Was the Southern Group/Henry Mack "railroad" of Florida Poly and NWFSC just too obvious and too thirsty?

Pro tip: Don't use your public position to openly troll business for a "major league" lobbying firm's new education business. And don't write it all down in helpfully preserved emails.

Before the vote, [Florida Poly Trustee Mark] Bostick described the [presidential hiring] process as being “somewhat railroaded.” He suggested that hiring [Northwest Florida State College President Devin] Stephenson would be “a disaster,” given his background, and warned that Florida Poly would become “a laughingstock.” — From Gary White’s article in The Ledger on April 19th

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In June of 2023, less than a year ago, The Southern Group, Florida’s largest “lobbying” firm, hired Dr. Henry Mack to help run its brand new education consulting business.

This new splashy new gig for the former Florida DoE senior chancellor of higher education lasted a little more than 6 months. In December 2023, he was hired by Northwest Florida State College, as vice president for “Academic Affairs.”

This happened just as then-NWFSC president Devin Stevenson was embarking on his successful pursuit of the Florida Polytechnic University presidency in Lakeland.

As I recently pointed out to readers, it was achingly obvious that the 71-year-old Stevenson received a golden parachute and/or rode a golden “railroad” to Florida Poly to make room for Mack to assume the presidency at NWFSC. That’s clearly what Bostick was referring to in the passage I quoted to start.

And right on cue, the NWFSC board chair nominated Henry Mack to replace Stevenson a few days ago as the “interim” president. The railroad was rolling.

And then, well, … it wasn’t.

Under open pressure from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office, the NWFSC board this week shut down the chair’s “interim” Mack appointment as president — and made it pretty clear VP of Academic Affairs is the totality of Mack’s future at NWFSC.

What happened?

Why did DeSantis openly, hilariously intervene to squash his own thirsty chancellor’s rigged ambitions after DeSantis’ handpicked Poly grifter trustees went through the humiliating trouble of elevating those ambitions by “railroading” the Stevenson hire at Poly?

I don’t know for certain.

Do you think it’s a conflict, Dr. Mack?

But, maybe, just maybe, could it possibly have something to with this text of premature congratulations I sent Mack on Monday of this week after getting his cell phone number?

Hi there, Dr. Mack. Congrats on your new appointment. My name is Billy Townsend. I’m a citizen in Lakeland looking at some of the dominoes involved in the Florida Poly presidential search. I saw an interesting introductory email to your [NWFSC] staff from Jan. 4. I just wanted to be clear — were you still receiving compensation by Southern Group at that time? And do you think it’s a conflict or inappropriate to work as hard as you have at your college to do business with Southern and/or its employees?

I assume Mack halted any direct compensation from the Southern Group upon his NWFSC hire; but I don’t know it. He didn’t answer my text.

By contrast, I know that the January 4th email I referred to was Mack’s first formal mass communication to faculty and staff at NWFSC. He started talking about his former employer The Southern Group in the fifth paragraph. Key excerpt:

Academic Affairs Review

This past fall, NWFSC contracted with TSG Advisors – Education, a consultancy firm based in Tallahassee, to facilitate a review of the Academic Affairs organization. Throughout the term, consultants administered a survey and completed interviews with Academic Leadership, Academic Support Services, and faculty members to gather insights and information as to whether the department is positioned to carry out activities supporting the strategic plan most efficiently and effectively.

It’s unclear if Mack actually personally closed the “Academic Affairs Review” deal for TSG Advisors - Education with NWFSC while we he was helping “lead” TSG Advisors - Education between June and December of 2023.

It’s also unclear if TSG’s “Academic Affairs Review” interaction with NWFSC led to Mack’s hiring as VP of, wait for it, “Academic Affairs.”

However, its’s very clear that Mack, since joining NWFSC, has been shilling hard for Carrie Henderson, a TSG Advisors — Education consultant, to get a gig associated with a big expansion program of some sort for the “Seaside” charter school organization affiliated with NWFSC.

“I emphasized how critical hiring Carrie was …”

Here is Mack asking the NWFSC general counsel Whitney Rutherford on February 28 if “we” have made any progress on getting Seacoast to consider Carrie Henderson and Southern for a role on the $40M project.

The “current consultant” Whitney Rutherford referenced here is Liberty Partners, a less powerful version of the The Southern Group. Mack seemed intent on muscling Liberty Partners out of the project in favor of TSG, according to multiple emails I reviewed.

And here is Mack, about a month later, while acting officially as vice president of NWFSC, actively trying to get the Seaside School Foundation to sidestep its competitive bid requirements for the benefit of TSG’s Henderson. Note what I’ve circled. Tom Miller is the executive director of “Seaside Neighborhood School and Seacoast Collegiate High School.”

