Kim Daniels will be back in Tallahassee for the next legislative session, having won her recent primary election and facing no opponent in the general election.
Daniels was a sponsor of the Religious Expression in Schools law that we here at Florida Citizens for Science opposed in 2017. She was also responsible for the In God We Trust law that requires all Florida public schools to prominently display that motto. That law was in response to the mass shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. There was recent backlash by school districts against the law. Some opted to display the Florida state seal, which has the motto on it, instead of an obnoxious sign.
Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino explains a little bit of Daniels’ background in his recent piece:Â Will God sign off on this PBC public school plan?
The law was the mission of Kim Daniels, D-Jacksonville, a sketchy new member of the House of Representatives who is a religious entrepreneur who calls herself an “apostle†and imagines that America is under attack by “witchcraft coming from Kenya to influence our president.â€
Daniels’ Spoken Word Ministries is a merchandise-heavy operation with some ungodly expenses, like a birthday Cadillac Escalade for her ex-husband and tax-exempt $1 million home in Davie called a “parsonage.â€
She’s a deep well of nuttiness on a variety of topics, such as slavery, which she calls a blessing, and the Holocaust, which she also finds to be not as bad as advertised.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State has taken note of this Florida law, and similar laws in other states, and makes an important point:
State legislators have not been coming up with the idea and strategy to pass these “In God We Trust†bills on their own. These bills are the first step of a nationwide strategy called Project Blitz — a playbook created by three Christian nationalist groups to pass state bills that undermine religious freedom and redefine the U.S. as a Christian nation. They hope to use bills like “In God We Trust†as a stepping stone to even more damaging bills that allow public schools to promote prayer, teach creationism, and eventually allow the government to use religion to discriminate against LGBTQ people, women, and religious minorities.
Now that Daniels has secured her seat in Tallahassee for a couple more years, what shenanigans can we expect from her? Stay tuned.
Is that a typo or is she actually a democrat? What are we coming to when Democrats are eager to do republican work for them?
Yep, Rep. Daniels is a capital-D Democrat. Fwliw, the linked floridapolitics.com article notes that the D party honchos pushed for other candidates in her previous primary and this one, but she steamrolled ’em both times (with help, apparently, from some of those R-people).
Other D’s have trod the same path, notably a Louisiana state senator who has introduced and promoted creationism-in-the-schools bills.
Support for Daniels from the African-American community seems, for some reason, less than unanimous.