection. For many reasons, Tallahasseans should vote for his opponent, Kristin Dozier, in November—and send Dailey into political retirement.

If ever anyone embodied the institutional effects of , current Mayor John Dailey is that person. I do not say this lightly, nor do I say it with any satisfaction. I feel mostly sadness.

Yet it needs to be stated clearly and without prevarication: Convicted felon Scott Maddox helped create a system of institutionalized corruption that made our local government less transparent, less accountable, and less democratic in general. Mayor John Dailey now, with brazen self-aggrandizement, controls that government, either directly or through proxies like city manager Reese Goad. The consolidation of power and the fine-tuning of processes to make more of it occur out of the public eye hurts our communities and our future.

Mayor Dailey, far from confronting or trying to reform any of this instead puts his energy into efforts like exploiting technicalities to ensure vast taxpayer-funded entities like Blueprint lie outside of proper ethics oversight.

He meets with terrifying political entities like Florida Power & Light with nary a transcript of those conversations to be found, even as his wife notes that FP&L is a client.

He helps orchestrate the daylight robbery of $27 million in taxpayers�� money for FSU stadium refurbishments (a project of immaculate conception no one can find the origins of)�� and then, when FSU booster leadership lines the coffers of his campaign, Dailey indignantly responds for calls for him to return the contributions “voter suppression.��

He holds private meetings at his house to discuss divvying up one million dollars meant to combat gun violence—and at those meetings some of those blessed invitees just happen to be those who will help his reelection chances.

Perhaps it’s an old story, and only partially new to Tallahassee, but that doesn’t make the story any less despicable, and the characters involved any less accountable for their actions.

Meanwhile, in his reelection campaign, Dailey has engaged in the kind of Orwellian doublespeak we expect from far-right Republicans. In short, Dailey toots his own horn to proclaim that his shortcoming are his strengths. The sound may at times be shrill and unconvincing, but the optics are slick.

When he had the chance to close ethics loopholes, Dailey chose the opposite route—and in the ways he did so, he wasted the time of a lot of honest people trying to do the right thing. Yet his campaign ads tout his strong support for ethics rules.

When our chief of police spoke at a conference sponsored by hatemongers who would transition the LGBTQ+ community out of existence and says his first job is to spread the word of Christ�� our mayor defended him. Yet Dailey in his campaign ads crows about his support for that same community and points to a “LGBTQ+ friendly�� rating of 100% from an organization that uses as its metric asking the city how it’s doing and taking their word for it.

Well, yes, that’s what campaign ads are, I’m told. But rarely has the distance between reality and fantasy been so disturbing and rarely has a candidate been able to get away with such vagueness without being called to account on specifics.

The mayor also likes to take credit for other people’s initiatives and for majority votes in these ads. In which case, as our purported leader on the city commission and the swing vote, he should also run ads taking credit for destroying our burn ordinance, for destroying a responsible tree-trimming ordinance, for destroying our urban canopy through approving terrible development projects�� for any number of razor-thin votes where he could have risen above partisan politics, above his own interests and the special interests backing him�� and done the right thing.

But that has not happened. It will not happen. It will just all get worse.

Even now, a look at his donor list tells you exactly who stands to benefit from his reelection—and it isn’t most of us.

Even now, women begin to come forward to talk about their harassment by Mayor Dailey behind closed doors at meetings.

Even now, being asked about his opponent’s endorsement by Ruth’s List, he cannot be our mayor first or even just a decent human being but blusters about these out-of-towners he’s never heard of before.

Rumors of changes to the charter to make the mayor more powerful cannot be dismissed as hyberbole, the more we try to imagine Dailey’s second term.

The truth is, what we will get is more of the same, only more catastrophically. The truth is, we need to reject this charlatan. The truth is that we need a local government that’s truly by the people and for the people.

Mayor John E. Daily has been a disaster. Tallahassee deserves better.

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Justin Ghazvini posted this completely untrue screed on his public facebook page. He helped found Grow Tallahassee.

by Jeff VanderMeer

If you were to write a guide to Tallahassee local politics, you might have to divide it into categories like “Responsible Adults,�� “Whiny Children,�� and “WTF Was That.�� In what has been the most acrimonious and negative campaign cycle in the city’s history, there have been a lot of whiny children and too many WTF’s. (No disrespect meant to children in general–many of whom would do a better job of governance than some of our current incumbents.)

On the one side, filed under Whiny Children and WTF, you have Grow Tallahassee and their PAC, whose officer Bugra Demirel sparked by an article I wrote–while former Grow Tallahassee president Justin Ghazvini regularly posts the crudest, least nuanced, completely untrue appeals to voters�� baser instincts, like the one above.

Perhaps more to the point, Steve Ghazvini, much earlier, This messaging closely mirrors that of recent negative campaigning on the right, from media outlets and individuals. It’s a strange approach on behalf of a slate of supposedly Democratic candidates and the ripple effect is to spread Whiny Child all over the internet.

Grow Tallahassee also likes to grouse about the progressive news outlet Our Tallahassee–a sentence that seems like a satirical observation that’ll be a local sitcom some day–and derives some of its energy from railing against such oh-so outre and fact-based things like OT creating an article out of their candidate Dianne Williams-Cox’s about developers. But there’s a vast difference between OT posting spreadsheets of Grow Tallahassee PAC money and a timeline of FSU booster donations to Williams-Cox and��.. (Even some conservative sources admit privately that OT has done good reporting.)

Then there’s the 4Tallahassee group, backed by the Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce. Resembling some kind of clown show in website form, 4Tallahassee is a joke backed by lots of money, with inept communications and didactic, cumbersome editorials, and just bone-jarringly obvious messaging.

But what’s fascinating about 4Tallahassee is how they so perfectly embody the rapid dive to the bottom that’s occurred during this election cycle. Literally overnight, 4Tallahassee went from stodgy and badly written admonitions about how politics should adhere to and facts, to posts –and environmentalists to potential murderers. In being so utterly obvious in their machinations, and so extremist, they’ve more or less canceled out their credibility, which is nice to see just from the standpoint of what they deserve for utter incompetence.

Counterpoint or More Whiny Child?

One counterpoint on the right, whether you agreed with them or not, was Tallahassee Reports, which had become almost staid in the methodical approach to reporting it employed the past few years, when not editorializing about social issues (no one cares about your views on gay teens). TR used to focus on city manager Goad’s poor performance and corrupt commissioners like Scott Maddox. You might even have called them a Responsible Adult, with on the left Our Tallahassee, only a year old, now the over-anxious, sometimes immature, but overachieving teenage counterpart on the left.

However, the past few weeks, Tallahassee Reports has entered realms other than Responsible Adult in serving up melodramatic fare again using the worst propaganda in the culture wars. In doing so, Stewart and Tallahassee Reports have become aligned with rich monied elites who used to often be the subject of skewering at TR. This new tone has been quickly weaponized by Grow Tallahassee in paid advertising–and at least one offensive text that seems to have spontaneously written and sent itself, apparently originating .

The offensive campaign text, weaponizing an article of mixed fact and innuendo from Tallahassee Reports

In the case of the campaign text, Tallahassee Reports not vigorously denouncing the use of its (petty inaccurate) article in a gutter politics context is a real strike against the site’s credibility . But, more generally, as Grow Tallahassee continues to pounce on and gleefully repost TR articles as facebook ads for their candidates, it makes me question if TR isn’t in fact turning into a Whiny Child.

A similar sense of sudden immaturity and “hey this is all just a game, so no holds barred�� now emanates as well from the Florida Politics site–and in particular founder Peter Schorsch, who has published what can only be described as “WTF Was That�� several times, in editorials with vastly different uses of syntax, vocabulary, and rhetorical sophistication. Here’s channeling some Decadent-era writer. Here’s as an example of Propaganda and Disinformation. (The latter piece was then promptly turned into a facebook ad by Mayor Dailey, which rightly is getting ridiculed in the comments.)

Elected Officials Ghost the People of Tallahassee

But surely the elected officials of this city and county have higher standards, right? Surely they will be the Responsible Adults and perform one of the unspoken functions of their office: which is to promote community standards and to make it clear what is not acceptable–what, in fact, tears at the fabric of the covenant we should have with each other as Tallahasseans.

