State House race heats up
GOP’s Hawkins launches attacks against Dems’ Cady
The contest for an open seat in the Florida House is heating up with Republican candidate Fred Hawkins launching a barrage of attack ads on Democrat Barbara Cady, including one in which he claimed Cady thinks voters “are stupid, racist, white trash,” a false claim that Hawkins’ campaign failed to substantiate.
That ad, received by voters in the mail this week, picks up on the theme of other recent mail pieces, which paint
Cady as “just another progressive” and a “radical leftist.”
One ad said she “called for an end to the Second Amendment.” Another claimed she “can’ t be trusted to fully fund our police.”
Cady said the attacks are baseless.
“Everything on the mailers is false, there’s not one thing on any of them that’s true,” she said Friday.
Hawkins’ campaign provided as evidence for the claims in the ads a handful of memes she shared on social media, her attendance at a Tallahassee rally in 2018 calling for gun control measures following the killing of 17 people at a high school in Parkland and endorsements she’s received from liberal organizations.
“The jig is up — Barbara Cady is the most progressive liberal that Central Florida has ever seen. She’s both sought and accepted these endorsements for her campaign,” said Christina Johnson, a spokeswoman for Hawkins. “If Barbara Cady doesn’t agree with the positions these organizations vigorously support and defend, then she should run as an Independent, as these extremist views are not what the voters of House District 42 want in a state representative.”
The district is seen as a possible pick up for Democrats and the attacks are a signal of just how competitive the race has turned. While there are more Democrats than Republicans in the district that includes St. Cloud, east Osceola County and a sliver of Polk County, it’s traditionally been represented by Republicans.
The mail was paid for by the Republican Party of Florida, but approved by the campaign. So far, Hawkins has spent $231,000 on the race, state records show, while Cady has spent about $13,000.
Hawkins won the GOP primary last month, just weeks after his arrest on a felony count of impersonating a law enforcement officer, which prompted Gov. Ron DeSantis to suspend him from his position on the Osceola County Commission. Hawkins has main-
tained his innocence.
The latest attack mailer, which asserts Cady “called anyone who supports President Trump white trash, racist and stupid,” is based on six social media memes Cady shared in 2016, Hawkins’ campaign said.
But those memes, copies of which were provided to the Sentinel by the campaign, don’t support Hawkins’ claims about what Cady thinks of voters. The memes, which Cady shared as she was working on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, denounced Trump for pushing the birther conspiracy theory, the false and racist claim that then-President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Cady shared a post that called the conspiracy theory a “racist attempt to delegitimize the first African-American president,” but said nothing of voters.
Another post she shared read, “Donald Trump, proving you don’t have to be poor to be white trash,” but, again, said nothing about voters.
And, in a third post, Cady wrote Trump “is a snake oil salesman…. He is BAD NEWS for this country.”.
But none of the posts provided said Trump voters are stupid, racist or white trash.
Another mailer from the Hawkins campaign states Cady wants to “rip up the U.S. Constitution” and “would disarm us.”
The Hawkins campaign pointed, again, to Facebook posts and Cady’s attendance at the Tallahassee rally about two weeks after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Cady said she did attend the rally with her son, but said she doesn’t want to end the Second Amendment and even noted that her views on guns have changed after talking to responsible gun owners in the district.
“I wouldn’t vote to ban the purchase of weapons by law-abiding citizens,” she said.
Cady also refuted the notion that she wants to “defund the police,” but signed a pledge by a group called Future Now, which lists shifting money from police budgets to social programs for youth, employment and housing as one of its priorities. Cady said she was unaware that policy was included, and doesn’t support it.
The pledge is signed by hundreds of candidates around the country, including several Central Florida Democrats, state House representatives Anna Eskamani, Geraldine Thompson and Joy Goff-Marcil, as well Democratic candidate Tracey Kagan.
“I don’t want to defund the police…I want to see the police more involved in the community,” Cady said.