{"id":43792,"date":"2024-04-05T17:07:42","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T21:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=43792"},"modified":"2024-04-05T17:07:46","modified_gmt":"2024-04-05T21:07:46","slug":"dont-attack-voters-from-your-pulpit-mayor-pastor-and-other-lessons-of-lake-wales-delicious-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/04\/05\/dont-attack-voters-from-your-pulpit-mayor-pastor-and-other-lessons-of-lake-wales-delicious-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t attack voters from your pulpit, Mayor Pastor; and other lessons of Lake Wales’ delicious elections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The party of High Point Church can’t get above 43 percent because a big majority of people everywhere don’t want to live in a gross, sleazy, fake Christian dictatorship, especially close to home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By BILLY TOWNSEND<\/td><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A huge majority of Lake Wales voters on Tuesday voted against the incumbent city commissioners on whose behalf Mayor\/Pastor Jack Hilligoss attacked his own constituents from his High Point Church pulpit recently. Full background on that here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it turns out, 57 percent of Lake Wales voters \u2014 of your constituents, Mayor Pastor \u2014 are “wicked,” abnormal, “consistent agitators<\/a>.\u201d What does that make you<\/em><\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t wait to hear what Hilligoss preaches on Sunday about Team Wicked\u2019s dominance. Somebody please send it to me. I bet he calls on Jesus to perform a celestial January 6 and smite the entire city of Lake Wales in vengeance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until then, here are some of the lessons\/interesting tidbits from this home-city thrashing of the last toxic remnant of the CCDF<\/s> or whatever it calls itself now, with which Hilligoss has always been closely affiliated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Party of High Point Church is deeply unpopular everywhere; but it benefits from no runoffs in Lake Wales<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you don\u2019t have a runoff mechanism \u2014 and you can\u2019t settle on a one-on-one race \u2014 rogue churches can take over your town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The party of High Point Church can\u2019t get above 43 percent. But 43 percent was enough to make Hilligoss mayor a couple years ago. And it was enough to give one incumbent a 3-vote lead over a young political newcomer, which may or may not survive a recount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let\u2019s be clear: if you\u2019re an incumbent, and 57 percent of your community votes against you, your community heartily disapproves of your job performance. And Hilligoss himself made the two incumbents stuck at 42-43 percent a package deal, from his pulpit. Both were rejected, even if the one barely stays on the commission because of a spoiler candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s worth remembering that Winter Haven citizens also rejected the Party of High Point Church\u2019s efforts to expand itself in that city\u2019s recent elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who told Thomas Piccolo and SimWins to dump PAC money into Danny Krueger\u2019s dumpster fire campaign?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the biggest losers \u2014 other than Hilligoss \u2014 on Tuesday were a political operative\/hack named Thomas Piccolo (recently married to Rep. Josie Tomkow, R-Lakeland, sometimes) and Polk Sheriff Grady Judd.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Piccolo is the chair of a PAC called \u201cBuilding a Brighter Future for Florida\u201d <\/a>that paid for these mailers on behalf of big loser Danny Krueger:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve written a lot recently about these types of PACs.<\/a> There are dozens and dozens of them, but they are controlled by a small handful<\/em><\/strong> of slimy political consultant shops. They are, in fact, mostly funding vehicles for those political shops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The political shop that controls \u201cBuilding a Brighter Future for Florida\u201d<\/a> is called Strategic Image Management <\/a>\u2014 or SimWins, as its often called. Piccolo and a favorite subject of mirth for me \u2014 a guy named Anthony Pedicini \u2014 run SimWins. The SimWins\/Piccolo\/Pedicini universe has lots of clients, including Grady Judd\u2019s fellow sheriff Chad Chronister, of Hillsborough County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBuilding a Brighter Future for Florida\u201d is one vehicle SimWins has for getting paid. Since 2018, $1.7M in contributions have flowed through this SimWins PAC to campaigns and whatnot. Not all of it goes to SimWins eventually through political consulting services; but a lot of it does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you can see, in just the last few months of 2023, this one PAC that SimWins controls spent roughly $100,000 on SimWins \u201cconsulting services.\u201d There is little doubt SimWins got paid to make the Krueger\/Grady mailers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A different SimWins PAC attacked Polk School Board Member Lisa Miller back in the 2022 election <\/a>\u2014 and got its ass kicked in the same way this one did, by roughly the same margin. Never let it be said you can\u2019t beat and humiliate these people and then tell them about it.