A.G. Gancarski
The Florida Elections Commission has scheduled a hearing May 18 regarding two questionable finance issues in the 2015 Jacksonville City Council campaign of Kim Daniels.
Daniels, who lost that race, is currently running for the Democratic nomination in House District 14.
The first matter in question: an expenditure of $4,000 from her campaign account to Shofar magazine, to buy ad space promoting her book, The Demon Dictionary: Know Your Enemy. Learn His Strategies. DEFEAT HIM!
Daniels also published personal essays in Shofar, which included assertions such as “May the diseased parts of the vision for our city be removed and God have mercy on their souls.”
These essays lacked necessary disclaimers representing them as political advertisements.
When this reporter contacted Shofar in 2015 for an article in Jacksonville’s Folio Weekly, a representative from Shofar noted that Daniels “got what she paid for.”
At the time, a spokesperson for the Florida Elections Commission said the FEC could not issue an opinion on the matter unless a citizen files a complaint, and even then the complaint would be confidential unless probable cause was established.
In addition to the $4,000 spend on space in Shofar, Daniels faces a second complaint: accepting two $1,000 donations from Jacksonville’s Fraternal Order of Police, one in October 2014, and the second the next month.
The maximum contribution to a Jacksonville city campaign account per party is $1,000, and the accounting, which was never amended, contravenes Statute 106.08(1)(a).
The complainant, Jacksonville journalist/activist David Vandygriff, offered the following statement to FloridaPolitics.com on Friday.
“We must hold our elected officials accountable. The public has reasonable expectations for the funds donated to a campaign to be used for a campaign, not for personal/business financial gain. Furthermore, this goes to demonstrate the lack of trustworthiness of an elected official at the time and to the individual that is now seeking public office once again,” Vandygriff asserted.