Well, not exactly. No matter who sent the offensive text, the inability of a single elected official who might benefit from that text to say a single word about it signaled a new low, according to several I talked to in the political world. With city and county government becoming ever less transparent, to the point that Jeremy Matlow to try to get more of it covered by our Sunshine laws, if we also lose the way that our elected officials can by example show us good and responsible conduct�� well, that’s also a loss of transparency.

Because one way that the media knows how to cover something is by whether our public officials deem it important enough to talk about. With local media cash-strapped and reporter-poor, reactive journalism is the current standard.

Earlier–premonition of futility–I had texted the mayor, commissioner Dianne Williams-Cox, and several other Grow Tallahassee candidates about the genocide denial and received not a word back. I didn’t expect much, but I was shocked to get nothing back at all. Williams-Cox’s sole reply was to tell an Armenian-American concerned about the issue .

This wasn’t an isolated issue. Several people in the community have come forward to share their own alleged experiences with bullying by the Grow Tallahassee treasurer, bolstered by social media screenshots, but the only sound coming from the direction of these elected officials on GT’s slate were either deflections about the PAC money coming to their campaigns from extreme right-wing sources or projection back onto reform candidates relying on individual contributions, who have in many cases been outspent by GT’s slate 4 to 1.

While it’s true Mayor Dailey has less power than mayors in many other cities, he absolutely has the power of substantive communication, not to mention the symbolic power of giving speeches and ribbon-cutting. Despite this, over the past year, our mayor went out of his way to defend a police chief but recently had nothing to say about Just to give one example of priorities.

Is it True? The Fish Rots from the Head?

So perhaps the old saying “the fish rots from the head�� is true, and what’s happening now has its roots in a general continued slide from Responsible Adult to Whiny Child over the past few years. Certainly, upon reflection, at the Tallahassee Greater Chamber of Commerce conference last year and the over-heated rhetoric thrown around about city commissioner Jeremy Matlow does not make one think of terms of like “best practices�� or “professionalism.�� Mayor Dailey also has a habit of shouting at constituents behind closed doors and bullying women in the community. is not the only one.

Given all of this, maybe the continuing silence on gutter tactics in local politics shouldn’t be a surprise.

Perhaps it also boils down to not being able to disavow that which aligns with your actual campaign strategy. That many of these incumbents at the city commission and county commission are engaged in calls, texts, and mailers that have no basis in fact in the slightest, that engage in race-baiting and/or completely spurious claims about their opponents, serves their purpose. Which is to get elected or re-elected while not having to answer any hard questions on the record or putting forward anything resembling a new or good idea for governance.

Worse, some of these candidates, like city commission candidate David Bellamy, and gave money to politicians like Gaetz, but now that they’re running for office have to pretend to be Democrats. This kind of rot is more than Whiny Child. It’s actual deception and lying.

Again, where are the grown-ass adults in the room? So far, it’s not these candidates, that’s for sure��

The Grow Tallahassee slate of candidates. John Dailey, Dianne Williams-Cox, and David Bellamy in particular stood to gain from the offensive text sent from an address owned by the Grow Tallahassee PAC chairman. None of them were willing to denounce dirty tactics. This ad was paid for by their PAC but then promoted by Grow Tallahassee itself.

(Full disclosure: I helped found Our Tallahassee, but left the organization in December of 2021.)

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Our house, which is fully integrated with the native trees surrounding it; apologies for the crap myrtle��

Jeff VanderMeer

This weekend, I gave a talk on yard rewilding at here in Tallahassee. Below you’ll find the information from the accompanying hand-out, much of which I mentioned in my talk. This is by no means a comprehensive overview of this kind of project, but may be of use in thinking about your yard.

You can also check out my , my , and my .

Are you currently in a mode of pushing back against the landscape or working with the landscape?

Kindness and close observation are two important qualities with regard to designing a yard for wildlife. Kindness refers to always trying to live in harmony with wildlife and to find imaginative and organic ways to do so. Close observation refers to knowing your yard and what lives in it well enough that you both do no unintentional harm and so you can help to the fullest extent.

What if your yard could not just be useful to wildlife, but the kind of sanctuary where wildlife feels safe, contented, and happy?

“Wildlife�� should mean, as much as possible, the widest variety of organisms, from mammals and birds to insects and invertebrates.

Clean, consistently refilled water sources are essential for wildlife in urban and suburban areas.

General Questions to Ask

How well do I know my yard already? Without having a baseline idea of how wildlife already uses your yard, you can’t determine what improvements to make and may actively hurt wildlife without realizing it. If you want to help wildlife and start by clearing all the bramble on your property, to prepare for planting, you may be removing habitat for snakes and rabbits. If you decide to clean up dead wood piles, you may be taking away the places box turtles live under. These are just examples of unintended consequences. Best to start your effort with as much observation of your yard as possible. What are the 2 or 3 major ways I can better serve wildlife? Especially if there are major improvements to be made, you might be tempted to take on too much at once. It’s also true that you can cause harm by changing everything at once. You would be better served identifying the two or three areas of greatest concern and tackle them first. Once these improvements are in place, make sure to gauge their effects on other areas of the yard and make sure there are no unintended consequences.What are the 2 or 3 things I can stop doing that will benefit wildlife? Sometimes you can help wildlife by just doing nothing. For example, if you’ve always raked up the leaves, stop doing so in as much of the yard as possible. This leaf layer forms a delicate biosphere of its own that creatures live their whole lives in, sometimes. We have skinks and insects that depend on the areas of the yard covered in leaves. Fireflies depend on these areas as well, before they mature.Red-shouldered hawk reporting for duty.

Specific Things to Do

Conduct a tree survey of your yard and become familiar with the wildlife those trees support. Use the app PictureThis, which is 95% accurate. Native trees will always support the most robust biodiversity–much more than wildflowers, etc. So one thing you can do to help wildlife is nuture the health of your mature native trees and plant more.Use the tree survey to determine which trees are invasive and should be removed, but do so at a time that will not harm wildlife (nesting birds, etc.). Over time, try to remove invasive trees that may only support a few organisms in your yard. We recently had three large camphor trees cut down. This not only will stop their saplings from spreading everywhere, crowding out trees with more food value for wildlife, but it opened up an area near the dry creek bed to plant understory trees and wildflowers that needed more sun to thrive.Choose one or two areas for “wildlife enrichment�� and focus on them first rather than attempt wholesale change across the entire yard (to avoid unintended consequences). Make sure you are realistic about the time, energy, and money you can spend on more or less terraforming areas of your yard to be of more wildlife benefit. Do not overcommit because consistency across time is more important than a short-lived fling with trying to help. If dealing with invasive plants, these areas where you plant natives are useful anchors–when battling invasives, start by weeding them out from these anchor areas, moving outward, to protect them.Understand how wildlife travels through your yard and remove impediments (like unnecessary fencing) while providing enrichment along those paths. You can reduce conflict with your plantings by knowing how animals use your yard. I used to have more problems with raccoons digging up new plantings, because I didn’t realize I was planting them in the middle of animal pathways. CamPark trail cams are cheap but durable and high quality—invest in a couple to know what nocturnal wildlife lives in or travels through your yard.Baby smols will be particularly susceptible to contaminants and poisons you add to your yard.

Preconditions for Success (as many as possible / practical)

No use of pesticides or herbicides or lawn treatments in the yard. Given new research on herbicides and pesticides, the long-term unintended consequences for organisms not the target of such products seem significant. For this reason, hand-weeding is far preferable to any mass application of herbicide, for example, to control invasives. If you do have to use an herbicide, please try to do spot application only. (For example on a tree stump.)Limited or no outside lights at night. Outdoor lights of any kind disrupt lifecycles of nocturnal animals and insects. As possible, reduce or eliminate your personal light pollution. In Tallahassee, you can also request the city or county replace unshielded old-style street lights with more shielded ones. Neighbors may be receptive to a nature-based plea to reduce their light pollution, but are likely more receptive if you politely note it is interfering with your own enjoyment of your yard in the evenings.Put out water sources. Especially in places like our dry-creek ravine, having water out for the wildlife is providing an incredibly important service. For one thing, the wildlife doesn’t have to come up out of the ravine in search of water, onto roads and near houses. Birdbaths of various types that don’t pollute the environment due to the materials they are made from will work for most everything, not just birds. But make sure to have some lid-like water sources flush to the ground for box turtles and other earth-bound smols. Discourage feral cats. If you have outdoor cats that use your yard, review the law in your city and county and, within the letter of the law, attempt to get those cats spayed or neutered and homed. Although socially and culturally controversial, the science is clear: outdoor cats are terrible for ecosystems.Do not feed wildlife (except birds; exception, check re guidelines re avian flu). In theory, as you rewild your yard, bird feeders will be less and less necessary, but be sure to monitor your particular situation so migratory birds have the roughly 10% of food they need from feeders during their long journeys. Otherwise, it is usually illegal to feed wildlife, for various reasons, including not wanting to habituate animals to humans. (However, I have found it’s okay to toss a grape to a box turtle once a year.)Make your house secure by making sure there is no access to attics or crawlspaces. If you are going to attract wildlife to your yard, you don’t want to have to harm it through location or lethal means because it gets into your house. When starting this process, hand-check or get a professional service to affirm that there are no ways for animals to get into your house.Best case: Your birbs are so happy in your yard, they start bossing other birds around.

