Let's welcome Austin Hurst, cynical young trickster of Central Florida voters, to public life in Polk County

I have a new "norm" in coverage of power pursuit (AKA "politics"): if you start/run a political committee in my community, expect *at least* as much personal scrutiny as actual candidates.

Update: Gil Colon’s office has informed me that he did not know about his step-son Austin Hurst’s committee — and thus did not give permission to use his house as its home base.

Colon’s office said the prominent Lakeland lawyer tries nto avoid publicly sharing his political beliefs with anyone, “including his son,” the spokeswoman told me. Colon’s political giving, limited only to small handful of non-partisan judge races, bears that out in my observation.

Colon’s office very politely said it would “appreciate” if I updated this article to reflect this information. I am happy to oblige and appreciate them getting back with me.

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Meet Austin Hurst, handsome young Republican who started a committee called “Florida Committee for Progressive Values” from a $2.7 million home co-owned by prominent Lakeland defense lawyer Gil Colon Jr., who appears to be his stepfather. Austin’s mom is married to Gil. Austin recently graduated from USF.

The purpose of young Austin’s committee is to trick and depress Democratic voter turnout in an upcoming special Florida House election centered mostly on Osceola County. To do that, Austin is pretending to be a “progressive” so he can attack Democrat Tom Keen as a lackey of GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis in dishonest mailers paid for by his committee. I’m not going to link to the mailers Austin is sending because I don’t want to reward him with clicks.

The idea is to attack Keen “from the the left” and trick Democratic voters into staying home and thus electing Keen’s GOP opponent. It’s a spiritual relative of the “ghost candidate” scandal I talked about in this recent article.

Gross people like Stafford Jones, Richard Coates, Anthony Pedicini, Frank Artiles, Ralph Arza, Pat Bainter, Randy Nielsen, et. al. have taught a generation of impressionable young frat bros like Austin Hurst, Will Harrell, et. al., that these stupid tricks are how one pursues “politics.”

It’s all soooooo clever.

Who gave Austin the mailer money?

Young Austin created the committee on Dec. 26, 2023.

It has no donors or expenditures reported yet. I assume this is just a lag in the reporting, not something nefarious. But somebody gave him enough money to do the mailers; and I’ll let you know who when it shows up.

I have asked Austin, via a couple of Facebook messages, if he’d talk with me about his “progressive” committee — or if he’ll just tell me now who gave him the mailer money. He hasn’t answered me.

I won’t speculate on the donors; but I will speculate on the expenditures.

Young Austin has a media company called “Hurst Media LLC.” I’m willing to bet we’ll see that “Florida Committee for Progressive Values” has spent some of its money with Hurst Media LLC. Anybody want to take that bet?

I also sent a note to Gil Colon’s law firm to ask if he knew that young Austin is running a political committee pretending to be “progressive” out of Gil’s house. I didn’t hear anything back.

For the record, I don’t think I’ve ever met Gil Colon. And nothing in his political giving suggests he’s the money behind this. He’s got a pretty limited history, from what I can see, focused on a handful of non-partisan judge races, as one might expect. He’s probably just trying to be helpful to his wife’s son. I get that.

A new norm for covering lazy, cowardly committee owners

I respect people who put their names on ballots and subject themselves to the well-established journalistic and public norms of personal scrutiny. In fact, I try not to over-scrutinize candidates personally because we need decent people to run. The scrutiny should be proportional to the power sought and the candidate’s civic behavior.

I do not respect people, like Austin Hurst and his spiritual consultant mentors, who pursue public political power with the intent of avoiding scrutiny. That is lazy and cowardly. It requires no knowledge, no risk, no skill, and no political goals. The only “talent” it requires is convincing gross wealth to write checks.

It’s a form of petty civic nihilism.

Media coverage of power pursuit (AKA “politics”) enables this nihilism because it pretends candidates are vastly more important than the unelected powers who seek to own them — or try to confuse/lie to voters on their behalf.

This long-standing journalistic norm is silly civic legalism. It encourages the type of anti-civic behavior Austin is demonstrating. There is nothing more anti-civic than actively trying to trick voters for money.

Thus, the personal scrutiny of the people who create and run political committees should be disproportionately intense. And here’s my norm moving ahead: if you create a political committee in mu community that doesn’t have your name on it directly, you immediately invite at least candidate-level personal scrutiny.

If your committee has a clearly descriptive name and acts in a way that is consistent with that name, then I’m unlikely to do much digging, similar to my approach to actual honorable candidates. Good for you for engaging in the political process in good faith in that case.

But the scrutiny will increase by degree if:

• Your committee name is vague or unclear about its real purpose.

• Your committee name is misleading or even directly contradictory for its actual goals.

• Your committee acts in ways designed to sway elections by tricking or lying to voters.

Fair warning. And let this article be an object lesson in that scrutiny.

Why don’t you start over, Austin? Happy to chat.

The right way to “go into” politics is not to pretend to be something you’re not to try trick voters into abandoning their votes based on false premises.

That’s just bad faith citizenship.

You’re a young guy, Austin, with your whole life ahead of you. This kind of cheap cynicism at your age is a red flag. The willingness to cheat and take lazy short cuts to power or money will, more than likely, affect your personal relationships one day. Take a step back for your own sake. Start over.

If you want to get into meaningful pursuit of public power, you should spend time learning about issues, systems, human beings, and how society functions. Identify some areas you care about improving. Give more of a shit about the nature and execution and outcomes of representative self-government than you do about media buys.

I’d be happy to offer some suggestions.

If not, well, PE1 is always on the hunt for content from our shared public lives and civic space.