By Bob Norman SW Florida Lighthouse
The mayor disputes the worst of the allegations but admits engaging in talk about sexuality during their July 4 encounter and having a “warped sense of humor”
Eighteen-year-old Dominic Hendricks took this photo with Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson to document what he said was a frightening experience.
In a Facebook post on April 6, Dominic Hendricks announced his intentions to become a politician after graduating from Florida Gulf Coast University in 2030.
“I am an 18-year-old Southwest Florida native,” Hendricks wrote, “who would love to enter local politics to help raise awareness for various topics, with public transportation and passenger railway infrastructure being a major topic.”
Hendricks began attending Fort Myers city council meetings this spring while still in high school and addressed the council about a planned housing development at the April 20 meeting during which he gave a shoutout to the city’s mayor, 68-year-old Kevin Anderson, regarding the similarity of their ties.
“As much as I love somewhere like Miami, I really appreciate the green space,” Hendricks told the council during public comments. “And one last thing, Mayor Anderson, like the tie.”
He and the mayor, spoke afterward.
“I encouraged him to keep [engaging politically],” Anderson recalled. “I told him get involved and always inform yourself before you speak.”
Hendricks continued to attend the meetings and routinely chat with the mayor afterward. In May, shortly before he graduated from East Lee County High School, Hendricks said Anderson even called his principal, Tony Allen, to arrange to find him a mentor. This summer Hendricks enrolled at Florida Gulf Coast University, where Anderson serves on the Alumni Association Board Of Directors.
Fast forward to the July 4 at Centennial Park, where Anderson was leading the city’s celebration. Hendricks said he wanted to check out the festivities and was dropped off by friends at 6 p.m. After about an hour, he heard the mayor giving a speech at the Caloosa Sound Ampitheater. The mayor came down to see him, gave him a VIP pass, and took to the nearby Oxbow Bar & Grill.
Hendricks says the mayor, who was drinking beer, barraged him with obscene questions about his sexuality — regarding the size of his genitalia, whether he was circumsised, if he would have sex with an older man, and if he considered him attractive. He said it prompted him to text a friend from the restaurant’s bathroom to come there and “save” him.
“The mayor of fort [sic] Myers keeps trying to coerce me into sleeping with him,” he wrote in a text shared with the Lighthouse.
Anderson, a married Republican, confirmed he spent time with Hendricks that day, and admitted sexuality was a topic of conversation, but denied it was as graphic as Hendricks described and said it was the student who initiated it. “I had a very interesting conversation with him,” Anderson said. “He was very open about his sexuality, but that didn’t bother me. It was somewhere along the lines that he was bisexual and I asked him about how that was at school and I asked him if he had a girlfriend and he went into that.”