Ways to See Your Yard

“Passive zones�� encourage the preexisting native plants and trees and require only weeding out of invasive plants. This will preserve areas already likely of high value to wildlife. You may also be surprised over time what pops up from the native seedbank in these areas.“Restoration�� of part of whatever landscape you live in to what it would be like in an rural/ wilderness state. For example, our ravine would be most like the near the Apalachicola River. Thinking of restoration as plants in the right combination with one another helps build up complex ecosystems, which creates a more complex biosphere. “Seasonal Richness�� refers to having food in the yard for wildlife every season of the year. This approach may require some Florida friendly plants and trees that aren’t native but useful. (For example, we kept our camellias because they help pollinators in early winter when native flowers are dormant.)

Creative Fixes to Wildlife Conflicts

A willingness to find a solution that does not require lethal intervention or relocation goes a long way; the right mental attitude and the right analysis of the problem’s actual severity make a difference. (If a rabbit eats some of your vegetables, should it be World War III?)

Armadillos love moist ground, so supersaturate areas you don’t mind them digging; protect sensitive plantings with logs around them of at least 10 inches in diameter and armadillos will usually dig elsewhere.Raccoons like to dig up new plantings; plant loosely if possible the first time and the dug up plant will usually not be damaged and the raccoon’s curiosity will be satisfied.Don’t like yellow jacket ground nests? Put a dab of peanut butter at the mouth after dark (the wasps sleep at night) and within a week raccoons, opossums, or sharks�� I mean armadillos drawn by the smell will find the nest and eat all the wasps.

What creative, organic solutions can you find to help your relationship with wildlife?

A Few Resources to consult (not comprehensive)

(find the equivalent for your area)(climate is changing–prepare in advance) (thought-provoking and inspiring)Florida’s Natural Ecosystems and Native Species series by Ellie Whitney, D. Bruce Means, Anne Rudloe (how to create integrated ecosystems)This series is absolutely amazing–you will learn more about Florida ecosystems and be able to then “translate�� that to your yard in a holistic way than from any other book or books.

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Damon Victor, independent candidate for county commission, District 3

Interview by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

is an independent candidate running in the 2022 District 3 county commission election for Leon County. The incumbent is Rick Minor. Victor’s other opponent in Joey Lamar. In we endorsed Victor, writing in part, “Not only does he have entrepreneurial experience of real value to governance, Victor has consistently highlighted the wealth inequities that have led to issues like no sidewalks for large sections of Tharpe Street. He has the life experience and integrity and knowledge to be a great commissioner.�� (Full disclosure: We have contributed to Victor’s campaign.)

In this extensive interview, Victor gives voters a comprehensive idea of his experience, his background, and his plan to help District 3, which follows through on promises long made and broken to communities living along Tharpe Street (to give just one example). You can read more about Victor .

***

The incumbent in your district claimed that you haven’t been active in the local community until you started this campaign. What is your response to that?

This campaign is largely possible because of all the meaningful relationships and partnerships built cooperating on important projects both internationally and locally. I don’t do any service work to gain attention. I’m grateful to continue to be in a position to have opportunities to make positive impacts in my community and around the world. Such a claim only reveals a lack of research or willful dishonesty.

This is your first time running for public office. Considering how difficult it is to run for office, raise funds, etc., why did you choose now to run? And why for the County Commission?

I’m sick and tired of people in Leon County being misled. From the beginning the incumbent was for funding $27 million to Doak Campbell stadium improvements. After seven months of ignoring public outcry, including my own, the incumbent changed his vote in an eleventh-hour reversal after I entered the race. But you know what’s five times worse than Doak? The Welaunee development.  It’s located out of town in the faraway Northeast and is costing taxpayers $80 million for newly constructed roads and sidewalks.  We taxpayers are on the hook for future liabilities and maintenance of infrastructure and roads, police, fire, schools. Four thousand seven hundred acres were added to our Urban Services Area, more than what was added to the USA in the previous 10 years combined. The incumbent voted for this expensive mega development to cut to the front of the line rather than long overdue projects in his own District—such as North Monroe Street corridor and West Tharpe Street.  Folks ARE distrustful of the process and I am too! I We deserve someone who will be there to represent them with a strong commitment to the job and won’t bow down to special interests or the establishment. We deserve a voice on the County Commission who can speak up—not someone forced to repeatedly recuse themselves due to conflicts of interest.

You’re not originally from Tallahassee, yet this has been your home since you were a teenager. You’ve traveled extensively around the world, and come back home to Tallahassee. Can you tell us what it is about Tallahassee that makes it special for you?

I was born in Alaska, but I’m from Tallahassee. I’ve been here for 35 years with my wife Rory. We’ve been together 32 years and married for almost 26 of them. Like a lot of folks we moved here to go to school, fell in love, and made Leon County our home. We still live in the same home we bought 23 years ago in Parkside-Park Terrace here in District 3. It’s been a wonderful place to live for both of our families, with many extended family members living here now and through the years.

I apprenticed and learned my trade of Orthotics and Prosthetics here and have had my Orthotics and Prosthetics business, Victor Technologies, for 16 years. It’s also led to being included as a vendor for the FSU College of Medicine and FSU Research Foundation. Leon County is a special place to me because this community, the members of the music and art scene, held me accountable in the early teenage touch-and-go years. My Tallahassee family helped me to transform into the person I am today. Having opportunities to apply my vocation on international service trips helped me gain personal perspective and realize there are universal issues that affect us all. We must work together to solve those problems, no matter how tough they are.

What skills and experiences do you have that are essential to being a successful commissioner? What skills are you lacking? How does your experience set you apart from the other candidates in this race?

I’ve been very grateful to work in Orthotics & Prosthetics for 25 years. It’s a career of meaningful work. I’ve owned a small business, Victor Technologies, LLC in Leon County for 16 years successfully servicing thousands of patients in need of leg braces and artificial limbs.  These are complicated mechanical devices that work intimately with the human body to regain mobility and change lives for the better. Affecting positive change in the world through targeted philanthropy and in conjunction with NGOs both locally and globally, I have partnered with organizations from South America, Central America, and Eastern Europe leading medical service trips and obtaining global and district grants to fund them. We operate under careful accounting to produce measurable outcomes and improve the quality of life for people across the globe.

One of the skills I’m lacking is the ability to end conversations with people I have a great connection and empathy towards. I know people want to be seen, heard, and valued. Sometimes I find it difficult to break off and head to the next appointment or meeting.

We often see candidates and incumbents talk about what the issues are (affordable housing, gun crime, poverty, etc) but identifying them is the easy part. What are the top 3 priorities for you in this race and how specifically would you address them? Please be definitive and unambiguous about your proposed solutions.

Many issues are overlapping because reducing poverty by increasing access to housing, healthcare, and education prevents crime .  The most important thing I can do as a commissioner to address them is to call for the review of all projects, priorities, and appointments of the Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency.  Only from there can we elected officials have access to all the tools in our kit to invest in existing programs and enact new solutions such as:

Increase the percentage of affordable housing required for a new developmentEmbrace innovations in modular and mobile homesForm land trusts in Leon County in order to create new communities that people both want to live in and can actually affordIdentify more areas and neighborhoods amenable to inclusionary zoning and ADUsConvert land set aside and required for parking lots to use build affordable housing and/or provide quality temporary homesIncrease investments in facilities that educate students wishing to enter child care, healthcare, and trades to increase supply of labor pool for those sectorsForm a credit union in Leon County and offer access to capital to residents historically unable to do so

How do you view responsible growth in this community? How does Tallahassee grow without destroying what makes it special and without leaving the most marginalized communities behind?

