OPINION: Democrats use intimidation to achieve political domination in Alachua County

OPINION

BY LEN CABRERA AND JENNIFER CABRERA

As Len wrote in 2018, lack of civility is nothing new in the world of politics, but it seems to be getting worse in Alachua County. On the right, a growing number of people are expressing hopelessness, resulting in anonymous name-calling, posting of home addresses of “enemies,” and calls for violence. The left also has nameless name-callers, but it also has an army of activists who use intimidation and public shaming to silence any opposition to their stranglehold on local political power. It’s almost comedic how those on the left say those on the right never show up to public meetings, but when anyone dares challenge the approved narratives, they face a coordinated bombardment designed to destroy their personal and professional lives.

The July 31st school board meeting is just one example of how the Democrat minority (yes, minority) in Alachua County maintains its power. A parade of activists showed up to defend a school board member who clearly violated the board’s Standards of Ethical Conduct — because rules don’t matter for members of their tribe. When a speaker denounced school board members in strong language, the meeting devolved into a Maoist-style denunciation rally. A Gainesville City Commissioner handed a live microphone to a screaming activist who demanded that the dissenter leave “our meeting.” Jeremy the Plumber became Enemy #1 for the ensuing week, with activists trying to outdo each other in attacking him and his business. These strong-arm tactics are how the minority Democrat party maintains a stranglehold on public opinion and silences debate.

Democrats only make up 45% of active registered voters in Alachua County (as of 9/7/2025: 173,914 total, 77,947 Democrats), but they control nearly every elected office. Prior to 2016, it was not uncommon to see elected Republicans here, including offices like Gainesville Mayor and City Commissioner, County Commissioner, and Sheriff. Since then, power has been consolidated through an activist network that targets any opposition with public shaming and harassment, allowing Democrats to claim that they represent “our values.”

In the aftermath of that school board meeting, the State Board of Education (BOE) voted to monitor the School Board of Alachua County because of its “toxic culture.” During the BOE meeting, Crystal Marull mentioned an incident from 2023 in which she believed her son was bullied in class because of his political beliefs. The Florida Attorney General requested an investigation and said the School Board of Alachua County should terminate the teacher if the allegations are found to be true. Rather than criticizing or appealing to the Attorney General or the Commissioner of Education, the activist network rallied to attack Marull and her son, a minor who is no longer attending Alachua County Public Schools. The intent was obvious: students, don’t dare talk to your parents about anything teachers do in class, or you and your family will get the same treatment.

Public conversations in Gainesville are reminiscent of living behind the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War. (See The Lives of Others.) People measure their words carefully and avoid topics altogether because they are terrified of going against the political establishment. They dance around topics, worried that if they say the wrong thing or are identified as the wrong political party, they will be publicly shamed and ostracized.

This wasn’t Crystal Marull’s first encounter with this phenomenon: after she submitted a form challenging a book found in her son’s elementary school library, a WUFT reporter somehow learned about the submission and quickly obtained the form. The journalist’s article was less about the book and more about Marull’s faculty job and voter registration, leading to ostracism from Marull’s colleagues; the reporter also dug into the traffic tickets and property records of another parent who challenged a book. The message was clear: the activists on the left will happily dig into your private life if you dare to challenge the leftist orthodoxies by naively following a process that was established by the school board.

The WUFT article also exposed something known to every conservative at the University of Florida: being a registered Republican is so frowned upon that all political views must be suppressed, lest a careless word expose your opposition to the dominant ideologies. Not only has Marull been shunned by her colleagues, but one of her colleagues forbade her six-year-old son from continuing his friendship with Marull’s six-year-old son. 

The intimidation game is not unique to Alachua County. In Iowa, a parent went to a school board meeting to complain about a teacher playing a PG-13 movie in class without parental consent. She’s now facing a defamation lawsuit. In a radio interview, the parent’s lawyer said, “We are seeing this tactic, that’s kind of trying to bully parents into silence when they raise concerns about their kids’ education. It’s really, I think, an intimidation tactic.” This echoes Erwin Lutzer, who wrote in his 2024 book that the “culture seeks to use intimidation to achieve domination.” 

New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz recently talked about leaving New York City for Florida: “I was born in the Soviet Union. I know that you say what you have to say to get by… so you don’t get in trouble. And that’s the way that they all operate… Part of why I moved was… the policing of the language and the cancel culture came for [my liberal friends] and they became afraid to say anything… And it would become where you were not allowed to say what you actually believed, what you actually saw was happening. And I was like, I gotta get out of here. This is no longer going to be a sustainable model for existence.”

These tactics create the illusion that everyone agrees with the people in power. By attacking anyone who expresses a differing opinion, opponents are intimidated into silence, leading to the myth that everyone agrees with the party in charge. Northwestern University psychology researchers Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman call it “performative virtue-signaling.” They surveyed 1,452 undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan, and 88% said they pretended to hold more progressive views in order to succeed socially or academically. Students also said they self-censor on politics (72%) and family values (68%). 

The examples above just scratch the surface of the insidious nature of Alachua County politics, and conservatives aren’t the only ones being silenced. At least a dozen people who routinely attended Gainesville City Commission meetings in 2019 have stopped speaking about issues after realizing that nothing they said made any difference. The Democrats who speak up are not usually publicly attacked, but they have given up, nevertheless.

In Federalist 39, James Madison wrote that it is essential for government to derive its powers “from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it.” If the entire society is not represented, you end up with “tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions.”

The last decade of single-party control in Alachua County and the City of Gainesville definitely illustrates Madison’s point. We have ever-increasing property taxes, fire assessment fees, and utility rates (prior to the GRU Authority holding electric rates flat), while infrastructure continues to decline (the County’s much-vaunted quarter of a billion dollars in road investments will not improve the overall road conditions), with no representation for over half the population. We are just income sources to fund the political establishment’s social projects, but we are not allowed to comment or complain about our money being wasted, soft-on-crime policies attracting mentally ill and drug-addicted vagrants, an entire generation of kids being ruined by poor education, or the funding of non-profits run by politically-connected elites.

Gainesville used to be a big small town, a quirky college town that was clean, safe, and had outstanding public schools. Once it went to single-party rule, it turned into sprawling Soviet-style block housing, with drug-addicted vagrants on every corner and illiterate young men shooting each other in the streets. Just don’t dare talk about or suggest the politicians in power may be to blame, or the political attack dogs will try to ruin your life.

The only solution is for people who oppose the current political establishment to band together and encourage each other. Lone speakers will always be picked off by the attackers. The July 31 school board meeting would have gone very differently if Jeremy the Plumber had been joined by 10 other people speaking out against Rockwell’s Facebook comment. Courage is needed at a time like this, not acquiescence to mob intimidation. The policies that have been destroying our local community over the last decade will not change until brave citizens stand up to the intimidation.