Does CRT explain Byron Donalds' senior advisor's grooming arrest? Scenes from the great Collier County GOP/Classical Charter/Hillsdale civil war.

Welcome to Florida, Chris Rufo, where our gross, criminal-adjacent "leaders" are too busy with this shit to care about the JebSantis "Great Regression" of our kids and future. You'll fit in great.

This is Larry Wilcoxson, “senior advisor” for newly famous Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Naples. He’s also a fierce combatant, recently caught on camera menacing opponents, in the Great Donalds family v. Lichter family “Classical Charter” and Collier County GOP Civil War.

Press reports indicate Wilcoxson has been arrested at least four times, including: felony grand theft auto (2014), felony aggravated battery (2003), and possessing a stolen credit card (1998). But he has only been convicted of stolen credit card possession, as far as I can tell.

Does Rep. Donalds believe 1) Wilcoxson “had no connection” to the sex crime. 2) Racist police targeted him in an example of CRT?

The most serious arrest, in 2006, was for literal “grooming” — three counts of child molestation in 2005 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Wilcoxson was a substitute teacher at Longfellow Middle School. The alleged victim was a 13-year old girl. I found this article from the Indianapolis Star, detailing the official circumstances of Wilcoxson’s arrest, which came after he was fired for exposing himself to a female custodian, according to prosecutors.

The Star seems not to have followed up. But the Southwest Florida online news reported later that the molestation charge was dropped. Wilcoxson blamed the racist behavior of violent police for his arrest.

On September 11, 2007 the Court sustained a Motion to Dismiss the case after the State of Indiana's Motion to Dismiss citing "Essential Witness's Testimony Excluded" …

… In 2010, during a press interview he responded to the molestation charges saying he was targeted by police who roughed him up and used racial epithets during an investigation of the sexual molestation case, to which he claims to have had no connection.

If true, this seems a textbook example of CRT in action — and I think Rep. Donalds should publicly address it. Larry Wilcoxson certainly addresses Byron Donalds in public.

An uncivil war to watch, if you can bear it

Now take a look at this TV news report from a couple months ago. You can see Byron Donalds and Wilcoxson in action. The people they are menacing/berating are new Collier County School Board Member Kelly Lichter and/or her allies.

Kelly Lichter was elected back to the Collier County School Board in this election cycle after she had been unelected and chased off it some years back. Her husband Nick Lichter recently became chair of the Collier GOP, more or less on the Alex Jones “I’m bonkers” ticket. See article here.

Kelly Lichter is currently suing Byron Donalds, his wife Erika Donalds, and Hillsdale College, one time sponsor of the Mason Classical Charter School that Erika Donalds and Kelly Lichter co-founded in 2012 in partnership with Hillsdale.

The lawsuit and Donalds’ screaming about it in the clip above are the latest “shots fired” in a very longstanding, brutal, stupid, and gross GOP/charter school civil war in ruby red Collier County.

That civil war emerges from Mason Classical, of which Hillsdale College and Erika Donalds helped Lichter and a man named David Bolduc are all founders of one degree or another.

The Donalds then had a massive falling out with Lichter/Bolduc. Accusations and lawsuits have flown back and forth to create a legal and press record so voluminous I can’t even begin to timeline it all out — much less adjudicate it.

But the bottom line, I think, in a paragraph, is this:

The Donalds broke away from Mason — and Hillsdale went with them — to start new classical charters. They cited accusations of wrongdoing by the Bolduc/Lichter faction. Hillsdale then sued the Lichter/Bolduc faction for badmouthing it to potential schools. And they’ve been unloading on each other more-or-less non-stop ever since. The Lichter/Bolduc countersuit is the catalyst of the confrontations caught on camera, as is the Donalds’ support of Lichter’s GOP opponent in the primary.

(Any Collier folks, please correct any of this. I’m doing my best here. I’m not a professional Lichterologist or Donaldstorian. I’m deliberately trying to avoid stating details with precision I don’t have. )

Who’s crazier and/or grosser? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The zeitgeist of Florida political gossip reporting generally seems to consider Lichter and her husband crazier and grosser than the Donalds; although I have no idea who decides the zeitgeist. Peter Schorsch, maybe?

And I’m not sure I agree. I tend to come down on tie, with Wilcoxson carrying quite a bit of weight for the Donalds crazy scale. I mean, there’s this, too …

Liv Coleman @LivColemanFL

There’s a comment on the FB live video of the Stop the Steal buses leaving from Naples, FL from Larry Wilcoxson, who identifies himself as advisor to #CD19 GOP Congressman Byron Donalds. /15

Moreover, my friendly acquaintance Kathryn Joyce, among others, has done great work on Hillsdale College and its influence both on Rufo-ism and January 6th-ism, which are mostly the same thing. Here’s a Joyce story that leads with Hillsdale and Florida.

Putting aside the “who is craziest/grossest of them all” question, it’s worth remembering that these people are all on the same “ideological” and “moral” side, in theory.

And yet, in flesh, they all hate each other far more than they hate libs in abstraction.

