“You were bald-faced lying Mayor John Dailey. You do support voter suppression,” County Commissioner Bill Proctor writes in a letter to Mayor John Dailey this afternoon.
Proctor’s letter comes in the response to Dailey’s comments at City Hall last night, which compared his $23,050 contributions from Seminole Boosters last month to “voter suppression.”
“The collective integrity of those who support the FSU stadium project can now be questioned by the appalling shadow of doubt your recent campaign contribution receipts, recently cast upon all of us. Enriching your political coffers in the name of upholding the democratic process or preventing voter suppression is a wild rant you should apologize for making.”
Proctor’s Letter:
The full letter is included below, with emphasis added by Our Tallahassee.
“Mayor Dailey:
In your interview yesterday, you said: “To suggest they should not participate in the democratic process is voter suppression and I will seriously never ever support that.”
You were bald-faced lying Mayor John Dailey. You do support voter suppression. Black citizens who pay city utilities in 8 Southside voting precincts are suppressed and truly denied the right to vote! You do nothing at all to change this taxation without representation exploitation formula upon them.
City Commissioners Matlow and Porter in 2022 sought the city’s review of a situation I have repeatedly brought to your awareness. The Tallahassee City Commissioners, including you John Dailey, refused to vote for city staff to review the Issues I have presented to you again and again. Your silence is hostile. Your do nothing at all stance against empowering black utility customers with the right to vote in city elections demonstrates your opposition to democracy and against voter empowerment. You support voter suppression, exclusion, and denial as the Mayor of Tallahassee.
I am offended that in the middle of Black History Month you cite voter suppression as an act of you not turning down campaign contributions especially from those directly affected by a pending 27-million-dollar bond issue vote you will cast next Thursday. Campaign contributions for your campaign, in no way, has any semblance to struggles inherent with the 15th Amendment, the 1965 Voter Rights, Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettis Bridge, John Lewis Voters Law, and other policies designed to protect and establish democracy and voting rights for disenfranchised black citizens who are the sons and daughters of African slaves.
Your comments have nothing to do with the aforementioned struggles. I am certain Harry T. and Harriette Moore and Fannie Lou Hamer would view your comments as diabolical and incredibly stupid.
White people have no insecurities over voter suppression. White voters historically are not baptized in the fires of lynching, bombings, and killings from which black citizens rights to vote emanated.
Enriching your political coffer before a 27-million-dollar vote is most revealing. Campaign greed and voter suppression are spectacularly different.
The collective integrity of those who support the FSU stadium project can now be questioned by the appalling shadow of doubt your recent campaign contribution receipts, recently cast upon all of us. Enriching your political coffers in the name of upholding the democratic process or preventing voter suppression is a wild rant you should apologize for making.
Jim Crow. Post-reconstruction. Reconstruction. Slavery
You have no clue what “voter suppression” means. It certainly has nothing to do with disallowing white contributors from giving to your reelection. Why aren’t you speaking at today’s NAACP voter rally at the state capitol? People who oppose Senate Bill 524 and voter suppression gathered without you. Every City Commissioner was present except you John Dailey. Your absence speaks volumes about your indifference to empowering black people with city voting rights.
Voter suppression is a real serious experience for black people in Tallahassee, the state of Florida and across multiple jurisdictions. The timing of your comments is incongruent with voter suppression now occurring to black citizens. Worse, you have belittled the term “voter suppression” at the height of Black History Month. There are two things, as mayor you should do:
1. Apologize for abusing and misusing the term voter suppression.
2. Join commissioner Matlow and Porter’s efforts to extend voters right to the Southside 8.
When will you stop suppressing the voting rights of black utility customers who pay for city utilities, but cannot vote in city elections because of you? You do support black voter suppression!
County Commissioner Bill Proctor
T.S. Eliot, in essence said: “There is no greater heresy than to do the right thing for the wrong reason.”
Amount | Donor Name | History donating | Role within Leadership at FSU |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1,000 | Craig Mateer | NONE | FSU Board of Trustee 2022 |
| $1,000 | Clydes and Costellos | NONE | FSU Board of Trustee 2022/Craig Mateer Business |
| $1,000 | College Ave District License | NONE | FSU Board of Trustee 2022/Craig Mateer Business |
| $1,000 | Jason Mahoney | NONE | FSU Board of Trustee 2022/Craig Mateer Business Employee |
| $1,000 | The Recess Club of Tallahassee | NONE | FSU Board of Trustee 2022/Craig Mateer Business |
| $1,000 | Edward Burr | NONE | FSU Board of Trustee 2022 Outgoing Chairman |
| $1,000 | Jim Henderson | NONE | FSU Board of Trustee 2022 |
| $1,000 | Deborah Sargeant | NONE | FSU Board of Trustee 2022 |
| $1,000 | Vivian de las Cuevas- Diaz | NONE | FSU Board of Trustee 2022 |
| $1,000 | Graganella Insurance Agency | Seminole Boosters Chairman 2022 | |
| $1,000 | Charles Dudley PA | Seminole Boosters Vice Chairman 2022 | |
| $1,000 | Brent Lindquist | NONE | Seminole Boosters Board of Directors 2022 |
| $1,000 | Kris Kraft | Seminole Boosters Chairman 2004 | |
| $1,000 | A. Lawton Langford | Seminole Boosters Chairman 1994 | |
| $1,000 | Douglas Mannheimer | Seminole Boosters Chairman 1993 | |
| $1,000 | Lance Barton | NONE | Seminole Boosters 2017 Board Member |
| $1,000 | Les Akers | Seminole Boosters Board of Directors (former), College of Business President’s ClubFSU Alumni Association’s Circle of Gold in 2006. | |
| $1,000 | Ashbel Williams | NONE | FSU Foundation Board of Trustees Chair 2012 |
| $250 | C. Raymond Cottrell | NONE | FSU Foundation Board of Trustees |
| $1,000 | Ruth Akers | FSU Foundation Board of Trustees | |
| $1,000 | Leslie Pantin | Former FSU Board of Trustees / FSU Presidential 2020 Search Committee | |
| $750 | Nicholas Iarossi III | FSU Presidential 2020 Search Committee | |
| $750 | Debbie Iarossi | FSU Presidential 2020 Search Committee Spouse | |
| $1,000 | William Lloyd | NONE | FSU Real Estate Foundation Board of Directors 2022 |
| $300 | Francis Nardozza | NONE | FSU Real Estate Foundation Board of Directors 2022 |
You can access the above in JPEG form here. You can view Mayor John Dailey’s full January campaign donations here.
Two excerpts from Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey’s comments in support of the Seminole Boosters deal from May 27th, 2021
Our Tallahassee has issued an editorial opposing the deal, and has encouraged people to email Commissioners in opposition to the deal.
