UPDATED: “Sex Offenders” are the new political grenade!
Want to try and blow up a political campaign? Try and toss a grenade. No, not a literal grenade – the small hand-thrown bomb – but a political grenade… an association with a “sex offender”.
“Sex offenders” have become the latest ammunition political opponents like to toss at each other in order to damage an opponents campaign. In Florida’s gubernatorial race, current Governor Ron DeSantis criticized challenger Charlie Crist’s running mate, Karla Hernández, for alleged ties to a former member of the Miami-Dade teachers union who is serving jail time for sexually assaulting students. He was quoted as saying, “They cared more about the power of their union than they did about the best interests of these kids,” he continued. “That is disgraceful. You do not put union politics ahead of middle school students who are in danger of being sexually abused. I think that’s disqualifying to be in any political office, much less Lieutenant Governor of the state of Florida.”
In return, Crist’s camp lobbed back another grenade, criticizing DeSantis for his association with a Florida Representative currently under investigation for trafficking a minor.
Who knew? We should have been endorsing candidates we don’t want in office!
UPDATED: OMG! This has risen to a new level. In Wisconsin a registrant happened to be at a campaign event for a Sheriff’s candidate and took a picture. The opponent immediately used that against him. https://empowerwisconsin.org/evers-appointed-dane-county-sheriff-photographed-partying-with-convicted-pedophile/
Desantis is slowly pissing me off. He seems to have a Napolean complex. I have wrote him with several letters regarding the disgusting display of lawmaking concerning the actual intent of the ex post facto clause(The only ex post facto clause in 943.0435). I shared that it was my opinion that the reason they included that clause in the beginning, was to have faces on the registry, so that when it was launched, the public would have a couple thousand faces on the registry to look at. In other words, what would happen when the local news anchors told the public to go check their local zip codes? The only state to respect the U.S. Constitution as of now is Alaska. They are the only state to have worded their registry as “Convicted on or after”, go figure…..
@mike, while it’s not quite exactly the same as Alaska, when MN switched certain offenses from 10-yr registration to lifetime, the changes only applied to new convictions after that date and not old ones. It requires some digging to find this as the statute itself says nothing about it and usually in MN the statutes themselves don’t have effective dates. Instead, you must read the legislative history to find that information. If you look at MN statute 243.166 on the state legislature site and scroll to the bottom there is a section called recent history. Each line has two links and the link on the right side is the entire bill that was passed and will include the effective dates and information about dates of offense to which it applies. For example the state greatly expanded lifetime registration in for offense committed after Aug 1, 2000 in the 2000 session but did not apply this lifetime requirement to most offenses committed before that. My point being is that Alaska isn’t the only state…
Minnesota is one of the fairest states in the U.S.
I think it is more fair especially because MOST registrants are not published online if you call registering at all fair. The biggest problem there is about is the civil commitment. If you are unfortunate enough to end up in that mess its pretty bad.
It actually is the only state that does not word the definition of “sex offender” retroactively…..
I’m sure everyone is well aware of Political antics. I hope we don’t have to hear about it on this site. We get enough of it on TV, morning , noon and night. FAC has a bigger battle to fight, no matter what the politicians are saying about each other. My personal opinion!
Maybe we should all begin making $10 political contributions to candidates we don’t like or don’t want to represent us.
I agree with you for the most part. But the politicians in this state have been standing on my neck for years to get votes or shame another candidate. They do use us true. But its far from new. I sometimes wonder if people even care anymore. They lie so much I don’t think people even beleive what they say at all anymore.
I frequently get calls to donate to this political concern and that political concern. Having watched our nation decline and listening to or watching our political representatives in action, I’ve decided no more. I’m tired of my money being used for media matters so politicians can lie about each other. When I say politics, I don’t mean Republican or Democrat…both parties have well intended followers…but I mean policies that affect the citizenry. I’m sick and tired of commercials that say, ‘no cost to you’ and ‘paid for by the federal government’. Does the bureaucracy actually believe that citizens don’t know where federal dollars come from? Unfortunately, there are some citizens who think it comes off the ‘money tree’. Today our government is out of control throwing federal money around to buy votes. If it keeps going this way, I’m fearful that the situation will go beyond intolerable. It will not be the first time that a nation founded on honorable principles will have gone down in destruction while the government and citizens ‘played’.
I don’t care what candidate might have dirt on them. I just want to know what hell they are going to do for the state or country. All this sling dirt on each other is childish and a complete distraction from what really matters.
You nailed it with “distraction” as that is their whole intent, to keep the public distracted with mudslinging so we don’t see what’s really happening.
It has been an issue for a while. Even in my early days of activism it was not uncommon to see pols, even presidential candidates, boast of their tough record against Registered Citizens as well as attacking the other candidate as being soft on crime or being a friend of Registered Citizens.