Peter Schorsch
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
That is clearly an adage that New College of Florida’s Athletic Director Mariano Jimenez has never taken to heart.
What other reason could there be for Jimenez to publicly disparage an elected official who is in the process of steering $800,000 to the school that employs him?
In a now-deleted Facebook post, Jimenez called on people to join him and nutjob congressional candidate Eddie Speir at last weekend’s Sarasota candidates rally to “confront” popular Congressman Vern Buchanan.
Yes, this is the same rally where Speir ultimately humiliated himself by getting shouted down and thrown out, along with a couple of supporters wearing American Revolutionary War costumes (you can’t make this up). Speir is no stranger to blacklisting, having been rejected as a New College trustee by the Florida Senate only to wrongly accuse President Richard Corcoran of “working with his political allies to block me.”
The irony of Jimenez’s unhinged rant was his absurd claim that “Buchanan has gotten rich off of #WeThePeople.” Forget the fact that anybody who has followed Buchanan’s career and life story knows he came from nothing and ultimately made his fortune before becoming a member of Congress. It’s the fact that Jimenez – either through ignorance, stupidity or both – made this statement just THREE weeks after Buchanan successfully secured nearly a million dollars in federal funding for New College of Florida through the House Appropriations Committee.
The funding that is expected to come up for a full House vote in September is for the design and construction of a pedestrian greenway corridor to reduce traffic congestion and allow students to travel safely.
Maybe Jimenez should have at least waited till after passage before publicly lambasting the very elected official responsible for delivering it. Then again, this is the same individual who recently participated in an unflattering profile of his athletic program where he valiantly declared (again, ironically) “civil discourse is the way forward.”
Now, Jimenez’s support of Speir in and of itself is not surprising.
A simple Google search reveals that Jimenez was once the baseball coordinator at Inspiration Academy, the nonprofit school owned by Speir that is currently being used as his campaign headquarters. Of course, additional searches also reveal an unsettling tenure that involved 15 of his players being suspended for hazing rituals that included “impossible situps that initially pin down blindfolded victims before they’re hurtled face-first into someone’s buttocks.”
We did reach out to Buchanan’s camp before publication. A spokesperson said he was unaware of Jimenez’s Facebook post but reiterated the Congressman’s support of Corcoran and the college.
Politics is a rough-and-tumble sport not meant for everybody. Jimenez is about to learn that the hard way.
