Listen to Melony Bell: Your daughter can also marry a Publix heir so you can run for Elections Supervisor
That is one "American dream," certainly. We'll see if it puts my old foil Melony Bell in charge of elections in Polk County, where we already have a perfectly competent and popular incumbent.
This is just funny. Funny, funny, funny. Nepotism is always kinda funny, especially when it lacks basic self-awareness and imagines itself inspirational. And my old foil Rep. Melony Bell, R-Fort Meade, is not known for self-awareness:
Full story here; you have get through Sam Killebrew’s fantasies about a child abuse business (really) to get to it. I find it … unfortunate (and not funny at all) that Sam chose to name-drop Grady Judd and fantasize about a “whoop-a-kid” business on the same day Grady was doing this:
Polk County, we are not sending our best to the Legislature. But I digress
How far will honorary Barnett-hood take you?
I’ve been wrestling on and off with how to politely broach the fact that outgoing Rep. Melony Bell, R-Fort Meade is running for Polk County Supervisor of Elections on a platform of:
“I am an honorary Barnett, thus you owe me this seat, Polk County”
Melony has now given me the perfect entry point with her own words — as she is known to do.
Melony’s daughter Ashley, who I really don’t know at all, is married to Wesley Barnett, eldest son of Carol and Barney Barnett. The Barnetts are longtime public and philanthropic faces of Publix in their hometown of Lakeland and county of Polk. If you’re interested, here’s very long article about my particular and peculiar public entanglements with Publix heirs. The Barnetts are not the Publix heir who funded the pre-Capitol Lynch rally on Jan. 6.
Full disclosure: You may or may not remember that back in 2020, when I was a School Board member, Melony got mad at me after I caught her saying I should be removed from office just for existing and made fun of her in public — sorta like I am doing now. She sicced son-in-law Wesley and Barney’s money on me, which was spent to tell voters that I was a civics-hating racist who threatens Trump voters. Really, that all happened. It’s pretty funny in retrospect. She made fools out of Wesley and Barney back then; and I’m still mocking her in public.
And now she’s telling people she’s the “American Dream.” I’ll let you decide if Wesley and Barney nod or cringe at that.
But I would argue that leveraging a strategic marriage connection for political status and power is more like the “Medieval Europe Dream.”
When your mother-in-law wants something …
I understand fully the discomfort that comes with the intersection of private and public life. My own marriage dwells at that intersection. It can be a strain.
In any family relationship, when a loved one pursues something, or asks for something, and it’s in your power to help and/or deliver it, well … I don’t envy Wesley in this. He’s in a no-win situation.
Civics-hating racist stuff aside (see “when mother-in-law wants something” sentence above), I genuinely like Wesley. We chat from time to time. I think he is trying to be a good powerful heir. That is probably a far more difficult task than people imagine. I doubt I could do it. Most people in his situation don’t try, in my observation.
At the same time, Supervisor of Elections is an important civic function.
And some Polk citizen probably needs to point out in public that this Supervisor of Elections race will make a fascinating barometer on the raw power of nepotism to own and control Polk’s vital civic functions. Who do you know who points out those types of things around here? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Current Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards is extremely popular. She routinely wins more than 70 percent of the vote. In 2012, she handed now Sen. Colleen Burton one of the great electoral beatdowns in this history of Polk County — a 73-27 drubbing.
If Melony experiences a similar drubbing, perhaps it will prompt her to rethink what it means to live the American Dream. Perhaps I’m not the only person rooting for that outcome.