That’s very, very important for normal, decent people to remember: these types of low character grifters will always turn on each other when there’s money and power at stake. Their ideological “goals” are no match for cash or the rush of dominance. We should look for opportunities to exploit that pathology and encourage more fratricide.

Good times.

What does Rufo think of Wilcoxson blaming his grooming arrest on CRT — or at least systemic racial injustice?

As I said, at first glance, Donalds and his wife Erika seem very much pillars of the gross, grifting, anti-CRT, fake “groomer” panic education “movement” embodied by Chris Rufo.

Gov. Ron DeSantis just appointed Rufo to the board of tiny New College in Sarasota, explicitly seeking to make it “the Hillsdale College of the South.” It’s the governor’s latest, tiresome, Gaetz-esque “own the libs” troll — a lot of noise signifying not much but a ‘24 GOP presidential primary talking point.

Erika Donalds’ charter efforts connect directly to Hillsdale: “Erika Donalds is the founder and CEO of the Optima Foundation—its goal is the successful launch of Hillsdale College Barney Charter School initiative classical academies,” reads the intro to a Donalds podcast.

I feel certain Donalds will plug herself into the DeRufo alliance’s grift at the new “Classical” version of New College.

And I’d ask the same thing of the DeRufo alliance — so fakely concerned with protecting children — that I ask of the Donalds:

Does Rufo believe 1) Wilcoxson “had no connection” to the sex crime. 2) Racist police targeted him in an example of CRT? 3) Is DeRufo comfortable with Wilcoxson and the Donalds as close allies?

I won’t get an answer.

There can only be one top grifter

If you look deeper at the Donalds, you’ll see they’re also pillars of Florida’s much longerstanding DoE/Jefferson scandal charter grifter community, which has been in what I would describe as a somewhat uneasy alliance of convenience with DeSantis since his election in 2018.

This faction is embodied by disgraced former Florida House Speaker and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, current Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, and Ralph Arza, a famously racist convicted witness tamperer who is also Florida’s top charter school lobbyist. DeSantis once banished Arza from his 2018 campaign because he was too racist. Really. Full background here.

That faction is more Jebworld than DeSantis world — another example of how JebSantis is inseparable from itself.

The Bolduc/Lichter lawsuit unloads on this JebSantis/Arza/Corcoran/Donalds faction in a “political background” section — and not without justification.

That faction is completely responsible the massive DoE/Jefferson County/MGT Consultant charter school scandal that quietly cost Richard Corcoran his career and that Ron DeSantis has been covering up in plain sight ever since. Full account here.

The JebWorld charter faction isn’t opposed to Rufo to exactly; but he is definitely muscling in on their grift. And I think, in the end, they’re all essentially rivals for head grifter status.

The DeRufo alliance probably threatens somebody else’s grift — not exactly sure whose — more than it does even New College.

A strange, interesting correspondence

I don’t know if Rufo and the Lichters and Bolduc know each other.

In fact, I did not know who David Bolduc was until he emailed me his massive lawsuit Friday — about the time the DeRufo New College announcement was happening — and asked me to read it. He told me he finds my work “impressive.”

I am susceptible to flattery; so here we are. This paragraph caught my attention:

519. On August 23, 2022, the night of Florida’s primary election, Rep.

Donalds aggressively confronted Lichter at a watch party hosted at Seed To Table in

Naples. During this encounter, Rep. Donalds and Larry Wilcoxson (“Wilcoxson”)

cornered Lichter while Rep. Donalds forcefully demanded that Lichter dismiss this

lawsuit and told Lichter that he would “crush” her if she did not.

520. Despite a checkered past that includes arrests for child molestation and

aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and accusations of exposing himself to a

female school custodian, Wilcoxson works for Rep. Donalds as a “Senior Advisor.”

Once I realized who he was, I asked Bolduc via email his general take on the whole gross witches’ brew cauldron pot of “conservative” school politics and grifting these days. I was trying to orient myself on his point-of-view.

I found his response interesting and worth printing, especially considering my Sunday op/ed in the Tampa Bay Times.

That spread points out Florida’s “Great Regression” in academic performance as kids age — especially compared to “lib” states like Massachusetts that are serving their kids, of all kinds, far far better than Florida’s grifter civil wars.

Note the part in bold from Bolduc:

I confess the complaint is a lot to process, but depending on how far in you are, I feel it will have more relevance to the Schools of Hope fiasco in Jefferson County, than the New College move today.

Yes, while Kelly and I are seen as "conservative" who support Charter Schools like Mason Classical, we are not in it for a dime, and only want to provide the best education possible for our students.

I moved from a top school system in Massachusetts in 2010, and have been very outspoken for over a decade that Collier County, Schools. with it's massively bloated budget, is in bed with FDOE to cover-up their D to F results with A ratings. Perhaps with our new board majority, we can bring the same core knowledge curriculum to all Collier County schools which has proven to be incredibly successful in Massachusetts from 1993 to 2010, and Mason Classical from 2014 to today. 

I am no fan of Bush, DeSantis, Donalds, Corcoran, Oliva, Diaz, Arza, FDOE, etc. when it comes to Florida Education. I feel once you read the entire complaint (a big ask), you will understand why.