by Mitch Maley

On Tuesday night, Manatee County Republicans beat the odds and defeated the deep-pocketed real estate development machine by electing Scott Farrington as Supervisor of Elections. The landslide victory means not only that Farrington is the people’s choice, but also that he has a mandate from the voters to run our local elections.

In the days since his defeat, Satcher has made it even clearer that he is unfit for office. When it became clear that the former Manatee County commissioner would take his place in the SOE regional election in Tuesday’s Republican primary, the man who was a baby began lashing out at staff members who were clearly excited at the prospect of having a qualified elections expert return to their office.

Satcher reportedly brought his father from Georgia to watch the victory, as his deep-pocketed contractors had pumped so much money into the campaign that he would consider it a victory. But things did not go as expected and it soon became clear that he would soon have to look for a job without patronage – something Satcher has not been successful at so far.

Satcher was apparently crumpled by staffers who were frantically checking the numbers as more and more polling places reported their results. So much so that one told me the television in the office was turned off, and staff were given the false explanation that it was broken.

Satcher reportedly fired Mark Darnell, who oversaw the mail-in voting process, which Satcher openly criticized. The morning after the election, Satcher fired Chris Palmer, who had served the office faithfully for 16 years, starting with the legendary administration of SOE Bob Sweat. Palmer was the coordinator of voter services. She was responsible for handling duplicate registrations, consolidated voters, removing deceased voters from the rolls, and even dealing with complaints from disgruntled voters.

Several long-term temporary staffers who were regularly hired during elections were also summarily fired. That’s a lot of institutional knowledge to throw out at any point, let alone just months before a presidential election – especially considering that Satcher has already filled the office with unqualified cronies whose only merit is loyalty to their idiot boss.

Palmer told me Thursday that Satcher didn’t even have the courage to fire her himself. Instead, she was approached by his deputy, David Ballard, who told her, “Your services are no longer required,” a phrase he repeated every time Palmer asked why on earth she was losing a job in which, by all accounts, she had done an excellent job.

What’s more, like another SEO employee who recently wrote an open letter detailing the office’s mismanagement, Palmer confirmed our worst fears about how bad things are going in our SOE office.

“It’s a mess down there, total chaos,” Palmer told me. “They’ve created a hostile work environment where every employee is afraid for their job.”

I asked Palmer if she had confidence in the office’s ability to properly conduct the November election, and Palmer’s answer was unequivocal.

“I have no confidence whatsoever in the competence of the office,” Palmer said. “Neither Satcher nor Ballard have a clue. They promised they wouldn’t change anything when they took over, and then they immediately started changing everything, and they don’t even understand how things work.”

Mind you, these are just the bombshells from Tuesday. From the moment he was appointed, Satcher has been an unmitigated disaster. He increased the budget by nearly a million dollars in the last fiscal quarter, then wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars issuing unnecessary replacement voter ID cards that confused many citizens and read like a campaign letter, and purchased verification machines that could not be used because he and his cronies had no idea of ​​the processes that had to be followed before implementation.

During early voting and on Election Day, there were numerous reports of voter harassment at and near polling places – all by people associated with the developer-backed slate of local candidates that included Satcher. Satcher himself faced charges of illegally being within the precinct after showing up at polling places and introducing himself to voters.

When Republican SOE Mike Bennett submitted his resignation, he was vocal in his support for his 11-year deputy SOE and chief of staff, Scott Farrington. His former colleague in the House and Senate, Bill Galvano, lobbied the DeSantis administration to appoint the developers’ preferred Satcher. Governor DeSantis made the wrong decision when he listened to Galvano rather than Bennett. Even though Manatee County Republican voters corrected his error at the ballot box, DeSantis owes it to them to clean up the situation and ensure that November’s election is run by qualified personnel.

Republicans like DeSantis like to talk big when it comes to protecting elections. Here is his chance to do more than talk and remove the unqualified SOE he installed in favor of a member of his party with a proven track record. Click here to sign a petition calling on Governor DeSantis to remove James Satcher from office and appoint Scott Farrington. Manatee County and the candidates in our upcoming election deserve better than Satcher’s staggering incompetence.

Dennis “Mitch” Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and host of our weekly podcast. With over twenty years of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. He is also the author of three novels and a short story collection, which you can find here..