As a Jacksonville City Councilman and CEO of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, Daniel Davis voted to cut the police budget and supported various tax increases. He also recently told a group of donors that he has dreamed of becoming Mayor of Jacksonville since he was 12 years old.
By Jacob Engels
In the past couple of months, many residents of Jacksonville have likely seen tough talking ads covering local television and radio touting former Jacksonville City Councilman, State Representative and current Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce CEO Daniel Davis as the most fiscally and social conservative person to have ever run for elected office in the region.
Mayoral Candidate & JaxChamber Still Silent Over LGBT Group’s “Penis Game”
Last month, we exposed how Davis’ Chamber of Commerce funded the LGBT non-profit group Jasmyn that was busted late last year for sexualizing children through a “penis game,” graphic social media posts, and after-hours events open to minors that included discussions on various sex positions, including the act of fingering a transgender woman.
Davis had months to denounce or explain his involvement with Jasmyn, despite the fact that the Duval County Public School system cut ties with the group, and to this day, has failed to take responsibility for funding the grooming group.
His refusal to denounce Jasmyn sends a message, Davis is complicit.
Now the Central Florida Post has learned that Davis as a City Councilman in 2006 voted to cut $2m in funding for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, which is odd considering how he has claimed to be against defunding the police and has courted their support during his bid for Mayor of Jacksonville.
Voting to cut the police budget as a member of the Jacksonville City Council was not a one off fluke for Davis, who years later would go on to support the elimination of first responder pensions and benefits as the CEO of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce. A release from 2014 from the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, which Davis led then as he does now, also stated how he wanted to reduce the annual COLA (cost of living adjustment) for retired police and firefighters.
Davis had a whole host of other questionable legislative votes during his time in the Florida legislature, which we will address in a separate article. But according to an interview with the Jacksonville Daily record in 2004, he stated that he “had knew he would run for Mayor at the age of 12”.
Now, wanting to enter public service at an early age is not necessarily a death knell in his coffin as he runs for Mayor, after stints on the City Council and then in the Florida legislature. However, it does give residents an idea on how Davis has made a cottage industry of sorts for himself through being a career politician.
You see, he believes that he has been working towards being Mayor of Jacksonville his whole life, with residencies at the Jacksonville City Council and the Florida House of Representatives as political rest-stops of sorts as he traversed the highways of elected office in pursuit of his teenage dream of becoming Mayor of Jacksonville.
He’s even admitted since 2013 when he was quoted in the Jacksonville Business Journal as explaining that he “shakes hands for a living.”
Gladhanding is not an uncommon characteristic for politicians looking to hop from one political office to another, while earning himself a hefty payday of $500,000 annually from the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce in between advancing his personal political dreams.
But aren’t people like Davis the very reason people are disgusted with the American body politic as a whole? They seem to view the electorate as unimportant vessels that exist only to fulfill their vanity, to be used when they see fit and tossed aside once they have climbed the next rung of the political ladder.
Jacob Engels is an Orlando based journalist whose work has been featured and republished in news outlets around the globe including Politico, Infowars, MSNBC, Orlando Sentinel, New York Times, Daily Mail UK, Associated Press, People Magazine, ABC, Fox News, and Australia’s New Dawn Magazine, LauraLoomer.US, and The Gateway Pundit.
Mr. Engels focuses on stories that other news outlets neglect or willingly hide to curry favor among the political and special interests in the state of Florida and beyond.