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of how reporting on these PACs works, we don\u2019t have any record yet of contributions or expenditures. But Danny Krueger, personally, is not significant to the people and interests who give to these statewide PACs. They don\u2019t care about his vision or agenda. They don\u2019t care about the party of High Point Church. They certainly don\u2019t care about Lake Wales, or any sense of common good, at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They do care about money and development interests. So, I suspect somebody who is \u201cimportant,\u201d who has lucrative development interests in and around the fast growing fringes of Lake Wales, thought Krueger was helpful to those interests. He or she told Piccolo\/SimWins to back him, I wager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who was it? I\u2019d put my money on J.D. Alexander; but I\u2019m open to other names. And if you are the person who did it, feel free to claim it. I\u2019ll happily give you full public credit. In the meantime, giggle at this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Grady Judd doesn\u2019t move votes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because these mailers were a professional SimWins joint, there is no chance Grady Judd did not know and sign off. He\u2019ll say it wasn\u2019t an endorsement. LOL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an endorsement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This wasn\u2019t Saga Stevin going rogue and taking his endorsement from him back in the 2021 Lakeland mayor\u2019s race.<\/a> SimWins does not want to annoy Grady Judd with mass mailers that use him casually. They consider him a valuable political commodity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But is he?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point in his career, Grady is primarily is a very predictable, very large (and sort of tired, low-energy) part of the social furniture in Polk County. Nobody\u2019s going to challenge him or try to remove him politically. But he\u2019s also not nearly as interesting (or even fun) as he used to be. And his cross-tribal appeal has gone with his cleverness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, like his ally Ron DeSantis (and unlike Trump, truth be told), Grady likes to duck fights he isn\u2019t 100 percent guaranteed to win. It\u2019s why he\u2019ll say he wasn\u2019t endorsing Krueger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The combination of the predictability and sameness of Grady\u2019s schtick; his diminished general appeal, and his longstanding unwillingness to take political risks means he\u2019s never really been the pure political force people think he is. As Krueger shows, he\u2019s not flipping votes for other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re running against a gross person, make sure you run against a gross person. Want. That. Fight.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By contrast, Carol Gillespie went right at Danny Krueger as the gross member of a rogue church seeking to dominate a town that doesn\u2019t want to be dominated or cursed from the pulpit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she crushed him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of all<\/em><\/strong> the gross candidates that have surfaced since Saga Stevin announced the era of the high profile gross candidate in Polk County, only<\/em><\/strong> Rick Nolte and Krueger have narrowly won 1-and-1 races against normal people. Lake Wales just corrected that error with extreme prejudice. LOL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Nolte, well, you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brief era of the gross candidate in Polk County is ending because normal people don\u2019t want gross people in their faces every day or fake Christians blasting them from their rogue pulpits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Really, only Pastor Mayor \u201c43 percent\u201d Hilligoss is left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Lake Wales settles on one good candidate, he\u2019ll go the way of Krueger when it\u2019s his turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hilligoss hates public schools, charter and traditional alike. So Lake Wales needs to get over its debilitating school divide and grievances<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, what\u2019s the biggest hurdle to Lake Wales unifying to purge the party of High Point church from its would-be city dictatorship?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my view, it\u2019s Lake Wales longstanding, bitter, class and race divisions which have been exacerbated by the longstanding enmity between the Lake Wales Charter district and the traditional public schools. I submit to you that the inability for charter folks to make peace and educational common cause with the district (and vice versa under Jackie Byrd) is a major major reason the party of High Point Church rose to power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jack Hilligoss hates both<\/em><\/strong> of you. Ask Donna Dunson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My bit of tough love: get over the grievances and judgements and work together. I tried to encourage that in my time as a School Board member \u2014 at great personal political risk \u2014 and got nowhere<\/em><\/strong>. Perhaps this experience has shown you how much you need each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The party of High Point Church can’t get above 43 percent because a big majority of people everywhere don’t want to live in a gross, sleazy, fake Christian dictatorship, especially… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}