Responsible growth is balanced growth, and we are out of balance at this point. We’ve been brought to the brink with too many mega developments expanding our Urban Services Area. We shouldn’t prematurely expand the USA—we should be using the public dollars wisely. We must always be looking to improve and invest in our established neighborhoods upon existing infrastructure as well as those areas which are historically marginalized and ignored.

We can focus on projects of social uplift and neighborhood investment without allowing gentrification to drive folks out. One way to stem the tide of gentrification is by investments in the many resident-owned, minority-owned, women-owned small businesses that historically support and represent the culture of the neighborhood. They are why these areas are attractive for development in the first place. After gentrification and commercialization, it’s very often that vibrance and life is choked out of a neighborhood because it is only the people who bring a neighborhood to life!

Please share one of your most difficult challenges and how you faced it. What did you learn from this experience?

Well, leaving Alaska and my father behind and coming to Florida when I was 15 was challenging. Also breaking away from my friends in Tampa/St Pete and coming to Tallahassee with my Mom and family for a better future was challenging.  So was battling cancer at 22. There have been many times in my life when I recognized I was at a crossroads: I can either keep doing what I’ve been doing and keep getting what I’ve been getting or I can make an effort to make a change to achieve new positive outcomes. Changing educational and career path as a young man, marrying the love of my life, advocating for rights of others, founding my own business, leading international service trips—all were challenging, all made me the person I am today.  Today this campaign is a new challenge. I think it’s because I take it so seriously; but it challenges you in so many areas of your life. I’m a craftsman�� a working class person with limited resources, and I believe the position requires a true spirit of service which is how I’ve lived my life.

Governing isn’t a one-person job. It requires collaboration and partnership. Who and what are some of the individuals and organizations you look forward to working with, why and how will you accomplish this?

I will accomplish this by continuing to do what has made me a successful candidate thus far: by staying true to my values.  Usually, I’m met with skepticism by voters, and that’s understandable considering how the public has been misled over the years �� but every time, almost without fail, by the end of a conversation, that voter and I are usually so bonded by sharing mutual friends and interests, I find common ground with anyone willing to talk to me.  We all have to live together even after this election, my work won’t end regardless of the result—my commitment to the community is stronger than ever.  I want to work with everyone!  Fellow elected officials, appointed staff, county employees, journalists, the chambers of commerce, the college administrations, land owners, development companies, the school board, our state agencies headquartered here, Walt McNeil and the sheriff’s office—we are at the epicenter of education and expertise.  My number one partnership will be with the public. I can’t wait to enhance and strengthen public collaboration with all those agencies.

If you are elected, how will you address working with those who have opposed you during this contentious campaign season? How will you find common ground to bring people together?

From day one of this campaign, I received an amazing outpouring of support—so many people from both parties begged me to re-register as a Democrat or Republican so they could support me more vocally without breaking their party rules. Yet, I received advice, endorsements, and donations from across the political spectrum—people want me to win!  So, who has opposed me?  I guess there have been some notable exceptions from the support—many of the incumbent’s signs are erected by well-known investors on their properties. 

So how will I work with them?  I cannot allow special interests to oppress people of Leon County through environmental racism and unfair and unaffordable housing practices through holding our blueprint sales tax dollars hostage for pet projects. It is my hope that we can come to agreements for a sustainable future for us all, so I will work cooperatively with anyone unless they take away tax dollars from those who need it and give it to those who don’t. Developers and construction companies are not bogeymen. Bogeymen are elected officials who allow rapacious profiteers to manipulate our political system and commit environmental crimes.

What is the one thing you want people to know about you?

There isn’t anything I wouldn’t want people to know about me. It’s all out there �� from wayward teen to punk rock pirate to cancer survivor to doting husband.  You have to be truthful about yourself to speak truth to power. It’s my story, and it’s all relevant�� I’ve been very forthright on this campaign, making sure people understand my life’s journey so that you can feel confident as to who I am and where I’m going. I know who I am and I know what I want: to help people free themselves from hurtful situations rooted in bad public policy decisions made [by] for profit and not for people.

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Bugra Demirel is the treasurer of Grow Tallahassee and chairman of their PAC. While PACs must disclose donors, Grow Tallahassee does not have to disclose donors. GT makes a big deal of how their PAC must be transparent while operating out of the spotlight with how they spend GT money.

Jeff VanderMeer

Despite a series of rants by Grow Tallahassee Chairman Bugra Demirel last weekend, Grow Tallahassee has yet to censure Demirel or apologize on his behalf. Nor has Demirel himself apologized–to me or anyone.

Nor have any of . Nor have the FSU Boosters, who are now heavily supporting the Grow Tallahassee PAC. What exactly happened? Let me break it down for you��

This past Sunday night, the chairman of the developer-backed PAC Grow Tallahassee, Bugra Demirel, took issue with the parts of my about his organization. What followed was a series of tirades from Demirel that veered from attempted bullying and projection to outright lies and genocide denial.

Like somebody who’s watched too many mafia movies, Demirel also suggested he’d sic his German Shepherd on our cat Neo, but at least by then he was running out of steam. Soon enough, he started deleting tweets, then just deleted his whole account, only to pop up in the morning on the Grow Tallahassee account with more aggression, threatening a lawsuit.

includes this gem: “He strives for productive dialogue surrounding microeconomic policies of our local governments.��

Really? Is that what he was doing Sunday night?

After Demirel’s attack on me and my article, which didn’t include refutation of facts, I brought up his lack of answers to my questions via facebook and asked him to explain why he’d . This is the same issue that has .

To my surprise, Demirel leaned in to genocide denial, when I had thought he would disavow it. He even added a distasteful comment about Jews–“Jews are the first ones to disagree with Armenian allocations”–which he would later try to delete. This was mixed in with personal insults about me.

And, in fact, Demirel wrote more than one genocide-denying article on the same website. The most substantial of these articles is no longer available for download, but even a glance at the table of contents is enough to make you question why, again, Grow Tallahassee and its supporters, its slate of City and County candidates, have had no statement to date on Demirel’s genocide denial—or his complete lack of professionalism during the entire exchange. (More information on the articles and this aspect of the night’s exchanges .)

Regarding the unprofessional behavior–verging into bullying and insults, after the Sunday night melt-down, several people in the Tallahassee community reached out to me to say that Demirel had behaved in a similar way toward them. One person told me, “He attacked me personally on Facebook when I lived [near one of his proposed developments] and dared to question something…Very creepy, researched my background and tried to use it against me. Then deleted his comment.��

On Sunday, this impulse manifested in a few different ways. One of them was threats of lawsuits for imaginary offenses. Sometimes, as below, these were mixed with smarmy attempts at disrespect. As I replied to Demirel, I have no dark money LLC and no LLC at all. Strangely, the State Attorney’s office has yet to contact me.

Clearly, Demirel was referring to the new media outlet Our Tallahassee, which I did help found, but which I left in December of 2021. I am not privy to any of their editorial decisions or inner workings and as far as I know the publisher continues to be the main source of financing. But throughout the night, he continued to make accusations about OT that reflected a shocking ignorance of the law regarding such entities.

Other times, however, the insults were just about propping up Demirel’s ego at my expense—once by seeming to mock genocide.

When I brought up Grow Tallahassee and, Demirel called this article—which is literally a video of and almost 100 percent quotes from Williams-Cox—“racist.�� This is a common ploy of Grow Tallahassee—part of their playbook, no matter what the context.

Let’s be clear: The area in which Demirel is operating with regard to the Williams-Cox campaign is the sort of thing, in general, that the FBI gets interested in really fast. It’s not a frivolous subject.

Oh, yes, and as I mentioned Demirel kinda threatened our cat Neo. That was fun.

Can I just note that, honestly, it’s pretty bad that because of Demirel’s tweets making no distinction between the seriousness of genocide denial as opposed to, say, casually suggesting he’d let his dog loose on our cat��. I have to address things that occur at such different levels of importance and seriousness in the same article.

Perhaps the saddest part of the evening’s tweets from Demirel was his last tweet, just a couple of hours before he deleted his account, in which he asked me to stop talking about him because he’s not a political figure. Um, except, of course, he’s the chairman of a political organization—one pouring tons of money into local campaigns, including the Williams-Cox campaign, in which he’s taken special interest. His SoMo Walls project has also received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the city and county through the CRA.

