Sheriff Ivey’s signature Facebook ‘show’ features non-fugitives<\/a><\/p>\nBut her campaign financing record supports\u00a0that Musselman’s campaign funding indeed “dried up” after rebuffing Ivey.\u00a0Not counting loans to herself, campaign finance records\u00a0show she pulled in $8,300 in the weeks before the May meetings.
She is not the only candidate this election cycle to allege similar tactics by Ivey and his allies.<\/p>\n
Cocoa police officer and District 2\u00a0County Commission contender\u00a0Chris Hattaway said since\u00a0FLORIDA TODAY reported that\u00a0Ivey asked him to step aside for the sheriff’s\u00a0favored candidate, former State Rep. Tom Goodson, he has heard from at least three donors who said they received calls from Ivey or Goodson.<\/p>\n
The donors \u2014 one elected official and two prominent local businessmen, Hattaway said\u00a0\u2014 described the calls as attempts to undermine his account of the sheriff’s offer or, in some cases, openly get\u00a0them to reconsider their support before the Aug. 23rd primary, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe (Ivey) is going about it by calling my donors and supporters and saying, ‘Chris made a mistake, but I am not going to say anything about it,'”\u00a0Hattaway said, quoting what his supporters told him. He called the efforts “damage control” in the wake of the article, but\u00a0said there is no doubt\u00a0in his mind it was meant to have a\u00a0chilling effect on support for his campaign.<\/p>\n
Among the donors who were contacted, according to Hattaway, was Cocoa Mayor Michael Blake. Hattaway said that Blake called him a few weeks ago to tell him that he had been contacted by Goodson.<\/p>\n
According to Hattaway, Blake said Goodson wanted to know why he, Blake, a Democrat, was supporting Hattaway, a\u00a0Republican,\u00a0and asked for a meeting\u00a0to get him to “rethink that.”<\/p>\n
Blake told FLORIDA TODAY a meeting with Goodson did occur, in which they spoke about “concerns for the city of Cocoa,” including housing needs and other issues, he said.<\/p>\n
After initially telling a reporter Hattaway wasn’t a subject of the conversation, Blake asked if he was being quoted and said he did tell Goodson he endorsed Hattaway in the race, but denied Goodson had asked him to change his support.<\/p>\n
When asked about the call, Goodson responded: \u201cNo comment, no comment, no comment. Next question.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Matthew Kachergus, a civil rights attorney in Jacksonville, if Goodson did call Blake to shift\u00a0his support, it was most likely “fair game politics.”\u00a0\u00a0“If he’s just trying to change his mind, I don’t really see a problem with that,” Kachergus said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The allegations involving\u00a0Ivey, however, are\u00a0a different matter, he said.<\/p>\n
Kachergus said when a state actor\u00a0tries directing people how to express their political rights, “just the nature of the request is going to have a chilling effect.”\u00a0That could cross the line into a First Amendment violation, or\u00a0even an outright crime,\u00a0depending on the context and\u00a0specifics of the case \u2014\u00a0particularly if some form of retaliation is later involved, Kachergus added.<\/p>\n
“Whenever a chief law enforcement officer in a jurisdiction is trying to dissuade people from exercising their First Amendment rights, it certainly smells problematic,” he said.<\/p>\n‘Right people into every office’<\/h2>\n Ivey has stated that elected officials at all levels of government \u2014\u00a0from sheriff to school board to county and city offices \u2014\u00a0should share similar values and views. In practice, that has usually meant his own set\u00a0of constitutional values.<\/p>\n
“I think we may have to make sure that we’re putting the right people into office. Into every office,”\u00a0Ivey said on an April 30, 2021, episode of the conservative podcast Liberty Monks. “We put focus and vigilance on some what we deem are the more important offices, maybe it’s sheriff, maybe it’s prosecutor. We often don’t put that same thought process and diligence into our judicial elections, into our school board elections, into our municipal elections.”<\/p>\n
“And what we find is people that aren’t standing up for the Constitution,”\u00a0he said. “We’ve got to get back to thinking across the board that every elected office is important.”<\/p>\n
Publicly, Ivey has framed his own judicial endorsements around his particular views of “law and order,”\u00a0imploring constituents to vote for judges that share what he has called his “no tolerance”\u00a0attitude on crime.<\/p>\n
“NOW MORE THAN EVER WE NEED TO MAKE SURE WE ARE ELECTING STRONG CONSERVATIVE JUDGES TO THE BENCH!!”\u00a0Ivey wrote in a March 1 Facebook post. Judicial candidates should be willing to impose maximum sentences and “throw the key away”\u00a0on people convicted of crimes, he said, and high bonds to keep those accused but not yet convicted in jail.<\/p>\n
“If you want to know who to vote for in a Judges race that is going to protect your community…ask your Sheriff!!”\u00a0he wrote.<\/p>\n
Ivey’s political maneuvering, while not a secret in Brevard, mystifies some experts.<\/p>\n
In his 10 years at the helm of the nonpartisan research institute, Wilcox of Integrity Florida said, he couldn\u2019t recall a case of a county sheriff exerting so much control over candidates \u2014\u00a0much less trading support for political favors.<\/p>\n
It is legal in Florida for law enforcement leaders to endorse judges for office and engage in other political activities. Still, Wilcox said the extent of Ivey\u2019s involvement in judicial races was \u201ctroubling,\u201d leaving open the door to questions about the independence \u2014\u00a0and ultimately, the integrity \u2014\u00a0of the county courts.<\/p>\n
“The sheriff is going to have to potentially arrest people that would then be prosecuted before that judge,”\u00a0Wilcox said. “It violates the spirit of the (Constitutional) separation of powers … And I think it raises really troubling questions about use of political influence.”<\/p>\n
Incentivizing candidates to drop out of races is problematic precisely because it prioritizes the will of the powerful few over the will of the people, he said.<\/p>\n
“He’s depriving the public of the choices in elections,”\u00a0Wilcox said. “That’s not fair to the voters. The voters are supposed to make those kinds of choices.”<\/p>\n
Musselman feels the same way.<\/p>\n
In Brevard politics, \u201cthere is no level playing field from the start,” she said. “There’s no reason to have an election if one person gets to choose who runs, and what they run for and when they run.”<\/p>\n
Eric Rogers is a watchdog reporter for FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Rogers at 321-242-3717 or esrogers@floridatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter @EricRogersFT.<\/em><\/p>\nBobby Block is Managing Editor for FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Block at 321-242-3710 or at bblock@floridatoday.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] Stories about elections and allegations of interference in the electoral process are of critical…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34421,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34419\/revisions\/34421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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