You may ask, is this legal?

To which I would answer: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I would then ask you in return: is anything illegal in Florida?

Anyway, the hilarious, open “railroading” of the Florida Poly presidential search has already sent me much farther down this gross, grifty Henry Mack rabbit hole than I ever wanted to go. I don’t have the time or energy to track all of this down.

But for any West Florida peeps, this intersection of Mack, NWFSC, the Southern Group, Seaside, Liberty Partners, and the “Triumph” fund that doles out legacy BP oil spill cash seems like fertile ground to investigate.

And by the way, new Poly president Devin Stevenson was fully in the loop on all of it, as the emails make clear. I have 88 of them. I will be happy to send to anyone who wants them.

That’s gonna leave a mark

Did all that Southern Group drama, which I brought to Mack’s attention on Monday, perhaps have something to do with Goodfellas-style whacking that Mack received on Tuesday, just when he was about to become a made man?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But Florida News Service reporter Ryan Dailey’s account of the Tuesday NWFSC board meeting (sub. req.) contains this amazing description of what happened to Henry Mack during that meeting, which, by all pre-appearances, was supposed to be a coronation. Note the bold:

“I, like probably everyone here, had a call from the governor’s office suggesting that they would prefer that the interim (president) not be a candidate for the final position. And I totally personally agree with that,” trustee Don Litke said.

While discussing candidates, trustee Jon Ward said the ideal interim president should “have a long-standing history” with the college.

“I think that Dr. Mack, while his resume is very impressive and he’s got a lot of work at the state level, his history here is very short-lived. As a matter of fact, just two months before coming here, he was offered the (interim president) job at Broward College,” Ward said.

Mack was appointed vice president of academic affairs for Northwest Florida State College in December.

In October, Mack was briefly named interim president of Broward College. Less than 24 hours later, the school changed plans and hired Barbara Bryan, a longtime employee of the school, after Mack withdrew. The school cited an inability to reach agreement with Mack on a contract.

“I think past performance and past action is a future indicator of what we might be facing. I think we have a safer choice. Personally, I would like to see Dr. Kedroski being appointed interim president, and hopefully Dr. Mack will be OK with staying as vice president of academic affairs,” Ward said.

One thing we all know is true: Ron DeSantis could not care less whether an interim college president is a candidate for the permanent job (see Richard Corcoran at New College). Nor would DeSantis care if the president has any relationship to the college (see Ben Sasse and UF and Stevenson at Poly).

So that’s just silly talk. Everyone just decided to whack Henry Mack for some reason. Period.

Was it the open, unambiguous, official shilling for TSG? The 88 emails I have came from a public records request NWFSC fulfilled recently. Someone, whose identity I do not know, shared them with me.

By the time I texted Mack on Monday, various folks at NWFSC and in state government must have known there were records of his TSG-boosting efforts. So I doubt it was actually me who caused this. And maybe it wasn’t the grifting for TSG that did it at all. Maybe it’s some other, pettier reason.

But this much is clear: moving Devin Stevenson to Florida Poly so Henry Mack had free reign at NWFSC would have been good for the Southern Group’s fledging TSG Advisors — Education business. Mack is a TSG business asset. He was in position to become a bigger business asset. And then he wasn’t; and the Southern Group did not have the juice to save him.

We’ll see if TSG has the juice to keep Mack at NWFSC at all — and cash in through him on the Seaside School Foundation gig

The Southern Group owns Lakeland and Poly; but not NWFSC, apparently

Back in Lakeland, you might logically ask: why was Florida Poly caught up in this Mack and TSG drama? And why have Poly’s backers and the Polk County “Leadership Class” here just taken this Florida Poly farce? Why aren’t they screaming?

Isn’t it deeply insulting to the Lakeland and Polk powers-that-be that Poly is nothing more than a place to send a guy with no STEM experience into a very lucrative retirement so that a big “lobbying” firm’s hot new business asset can take over a state college in Niceville? Isn’t that bad for our city and county?

And isn’t it somehow worse — and more humiliating — that Mack didn’t even get the gig that Poly “railroad” opened up for him?

What gives?

I would say, yeah, it’s insulting and humiliating and bad; and then you realize this is the City of Lakeland’s city lobbyist:

And this former Lakeland city commissioner and legislator is the Southern Group’s “managing partner” for the Tampa Office, which appears to oversee Lakeland operations for TSG.

And this is the Polk County School Board’s lobbyist …

[True story: Wendy Dodge once filed a state ethics complaint against me for tweeting about a history book about Florida governors to which I contributed a chapter without being paid for it. Really. It is probably the single most frivolous ethics complaint ever filed in Florida. It got tossed in like five minutes.]