Whereas I am just a writer with a passion for politics who wants good local government…with a now-aggrieved cat, whose response to the whole evening was as follows.

Neo, not amused��

In a prior Facebook message conversation–referred to in my –Demirel had told me that Grow Tallahassee had turned over a new leaf and was now committed only to smart development and that the Ghazvini developer family was no longer really involved. However, in fact, recent records show that the Ghazvinis are once again contributing significant money to the Grow Tallahassee PAC. Nor would Demirel actually answer any of my other questions with what you might call specificity or, in the end, honesty.

Worse, as noted, after the Sunday debacle, I received emails and texts from several people in the community who had been bullied by Demirel. Is it possible that it’s only now, with his position more visible due to the political involvement�� that this behavior is also more visible?

All I know is that genocide denial is not okay—and also in a context where local members of the Armenian community have written about this terrible part of history in both fiction and nonfiction. All I know is that a professional organization would not tolerate this behavior from its chairman. Nor would a political campaign. Just contrast with just a couple tabs over. It’s about as jarring as my twitter exchange Sunday night.

Anyway, welcome to Tallahassee, where it may all be a-okay and nobody will mind in the least. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Michael Alford is Vice-President and Director of Athletics at FSU

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Some of our recommendations: Kristin Dozier, Donna Cottrell, Josh Johnson, Jeremy Matlow,
David O’Keefe, Damon Victor, Adner Marcelin, Will Crowley. (Shelby Green pictured below.)

Candidate Recommendation Cheat Sheet:

Mayor: Kristen Dozier

City Commission: Jeremy Matlow (Seat 3), Adner Marcelin or Shelby Green (Seat 5)

County Commission: Donna Pearl Cotterell (District 1), Will Crowley (District 2), Josh Johnson (at-large Group 2), Damon Victor (District 3), David O’Keefe (District 5)

School Board:  Anthony DeMarco (District 1), Darryl Jones (District 3), Alex Stemle (District 4)

Judges: Jason Jones (the judge in the other race is running unopposed)

You can find the complete 2022 list of candidates .

General Thoughts

The 2022 local elections may be among the most important in a decade. Despite convictions in an FBI probe into corruption in City Hall, the elected officials of the city and county have, as a group, failed to address systemic corruption. In fact, you could argue that special interests have tried to consolidate their stranglehold on Tallahassee and Leon County.

Regardless of how you feel about issues like no-bid sales of public land, the pathological way our mayor has gone out of his way to avoid instituting true ethics reforms, and similar issues, we feel it’s important to have special interests as far removed from decisions affecting communities as possible. Similarly, we think that good governance and responsible management of our abundant natural resources requires elected officials with as few conflicts of interest as possible.

Finally, elected officials should not seem in their positions and rhetoric to simply want to keep getting elected. In other words, if an incumbent cares more about reelection than about effective and useful governance, why should we let them help allocate our tax monies? Let alone craft policies that may affect Tallahasseans for decades to come.

With all of that in mind, here are our picks in the local Tallahassee/Leon County elections, with our opinions on those races outside of our district also given. At the state level, we are voting for Charlie Crist, Val Demings, Daniel Uhlfelder, and Ryan Morales. �� Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

Selected Notes on the Races

Mayor—Vote for

Incumbent John Dailey has actively re-upped on the methods and outlook embodied by disgraced former mayor Scott Maddox while demonstrating an uncanny knack for finding photo ops; he often takes credit for the labor and ideas of others. Dailey has nurtured a lack of transparency in city government and given the city manager carte blanche to consolidate power in ways harmful to representative democracy—and even shut down meetings to avoid talking about real ethics reform. There are also questions of conflict of interest in his wife having Florida Power & Light as a client while Dailey takes meetings with Florida Power & Light (for reasons that have not been divulged)—not to mention the conflicts of interest inherent in his relationship with VanCore Jones. Several rumors of bullying should not be discounted out of hand, either.

His main opponent, Kristin Dozier, has served ably and well as a county commissioner. She has a vast amount of experience in addition to being a policy wonk. Dozier would restore a sense of balance to city politics and work toward greater accountability. Dozier would also bring back true civility to city government, which would allow for meaningful compromises. As importantly, removing Mayor Dailey would rip out a fair percentage of his network of special interests from the center of power, which would by itself help the people of Tallahassee have a more democratic and responsive local government.

City Commission Seat 3 –Vote for

It’s fair to say that Jeremy Matlow winning this commission seat in 2018 was transformational for the City of Tallahassee. Despite a cynical city commission voting bloc headed up by the Mayor, Matlow has made visible many of the problems plaguing Tallahassee and used his platform to advocate for those without a voice. Time and again, despite unfair and simply untrue negative attacks by special interests, Matlow has stood up and spoken truth to power. His detractors call him too aggressive—we call him “scrappy,�� in a good way. Returning him to his seat in 2022 sends a powerful message that Tallahassee wants competent, transparent governance, with its course set by the people and for the people.

Matlow’s opponent, David Bellamy votes for Republicans and gives money to the campaigns of extremists like Matt Gaetz while actually maintaining a home in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area. Bellamy’s campaign operates out of the same office as the mayor, and receives strategic guidance from Bryan Desloge, who was voted out as county commission in 2018 due to his cynical and arrogant use of his office to push big developer deals while ignoring his constituents in existing neighborhoods. That Bellamy is using legacy staff from felon Scott Maddox’s campaigns is beyond the pale. Bellamy’s homophobic facebook comments are also deeply troubling.

City Commission Seat 5—Vote for or .

We voted for incumbent Dianne Williams-Cox in 2018, when she ran on a platform that included smart economic growth wedded to respect for the environment and an impulse to tackle wealth inequity. However, since then Williams-Cox has abandoned every principle she ran on, to the point that almost her entire original staff has left her. , have cast doubt on her ability to serve the common good. Certainly, these are the kinds of situations in which the FBI takes interest.

Two excellent challengers have done well in the debates: Adner Marcelin and Shelby Green. Marcelin may have the best chance against Williams-Cox’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in development money—and may have built a broader coalition by focusing on the FSU stadium debacle. Yet Green has been an advocate for important issues—like public transportation, utilities inequities, and energy poverty—not much talked about by other candidates. We have contributed to her campaign and expect to contribute to Marcelin’s. Both of these candidates deserve our long-term support in their political and other endeavors. Check out the websites, their stance on issues, and their advocacy. Would that every race gave voters more than one good choice.

City commission candidate Shelby Green (seat 5)

County Commission Races—Vote for Josh Johnson, Damon Victor, David O’Keefe, Will Crowley, Donna Pearl Cotterell

There are several great candidates running for county commission seats, but for purposes of concision we will make just brief notes here about our choices and some worthy alternates—and some duds.

is the clear stand-out candidate in At Large Group 2—and maybe across all the county races. Not only has Johnson run a smart campaign and put in the work going door-to-door, his background as an educator and his clarity on policy positions make him far and away the best candidate. You can expect from this candidate transparency and good governance.

Unfortunately, the incumbent, Nick Maddox, suffers from just-want-to-keep-being-commissioneritis, is backed by special interests, and dismissed a sexual harassment charge against him in a debate as “a personal issue.�� This occurred at the Boys and Girls Club while he was serving there and he was dismissed from his service because of it. There are legitimate questions about Maddox’s character and his judgment.

, our choice for District 1, has a nicely varied background in the arts, finance, and teaching and would make a great commissioner. We feel she would be effective in building coalitions around important issues, understands the value of our current quality of life in Tallahassee, and is resistant to the influence of special interests.

Bill Proctor has been erratic and contradictory in recent years, while proving more and more susceptible to developer influence. It’s no surprise (although kind of a surprise) he is now on the conservative developer PAC Grow Tallahassee’s candidate slate. One of Proctor’s worst moments was to rail against the $27 million FSU stadium deal�� and then vote for it. That level of rhetoric versus result provides a compelling case for voting out Proctor in favor of Cottrell.

, our choice for District 2, combines a knowledge of the issues with an energy that offsets his relative lack of experience re political office. He can be trusted to be resistant to special interests, to understand that environmental issues and economic issues are intertwined, and to have useful ideas about wealth inequality in the county. It will be important for him to listen to and take on board advice and information from more experienced voices when in office, and we believe he will do so.

