Don't attack voters from your pulpit, Mayor Pastor; and other lessons of Lake Wales' delicious elections
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.
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.
As it turns out, 57 percent of Lake Wales voters — of your constituents, Mayor Pastor — are "wicked," abnormal, "consistent agitators.” What does that make you?
I can’t wait to hear what Hilligoss preaches on Sunday about Team Wicked’s 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.
Until then, here are some of the lessons/interesting tidbits from this home-city thrashing of the last toxic remnant of the CCDF or whatever it calls itself now, with which Hilligoss has always been closely affiliated.
The Party of High Point Church is deeply unpopular everywhere; but it benefits from no runoffs in Lake Wales
If you don’t have a runoff mechanism — and you can’t settle on a one-on-one race — rogue churches can take over your town.
The party of High Point Church can’t 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.
But let’s be clear: if you’re 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.
It’s worth remembering that Winter Haven citizens also rejected the Party of High Point Church’s efforts to expand itself in that city’s recent elections.
Who told Thomas Piccolo and SimWins to dump PAC money into Danny Krueger’s dumpster fire campaign?
Perhaps the biggest losers — other than Hilligoss — on Tuesday were a political operative/hack named Thomas Piccolo (recently married to Rep. Josie Tomkow, R-Lakeland, sometimes) and Polk Sheriff Grady Judd.
Piccolo is the chair of a PAC called “Building a Brighter Future for Florida” that paid for these mailers on behalf of big loser Danny Krueger:
I’ve written a lot recently about these types of PACs. There are dozens and dozens of them, but they are controlled by a small handful of slimy political consultant shops. They are, in fact, mostly funding vehicles for those political shops.
The political shop that controls “Building a Brighter Future for Florida” is called Strategic Image Management — or SimWins, as its often called. Piccolo and a favorite subject of mirth for me — a guy named Anthony Pedicini — run SimWins. The SimWins/Piccolo/Pedicini universe has lots of clients, including Grady Judd’s fellow sheriff Chad Chronister, of Hillsborough County.
“Building a Brighter Future for Florida” 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.
As you can see, in just the last few months of 2023, this one PAC that SimWins controls spent roughly $100,000 on SimWins “consulting services.” There is little doubt SimWins got paid to make the Krueger/Grady mailers.
A different SimWins PAC attacked Polk School Board Member Lisa Miller back in the 2022 election — and got its ass kicked in the same way this one did, by roughly the same margin. Never let it be said you can’t beat and humiliate these people and then tell them about it.
Because of how reporting on these PACs works, we don’t 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’t care about his vision or agenda. They don’t care about the party of High Point Church. They certainly don’t care about Lake Wales, or any sense of common good, at all.
They do care about money and development interests. So, I suspect somebody who is “important,” 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.
Who was it? I’d put my money on J.D. Alexander; but I’m open to other names. And if you are the person who did it, feel free to claim it. I’ll happily give you full public credit. In the meantime, giggle at this:
Grady Judd doesn’t move votes
Because these mailers were a professional SimWins joint, there is no chance Grady Judd did not know and sign off. He’ll say it wasn’t an endorsement. LOL.
It was an endorsement.
This wasn’t Saga Stevin going rogue and taking his endorsement from him back in the 2021 Lakeland mayor’s race. SimWins does not want to annoy Grady Judd with mass mailers that use him casually. They consider him a valuable political commodity.
But is he?
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’s going to challenge him or try to remove him politically. But he’s also not nearly as interesting (or even fun) as he used to be. And his cross-tribal appeal has gone with his cleverness.
Moreover, like his ally Ron DeSantis (and unlike Trump, truth be told), Grady likes to duck fights he isn’t 100 percent guaranteed to win. It’s why he’ll say he wasn’t endorsing Krueger.
The combination of the predictability and sameness of Grady’s schtick; his diminished general appeal, and his longstanding unwillingness to take political risks means he’s never really been the pure political force people think he is. As Krueger shows, he’s not flipping votes for other people.
If you’re running against a gross person, make sure you run against a gross person. Want. That. Fight.
And she crushed him.
Of all the gross candidates that have surfaced since Saga Stevin announced the era of the high profile gross candidate in Polk County, only Rick Nolte and Krueger have narrowly won 1-and-1 races against normal people. Lake Wales just corrected that error with extreme prejudice. LOL.
And Nolte, well, you know.
The brief era of the gross candidate in Polk County is ending because normal people don’t want gross people in their faces every day or fake Christians blasting them from their rogue pulpits.
Really, only Pastor Mayor “43 percent” Hilligoss is left.
If Lake Wales settles on one good candidate, he’ll go the way of Krueger when it’s his turn.
Hilligoss hates public schools, charter and traditional alike. So Lake Wales needs to get over its debilitating school divide and grievances
Finally, what’s the biggest hurdle to Lake Wales unifying to purge the party of High Point church from its would-be city dictatorship?
In my view, it’s 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.
Jack Hilligoss hates both of you. Ask Donna Dunson.
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 — at great personal political risk — and got nowhere.
Perhaps this experience has shown you how much you need each other.