And you realize this …

That “ranking” is also hilarious for a college that is both a) one of two smallest Florida universities b) owner of the state’s worst 4 and 6-year graduation rates c) 80 percent male d) literally paying kids, many of whom are international students, to attend. Maybe that’s Southern Group’s “influence” at work. [Full background on the tragicomdy of Florida Poly in the article link that follows.]

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Florida Poly has a 31% 4-year graduation rate, Florida's worst, according to U.S. News

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I’m sure the word went out from Shepp and Seth (no one really cares what Wendy says, I have to admit) to local politicos and Poly board members who aren’t in on the grift: keep your mouth shut about the Poly railroad. Corporate wants this.

Middle management for a franchise that strip-mines the public good and dabbles in legislative protection rackets

To call The Southern Group a “lobbying” firm — and to call Lakeland and Florida Poly its “clients” — is to misunderstand both TSG and the nature of “government” in Florida.

Here are Seth McKeel and David Shepp helpfully making this point for me back in 2019 in a local promotional brag article when “Southern Strategies” changed its name to “The Southern Group.” Key excerpts:

The Southern Group signals our firm’s further evolution in the influence business,” said Seth McKeel, managing partner of the Tampa office. “We pride ourselves on leading transformation in the lobbying industry, and one only needs to look at our past success as evidence of our influence.

And …

Most of the partners in the firm previously worked in government, such as McKeel, a former state representative, and David Shepp, a lobbyist who worked with Adam Putnam when he was a state legislator and oversaw the Florida Strategic Group, a government affairs consulting firm. Shepp said those credentials set the agency apart.

“Our goal is to grow The Southern Group into Florida’s first fully integrated ‘influence firm,’ one in which the disciplines that affect the political world are seamlessly melded into one impactful whole,” he said.

LOL.

Florida “government” is structured a bit like professional baseball.

But instead of privately-owned franchises aiming to hoover up as much of your private entertainment dollar as possible, Florida’s privately-owned Major League government franchises aim to cash in on public functions that nominally serve the public good.

Basic government functions throw off lots of public money that economic and political power can scrape off the top for itself, while remaining utterly indifferent to the quality of the government function.

The Southern Group is one of Florida’s Major League private government franchises. The city of Lakeland and Florida Poly are not. Not even remotely close. Lakeland and Florida Poly serve TSG’s interests. It’s not the other around. In fact, I don’t think any actual elected government entity outside of the Governor ever really plays in Florida’s “government” Major Leagues.

Lakeland and Poly don’t buy services from TSG; they buy affiliation. We’re a Single-A minor league team in the TSG system. So to say TSG serves Lakeland or Poly interests is to say the Detroit Tigers serve the interests of their Lakeland Flying Tigers affiliate team.

Henry Mack was a splashy free agent signing for TSG. And Florida Poly was sort of like Kevin Costner’s Crash Davis character in Bull Durham, the afterthought minor league catcher designated to help the young phenom along for the benefit of the overall organization.

However, as Mack’s flameout shows, TSG, while a Major League franchise, is not the Yankees or the Dodgers. They’re more like the Royals or the Rays. And when the governor vetoed their trade, they just took it.

What would happen if Lakeland cut off our tax-funded contribution to Seth McKeel’s revenue goals?

So what do we get for this tax-funded affiliation with the TSG?

It’s not really clear to me. In theory, I guess, we get protection from the rapaciousness of the other franchises. But, the Florida Poly railroading shows our own “protector” is pretty rapacious.

If Lakeland’s interest or Poly’s interests ever conflict, at all, with TSG’s interests, our TSG minders will make clear who comes first.

So why do we help Seth McKeel make his monthly numbers with our tax-funded annuity? What would happen if we cut him and TSG off?

Retaliation.

Cut off the public cash Seth sends to his bosses and you might find that shiny appropriation killed or vetoed. Maybe you get a primary. Maybe you lose your public job or find the agency you lead comes under attack in Tally. Nice public utility you have there; it would be a shame if something happened to it.

Maybe Seth sicks Grady Judd on you.

Yeah, it’s not protection. It’s a protection racket.

Retaliation threat — open or implied — is the coin of the realm in Florida and Polk government. When you talk to folks in local government or the public good business in all its forms, fear of retaliation is the endless excuse given for their quiet submission. That goes for the supposedly powerful people, too.

On the one hand, they’re not wrong; on the other, imagine going through life afraid of what Seth McKeel might do to you.

I think the fear of retaliation, as the collapse of the Mack deal shows, is justified, but overblown. We should test that and make TSG and Seth McKeel and David Shepp retaliate against their own home.

If they’re all willing to sacrifice the only university Lakeland will ever have for some TSG Advisors — Education business leads, what do we actually have to lose?