One of his opponents, Max Epstein, has a vast amount of experience in environmental matters and we hope his entry into politics results in some form of a voice at the table as a policy expert.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Hannah Crow, a right-wing extremist backed by the political hack Skip Foster, a climate change denier . Christian Caban is Grow Tallahassee’s selection and also supported by the Chamber of Commerce. Please do not mistake his personable nature as an indication of sophistication or usefulness on policy issues. Caban has bought his way into the conversation with no political experience and has switched political parties from Republican to Democrat seemingly for the cynical purpose of having a chance in this election.

, our pick for District 3, has run outside of the Democratic Party apparatus and accepted only individual donations. Not only does he have entrepreneurial experience of real value to governance, Victor has consistently highlighted the wealth inequities that have led to issues like no sidewalks for large sections of Tharpe Street. He has the life experience and integrity and knowledge to be a great commissioner. Victor also rolled his sleeves up and jumped in when residents behind the Northwood Mall demolition, near where he lives, complained about toxic dust and polluted runoff—it was Victor, not the incumbent who made sure the right people at the city became aware of what was deemed a violation of laws governing suppression of pollutants during demolition.

Meanwhile, the incumbent, Rick Minor, has been a major disappointment. He largely falls into the category of “just wanting to hang on to power.�� He has done a few beneficial things, but has totally failed constituents in the Tharpe Street area. This is likely because he is backed by special interests and was Mayor Dailey’s handpicked replacement when Dailey left the county commission. You can expect Minor to largely be in step with Dailey and to be within the same web of insider politics. It’s also an unforgivable cluelessness for Minor to have expressed that the Amazon warehouse would solve the brain drain in Tallahassee. And it works against the people’s interests when Minor shows up on Zoom calls for community discussion of development and basically takes the side of developers, not the neighborhoods he serves—as he recently did for apartments being built near the intersection of Old Bainbridge and Tharpe Street.

Finally, it must be noted that has been persistent and relentless in knocking on doors and doing the work of seriously engaging with the people of Tallahassee. Although he’s not our choice in this race, he should be commended for running a good campaign. It is blatantly untrue that he and Damon Victor have never done anything for the community—as claimed during a debate by Rick Minor in a truly classless moment by the incumbent.

is our choice for District 5 because he has a strong grasp of the issues, a strong fiscal responsibility background, and has been on point re the waste of taxpayer money on the FSU stadium. Jay Revell is the mayor’s man and backed by developers. Dustin Rivest is a Trumper. Enough said. is an honorable challenger worth your consideration, with considerable experience in local government. However, in an era when local government staff have in a sense made our local government less democratic, it feels like the wrong moment to vote for this candidate.

School Board Races

School board races can slip under the radar, but they are vitally important whether or not you have children in local schools, as they help create the conditions for the well-being for the future of our community. In terms of education but also the daily life of students, school boards can help promote a broad and inclusive world-view, or a narrow and closed-minded one. Just as one example.

This year, it’s imperative to know that one candidate is a member of Moms for Liberty (aka Moms for Bigotry) and that one incumbent has worked against the interests of children and commonsense safety. Our thoughts below were reached after consultation with experienced, trusted local sources in the education field. We have not listed races that have only one candidate running.

District 1: Alva Striplin is toxic, aligning herself with extremists and should be voted out. is the best choice here. But would be a big improvement, too. Check out both candidates�� websites.

District 3: has been more than solid and reelecting him would retain someone with a good grasp of the issues who will serve the community well.

District 4: Laurie Lawson Cox is a rightwing extremist who would do immeasurable harm to the students she purports to want to help—do not vote for her. We’re voting for as the best choice for the board: someone who is knowledgeable, reasonable, and for good policy. Incredibly, Stemle is also the only candidate in this race who has stated he has confidence in the outcome of the 2020 election.

Judges

Everything we’ve seen indicates that judge Jason Jones deserves to be reelected. There have been no warning flags and by all accounts he has done his job well.

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Jeff VanderMeer

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

What do you do when you have enormous influence on city and county government and tons of money backing you but you can’t silence every voice of dissent?

Apparently, it’s de rigueur these days to whine that you’re actually the oppressed ones and if only you had even more influence and these pesky environmental regulations went away, you could help the poors. At least, if you look closely at and , as well as the campaign rhetoric of Chamber city commission candidate David Bellamy, that’s what you’ll find as subtext.

Meanwhile, we have a real problem in local government of lack of accountability—and it speaks to systems-level issues of little transparency and what feels like the growing arrogance of senior city and county staff that they know the right way to do things and even elected officials should just go along with it.

This might be why, from 2018 on, Tallahassee has rejected several establishment candidates—sending Elaine Bryant and Bryan Desloge packing, for example. People have begun to notice that every year the voice of the people is heard less and less in  local corridors of power—and they want to reverse that trend.

Shouldn’t You Have an Actual Voice in Local Government? Don’t We Deserve Accountability?

Last time I checked, we elect commissioners to be our voice, as part of series of checks and balances, not to be a rubber stamp on staff decisions. But with the erosion of their power, sometimes all commissioners can do is inform the public about projects seemingly greenlit before they even come up for a vote. This occurs in part because of the slow chipping away at even basic things—like commissioners�� right to have time to debate huge projects—and voting blocs that ironically work to squelch the commissioners�� own authority. An increasingly pro-development staff that schmoozes with Grow Tallahassee and Chamber leadership doesn’t help.

Projects like $27 million for the FSU stadium , with the help of ribbon-cutting fetishist Mayor John Dailey, and no one can actually even say where the idea even came from.

Is it possible the Jesus of Local Governance walks amongst us, product of Immaculate Conception? No. What’s happening is that the city manager and the county administrator, with the help of the Mayor, continue to consolidate power. There’s that will determine whether meetings between the city manager and city administrator should fall under Sunshine Law or are also under the laws of Immaculate Conception. Nor is it clear why the Mayor suddenly wants to amend the charter or why he met with representatives of Florida Power & Light this year.

From a systems point of view, all of this is an unfolding long-term disaster for the people of Tallahassee. The point isn’t that every decision and every project the city manager and county administrator support is a bad one. That doesn’t have to be true even a quarter of the time for Tallahassee’s future to be severely compromised by a system that more and leaves out communities, ordinary people–allowing special interests, by this very lack of transparency, to have massive amounts of sway behind closed doors.

Did you want a longer period to decide if an Amazon warehouse was a good fit for Tallahassee and that the location made sense rather than just being the whim of a crackpot with an antique car museum? Curious about whether these planned airport projects have any environmental side affects and want to research what climate crisis experts have to say about the future of airports in general? Wonder why the county ? Well, good luck getting any of that information.

You certainly won’t get it from the Tallahassee Democrat, who under editor-in-chief Skip F–�� I mean William Hatfield�� has some of the worst economic development and environmental coverage of any newspaper in the state of Florida. (Funny how we all had to find out from a NextDoor post about an environmental regulation violation by the company demolishing Northwood Mall.)

The Echo Chamber Rejects Self-Reflection

A lot of these issues became visible during the FBI corruption trial of and . It became glaringly obvious that the Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce leadership, allied with large developers, had formed a kind of shadow government, an overlay over the government of elected officials, and they had done this, in part, through allegiances with local government staff and sometimes elected officials. Our Tallahassee . (Full disclosure: I helped found OT, although I’m no longer there.)

The Maddox trial became the flashpoint for a lot of things, but mostly for those in power (shadow or otherwise) to say “this was an isolated incident�� while folks who care about Tallahassee entire said “no, this is a systemic issue that requires a systems solution.��

The wariness with which I view the former stance is caused by knowing from the literary world and prior day job experience that you do not want organizations, companies, governments, to rely on the individual daily heroics of individuals. In other words, the systems in place should nourish and support transparency, diversity, fairness, a level playing field, positive communication, and high ethical standards. This is how you protect against bad apples, people who want to game systems, people who have a narrow view of what “community�� means.

Elites in control in Tallahassee had several options in front of them after Maddox and Burnette’s convictions. One of them was to support, or even just allow systemic reform, and possibly affect short-term profits, but in a context where no one was going to be putting the Chamber out of business any time soon.

But this would mean admitting some measure of responsibility, given how the Chamber had so much juice in the game with regard to Blueprint (which spends our tax dollars on huge projects), the Office of Economic Vitality, etc. That would also mean ‘fessing up to having done little for poor people over the past two decades.

So, of course, this didn’t happen. Worse, when city commissioner Jeremy Matlow the systemic problems in local government—including restricting the power of elected officials while not overhauling local government processes—the Chamber .

