Fried attacks journalists over Big Sugar story

TALLAHASSEE — Democratic gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried on Sunday accused Palm Beach Post reporters who wrote a story about her sugar cane burning policy of being paid by the Sierra Club.

Fried did not back up her claim, and she declined to comment when asked about it during a visit to a polling site in Boynton Beach on Monday.

Fried, the state’s agriculture commissioner, made the allegation during a “Roe the Vote” campaign stop in Tallahassee. She told reporters that the Sierra Club wanted a complete ban on cane burning, which she couldn’t legally do, Politico columnist Gary Fineout reported.

When John Kennedy, a USA TODAY Florida reporter, asked her for evidence the Sierra Club paid for the article or supplemented the journalists’ salaries, Fineout said, she said there was “information we can get for you.”

In response to Fineout’s tweets about what happened, Fried posted on Twitter: “It’s something I’ve heard - hope it’s not true. But honestly hard to tell when their editor is RTing my opponent’s staff and editing black and white campaign videos of me to prop up Charlie. It was a hit job on the eve of election. We posted the facts. Will link below.”

Editors for The Post could not be reached for comment.

Fried later issued a statement on Twitter laying out the changes she made to sugar cane burnings, including establishing a minimum 80-acre buffer between wild lands and burn areas on dry, windy days, banning nighttime burnings, banning burns before 11 a.m. on days with fog advisories, and giving landowners 72 hours, not 96, to put out muck fires.

She also provided a chart showing a dramatic increase in the number of sugar cane permits she’s denied since taking office.

The Post story reported that Glades residents said “nothing has changed” since Fried enacted “historic changes” when she became agriculture commissioner in 2019.

“It’s unfortunate that the Post article didn’t have all the evidence we’ve been presenting to them the last few years,” Fried said in Boynton Beach. “It was a very biased

article, and it’s unfortunate that the readership didn’t get the balance that was needed for this issue.”

The reaction to Fried’s comments were swift and negative. Sierra Club of Florida tweeted, “Again, picking fights with climate activists and journalists sure seems like a winning strategy.”

And state Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando area Democrat who has endorsed her main Democratic opponent U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, tweeted, “Did you hear this talking point from the sugar industry?

Or are you copying what Trump does? Both are bad?”

She later wrote this is a “Democratic nominee for Governor using sugar talking points and/or lying about reporters being bribed to write a story.”