Mother Jones – September 01, 2019

38 MOTHER JONES |^ SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019

TROLL STORY

year, including the biggest monied interests

in the district: local real estate developers,

health care companies, and a Pensacola beer

baron. (Joe Scarborough, who once repre-

sented Gaetz’s district in Congress, donated

to Don in 2005 and Matt in 2010 and was

suspended from msnbc in 2010 for giving

to several Republican candidates, including

the Gaetzes.) Former Gov. Jeb Bush, a friend

of Don, endorsed the younger Gaetz and

contributed $100 to his winning campaign.

But what really set Baby Gaetz apart from

the rest of the primary field, according to his

2010 financial disclosure, was a net worth

of more than $1 million, money that did

not all come from volleyball net lawsuits.

Gaetz’s legal work in 2010 earned him a mere

$29,000, yet he dumped $100,000 of his own

money into the campaign in the two weeks

before the gop primary, more than any other

candidate’s total fundraising haul.

Once in Tallahassee, he introduced

aggressive bills to speed up executions,

impose mandatory 50-year sentences for

some rape convictions, ban abortion cov-

erage in private insurance plans offered

through Obamacare, and allow guns to be

carried openly. He also made a name for

himself as a troll. He mocked food stamp

recipients (“Yesterday I saw a lady at Publix

use her ‘Access’ welfare card. Her back was

covered in tattoos. RT if u support entitle-

ment reform.”) and questioned the literacy

skills of two black Democratic colleagues.

He relentlessly insulted three-time-party-

flipping former Gov. Charlie Crist during

his 2014 campaign against Gov. Rick Scott.

When Crist tweeted, “We need a governor

with a heart again,” Gaetz hit back: “It’s

nice to have one with a brain...who didn’t

need 3 tries to pass the Bar Exam.”

No target was too small, not even con-

stituents who commented on stories at the

tiny Northwest Florida Daily News. When a

local man who’d twice run unsuccessfully

for sheriff inquired in the comments why

a policy idea from an online poll wasn’t

included on Gaetz’s survey about county

priorities, Gaetz responded, “It got even

fewer votes than you did in your last two

runs for public office.”

Scandalized by that exchange, an

Okaloosa County commissioner wrote

in his newsletter that he couldn’t support

Gaetz. “I am a young guy and I have a lot to

learn yet about the way the world works, but

even I know this: Leaders, the good ones at

least, don’t bully, they don’t belittle and they

don’t demean those around them,” the com-

missioner wrote, telling Gaetz, “be nice!”

once don gaetz retired from the state leg-

islature, he briefly wrote a regular column

for the Pensacola News Journal, until he quit

in protest on the grounds that the paper

was too mean to his son. In 2017, Don wrote

about his family tradition of donating to fa-

vored charities in lieu of Christmas gifts for

each other. “Matt goes to Walter Reed Hos-

pital in Washington, D.C. every week to visit

warfighters from our area who are fighting

the battle after the battle,” he wrote. “Matt

says we can never do enough for them and

their families. He chokes up, a rare thing for

him, when we donate in his name.”

In reality, Matt Gaetz has made only

two visits to wounded vets at Walter Reed

since taking office, the last one in Septem-

ber 2017. (Gaetz’s office now says his father

“misspoke.”) But demonstrating fealty to

military veterans is critical in Florida’s 1st

Congressional District, where one in every

six residents has served in the military. The

district hosts five military installations, in-

cluding Eglin Air Force Base, one of the

largest air bases in the world.

Gaetz learned early on how to use the

military to advance his political career with-

out actually having to enlist. In 2005, the

military decided to locate the training pro-

gram for the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

program at Eglin. The new jets were loud:

A report commissioned by the Pentagon

showed that the fighter program would

render 93 percent of the town of Valparaiso

unsuitable for development, with some

areas uninhabitable because of the noise.

Valparaiso sued the Air Force in 2009, seek-

ing to force it to reduce noise levels.

A poll found that nearly 85 percent of

Okaloosa County residents, hoping for eco-

nomic benefits from the program, wanted

the county to force the city to drop the

suit. Gaetz sniffed an opportunity. Three

months before declaring his candidacy

for the state House, he sued Valparaiso on

behalf of Okaloosa County and argued pub-

licly that the city’s opposition could sink

the F-35 program. In reality, the program

couldn’t be reversed without an act of Con-

gress. Gaetz’s lawsuit went nowhere. “It was

a big waste of time and money, but it got

him in the paper,” says Douglas Wyckoff,

the lawyer who represented Valparaiso.

The Air Force eventually settled the suit

from Valparaiso, agreeing to some noise mit-

igation. Gaetz declared victory, even though

his side had effectively lost. Bruce Arnold, a

former naval officer who’d served as the city’s

mayor since 1964, was dumbfounded. “Mr.

Gaetz had absolutely nothing to do with [the

settlement],” he told the local paper. “He is

crazy. He is completely insane. He is a politi-

cal upstart trying to attract publicity.”

It worked. The lawsuit gave Gaetz some-

thing besides money to campaign on.

When he arrived on Capitol Hill, he hung

a poster of the F-35 behind his desk. “He’s

got the veterans here pretty well duped,”

says Cris Dosev, a retired Marine pilot who

ran against Gaetz in the 2016 and 2018 Re-

publican congressional primaries.

In March 2016, Rep. Jeff Miller, a former

TV weather forecaster who represented

Florida’s 1st District, announced he wasn’t

going to run again. Political observers saw

Don Gaetz as Miller’s logical successor. But

Don’s path led elsewhere. In the state legis-

lature, he had championed a bill to create a

nonprofit to manage settlement funds from

lawsuits over the 2010 BP oil spill. After Don

left office, he became president of the fund’s

board, where he now oversees $380 million

in local development money, ensuring his

continued influence in the district.

Meanwhile, Miller’s unexpected retire-

ment created a compressed campaign cal-

endar that once again gave the well-funded

junior Gaetz an advantage. But this time,

Gaetz wasn’t heading into the election with

the same deep pockets he’d had in 2010. In

just six years, his net worth had dwindled

from nearly $1 million to $388,000, accord-

GAETZ’S ASCENT, LIKE TRUMP’S,

WAS FUELED BY A RICH

FATHER AND UNORTHODOX

FINANCIAL MANEUVERS.