Instead of having any sense of self-awareness and contrition for at the very least contributing to a situation in which systemic corruption was able to take hold, the Chamber and its allies decided the problem was the messenger. From the level of vitriol, you would’ve thought Matlow was a felon throwing bags of kittens into Lake Ella rather than a respected local business owner asking for some accountability and best management practices.

But because Matlow had the gall and audacity to point out the obvious, we’ve been subjected now to more than a year of attacks on Matlow and others who have pushed for reform. We’ve seen the Chamber, sometimes using organizations like Grow Tallahassee and 4Tallahassee, put forward their own slate of candidates and use PACs, etc., to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars toward defeating Matlow and other reformers. As I pointed out , there’s nothing community-minded about these attacks and people like former county commissioner Mary Ann Lindley, who used to be respected in this community, ought to be ashamed for being involved.

These attacks, most discouragingly, have been echoed in the Tallahassee Democrat and bring to mind the question of whether another media outlet needs to investigate the Democrat and editor William Hatfield’s interference in what should be a more balanced approach to coverage. A further at the Democrat has been applied lazily in place of actual analysis of various progressive and conservative organizations reporting on local politics.

What Happens When You Think Systems Are the Problem

In this context, what happens when denialism metastasizes? You get organizations founded and funded by the crowd in power like Grow Tallahassee and 4Tallahassee. At a systems level, both of these organizations are born of a need to validate shaky positions—which is to say, both want to reject the idea that we have systemic problems in local government.

But, beyond that, they want to valorize or make decent and just the idea that there are no systemic issues and, further, that the obscene amount of influence special interests have on local government is not only not a problem—it’s a good thing. It’s an ethical thing. It’s going to lead us to a bright and shiny future where that sound you hear isn’t elites pissing on the heads of the ne’er-do-wells down in the trenches but trickle-down economics. (I don’t doubt that there are sincere people involved in GT who want to be of use, but it’s again a systems issue: If your system is effed up, individual heroics and positive progress occur in spite of the org.)

We’re back to the really distasteful part of all of this: People in power with lots of money who whine about actually being the oppressed ones. People who had influence all of this time who suddenly talk, like city commission candidate David Bellamy, about ending poverty and dealing with the poors. It is not enough to be in power and to have influence and money. They must also be so firmly in the right that the other side is a pack of rabid socialists infiltrating our unblemished city who somehow are going to re-form Tallahassee into some hellish post-apocalyptic version of Denmark—instead of simply people who want reform of systems that are more and more unfair.

This is how we devolved from Chamber- and Grow-Tallahassee-backed David Bellamy starting his campaign in an oh-shucks-just-want-to-better-serve Tallahassee�� to talking to supporters at a recent party in vainglorious terms about how he’s gonna save this city from the rabble.

He’s gonna fix the problems of the poor for sure this time—if only we can clear out that inconvenient rabble asking those inconvenient questions. (In one debate he said he’s for babies not trees, although no one’s ever suggested we’re sacrificing babies on the altar of trees. Total straw baby.)

Meanwhile, pro-growth elites have gotten almost every project they wanted over the past few years, but the very fact anyone is speaking out about how hey you know that project as conceptualized is not well-suited for this landscape or that place�� it’s just too much for them. They must now not be asked to suffer the slings and arrows of honest critique.

They must be the heroes of their own stories. Forever and ever. Even when, like Bellamy, they voted for DeSantis and contributed to the campaigns of sleazebags like Matt Gaetz. Because, make no mistake about it, Bellamy is a right-wing candidate. Certainly, his right hand, Tina Johnson Reason made this clear with her offensive recent retweet of the White House Press Secretary in clown face.

Bellamy’s right hand retweeted this and despite apologizing never did, in the comments on my facebook post, apologize for being responsible for putting up tons of illegal Bellamy signs in Tallahassee. Nor did she apologize for the outright lies Bellamy’s campaign has told about Jeremy Matlow.

The Onus is on Developers to Prove They Care About Tallahassee’s Quality of Life

Scuttlebutt about discussions at the recent Chamber/Grow Tallahassee candidate meet-and-greet at World of Beer is that vainglorious claims of being for “sustainability�� were juxtaposed with grousing over drinks about “environmental regulations�� being too tough. Why couldn’t we put this Starbucks here? Oh, these outdated regulations that were put in place so nearby neighborhoods wouldn’t be flooded, that’s all. The intel on the sheer inanity and irony of the conversations at this event is wearying. It suggests that instead of Steve Ghazvini being a wee little bit sorry about illegally cutting down trees as part of his Canopy development, he’s a lot bit sorry that it was illegal to do so in the first place.

Grow Tallahassee’s first PR flack, Jared Willis, who attended the event, was so unprofessional, even for a political hack, that even his allies looked askance at him. He was also really bad at pretending he wasn’t born into wealth, which is a liability when you’re trying to convince the prols yer one of them. Willis’s biggest accomplishments might be to plus two half-arsed editorials in the Democrat about how it’s undemocratic to ask questions about candidates backed by huge special interests.

I had hoped the new face of Grow Tallahassee, Bugra Demirel, might be different. Bugra told me in a facebook email that Grow Tallahassee would only support smart development from now on but when I asked him if that meant GT would also publicly come out against stupid development—maybe even back some conservation projects—I got crickets. Not a single question I asked him was answered. Instead, I got platitudes and buzzwords like “Strong Towns.��

Grow Tallahassee’s , who has taken lots of developer money, also leads to questions about the influence GT exerts in local elections.

Nor is there any evidence that Grow Tallahassee will ever not love all development—served up on a dinner plate with a side of more development and a huge glass of development to go with that, and an enormous slice of development for dessert.

4Tallahassee’s Clockwork Prune: Your Granddad’s PoliSigh Rants

Aligned with this faction is , which is kind of a political hit squad against reformers that reads like if your granddad sent you some disjointed paranoid texts about how the country’s going to pot because of some damn hippy somewhere. It’s run by Skip Foster and Bryan Desloge and should have the tagline of “slouching toward Bethlehem since 2022.��

Foster is the former publisher of the Democrat and reportly still has a strong connection with Hatfield, the current editor. 4Tallahassee is run out of the same address as the Mayor’s campaign and Bellamy’s campaign.

Should I also mention that Skip Foster is a big climate crisis denier? Which would explain why all of his ideas for the future sound like he came up with them at an Orange Julius in Governor’s Square Mall in the late 1980s and just never looked back. Foster is also a guy . Which is to say, this is the kind of “leadership�� that creates eye strain due to all constant eyerolls you sustain reading his shtick.

Like the Chamber crowd at large, Foster is oppressed�� by the fact people call him out on his problematic issues. This would explain why the storytelling on 4Tallahassee has become more and more unhinged. Gems of their recent forays into commentary include this doozy (below), which implies that local folks who speak out against bad development ideas are possible murderers.

This post also shows Skip Foster and Bryan Desloge have a breathtaking ignorance of geopolitics and the facts of the Sri Lanka situation.

Meanwhile, after having done and why “civility�� is important and, oh my we might get the vapors if we engaged in a little blunt communication about substantive issues�� after doing these lecturing civility pieces that sound like a somewhat obtuse parent had gotten hold of a topic and been told it was urgent to incompetently relay it to a child�� after all of that, 4Tallahassee pivots to a boatload of nasty negative advertising and posts that read like Steve Bannon ghostwrites for them. This has included attempts to equate the January 6 insurrection with a handful of progressives winning a few seats locally. Which tells you just how frivolously they take the attempted overthrow of our government.

Is this “civility��? 4TLH seems to be saying it is��

Civility, then, is a one-way street, and if that street is Tharpe, it probably has no sidewalks. Civility is something people in power use so they don’t have to have uncomfortable discussions about why their house is a former plantation. Civility is something weaponized to snuff out opposing ideas and to silence people.

Civility is, at the end of the day, as expressed by 4Tallahassee and the Chamber, a smile that’s actually a hyena’s snarl.

What You Can Do

There is more—so much more—but for now I’ll stop and say that there are many great candidates running this year that, except for retaining Matlow, there’s no excuse for voting for incumbents who have supported the status quo.

In addition to many other calamities, we are in danger of completely erasing our urban-rural divide and creating an era of sprawl similar to the problems Jacksonville has experienced—just as we need climate change resiliency the most. This is irresponsible development, without a plan.

The squandering and poor management of our natural resources should be a source of alarm for anyone who cares about future generations of Tallahasseans.

As for ethics and the people’s voice, nothing tells us how little Mayor John Dailey values your opinion than how he has orchestrated deflecting from the subject of ethics or just simply shut down debate during meetings—in essence silencing your elected representatives.

So please research who is running and vote in reformers so we have systems that support actual ethics and transparency, not the whims of the few. We cannot have a sustainable future or a good quality of life in Tallahassee without systemic reform of local government.

***

(If you want a wide-scale view of how Tallahassee fits into total Florida picture in terms of these quality of life issues, .)

(Note: I will post a local elections voter’s guide early next week.)

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Composite trail cam photo from our yard, night of Jan. 29, 2022

Please do follow me on twitter, facebook, and instagram for rewilding updates, publishing news, goofiness, and silliness. My twitter and facebook are obvious. My instagram is jeff_vandermeer123.

After about two years of pandemic isolation, during which I’ve had a number of books out, it’s about time to start a new chapter on what I’m writing and my environmental activism. If you missed it, since the start of the pandemic, I’ve published , , , reprints of , (co-edited with Ann VanderMeer), and Theo Ellsworth’s graphic novel of my short story . It’s not been the best time to be so prolific, given everything going on in the world, but I’m thankful to still be here and starting new projects. That includes things outside of the fiction-writing sphere.

The amazing trade paperback editions of the Ambergris novels, from Picador US/MCD: City of Saints & Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch

The Hummingbird Salamander book tour was a whirlwind, including so many amazing moments–getting to talk with Karen Russell, David Mitchell, David Duchovny, and so many more. I think I particularly loved this moment visually, although this photoshop includes our cat Neo because that’s hilarious. Thanks to everyone who came to so many virtual events. I believe in a 12-month period I did about 70 Zoom events, which was both amazing as an opportunity and also an endurance test!

***

Some of you may know I helped found and served as contributing editor for , a new media site posting articles on local North Florida politics that other places just haven’t been picking up on. OT fills an important gap in coverage and spotlights ongoing systemic corruption in our local government. I was pleased to be asked to be involved and it was invigorating to help get OT up and running, but ultimately day-to-day operations took too much time away from the writing career. So I’ve stepped back and am no longer part of OT, although I’ll continue to signal boost their most important stories. Bob Lotane, the publisher there, is a great guy. I am proud of my article–it includes issues that anyone living anywhere should be worried about if they crop up in their community.

During this time, too, I’ve been flattered to enjoy the trust of a number of concerned folks in the community about various issues, many of them environmental in nature. I plan to continue to serve as a conduit for folks to media outlets, but I also urge you as concerned people in the community to reach out to whoever you trust, from new media to more traditional places, so important news that we need to know becomes visible.

For my part, I am writing a couple of articles on local politics for national media, as well as a major piece on Florida’s troubled environmental record. I think I can more effectively pick my spots and still concentrate on the fiction this way.

We continue to work on rewilding the yard and helping to preserve land in North Florida�� is probably the best I’ve done on the subject. We’ve seen the yard become ever more of a haven for urban wildlife and migratory birds. In 2021, I planted another 20 native bushes and about 15 understory trees. I also planted two sycamore trees, which are already getting quite tall! Five basswood saplings are the latest additions along with a Palatka Holly tree. In rather hilarious news, some of what I thought we palmettos in the yard were slow-rising sabal palms. We also faced challenges of new light pollution in the ravine, part solved by more shielded street lights and selective plantings that will blot out some of the light over time. Other challenges include increasingly unpredictable and unseasonable temperatures and weather, resulting in a strong move toward even more drought-resistant plants. We also are consulting with a landscaper to turn the front yard into more of a teaching/learning experience about native plants.

View of the canopy in our yard from the front walkway.

***

In terms of movie/TV news, all I can say is that the Borne TV series at AMC continues to make great progress. I can’t share details yet, but I’m very pleased with how it is going. My short story “The Third Bear�� is also still under option and I’m hopeful there will be a finalized script soon. were made out of three individual short stories from my collection Secret Lives, as well.

As for new fiction, fans of A Peculiar Peril, the first volume of the Lambshead duology, will be happy to know that I will be turning in volume 2, A Terrible Trouble, over the summer. I’m also working on a novel set in a version of the ravine behind our house, working title The Stone Shed. In addition to that project, I have a fourth Southern Reach novel on slow burn, Absolution, and a stand-alone set in a future of plastic oceans entitled Drone Love. With regard to short fiction, my story “Always Home�� will appear in a terraforming anthology later this year (details to follow) and I’ve edited a digital-only short story anthology for Plympton, which will be announced soon.

Both Ann and I were very pleased that our The Big Book of Modern Fantasy won the World Fantasy Award for best anthology. I would also add that Subterranean Press�� limited edition two-volume set Ambergris is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Alas, it is already sold out.

Armando Veve’s artwork for volume 1 of Subterranean Press�� limited edition of my Ambergris novels.

I was chuffed to have City of Saints & Madmen be part of a major Byzantium exhibition in Istanbul recently–Scott Eagle’s art from the first edition of City was part of the exhibition and I also participated in on the Ambergris trilogy.

Scott Eagle’s artwork showcased in Istanbul

Meanwhile, our cat Neo continues to live the good life and be semi internet famous, with more fan art and people on my facebook and twitter very loyal to his antics, bleps, and beauty egg routine. Neo has been a big part of us not going nuts during the pandemic lockdowns and general isolation.

Thanks to artist Seren Dipity for this fab image featuring Neo, our cat�� who is The One.

Finally, I was disappointed to find that facebook was hiding in my spam approximately 150 legitimate emails from readers, event organizers, etc. This covers the span from late 2019 to early this year. I’m so awfully sorry that I didn’t see your email at the time and although I have responded late to some of you, it’s kind of hard to pick up the thread on all of them. You can always email me at [email protected] with your comments, requests for appearances, etc.

Do I get to have a favorite joke I made this past year or so? Well, this is my Wordle�� image by Jeremy Zerfoss

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1.

He had a lesson plan for the semester, but I had given him a novel featuring owls that I thought particularly fine and that, as his superior, I had made a strong case for to the exclusion of all else. He must have agreed, because he rewrote his lesson plan until it was only about owls and went well beyond the limits of anything contained in the book, which was titled Owls. His name is irrelevant as he soon began to call himself Owl. At this point, I told him he had gone too far and that you could not teach maths using only owls. But Owl would not listen and soon everything was owls. Everywhere. All the time. They found him in the parking lot one day during recess, pecking the crap out of a dead squirrel. After having spent the night in a tree. He was fired a year later. It was entirely his fault.

2.

The dog barked too much at an owl perched in a nearby tree, so the woman who owned the dog took it to the vet to have it put down. But the vet refused for some reason, so she took the dog out back and buried it alive. But the dog dug itself out and got back in the house through an open window. It gave her a very determined stare, and the woman had in the meantime become less sure of herself. Or what she wanted, or even if she could defend herself against a dog that might be a ghost. So, she gave up and dug a grave and buried herself, leaving the house to the dog. And, finally, the woman got a good night’s sleep, despite the owl. Until the day the dog dug her bones up and scattered them all across the neighborhood. If this seemed vindictive, he had his reasons.

3.

A man who had just been fired from a teaching job kicked a utility box along the sidewalk. Out popped an owl. The owl said, “Come with me.�� The man said, “I’m not coming with you�� and ate the owl. But then the man became an owl and hid in the utility box. Haunted by what he had done. An owl had talked to him and he had eaten it. He would wait in the utility box until someone kicked it. Then he would try to complete the eaten owl’s legacy. As best he could. Which would probably not be very good because he had no idea why the owl had been hiding in the utility box. But that was the least of his problems.

4.

There once was a writer who wrote mystery novels featuring different kinds of owls and the murderer always had the same name and the detective had the same name as the murderer. So you always knew who the murderer was, but it was very confusing. Only five people liked these novels, in the whole world: a container-ship captain, an insurance salesperson, a florist in Delaware, a firefighter in Delhi, and one retired millionaire who had made his fortune selling frozen steaks to restaurants. The novel writer became rich writing his novels for these five people, due to the last one. One day, against my advice, he decided for his millionaire benefactor to change the owls and use peacocks instead. Eventually, he died penniless. The retired millionaire, you see, loved owls, not mysteries.

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