Wokeness on the ballot

By John Labriola - This June marks the fifth year in a row that the Citrus County library system has not celebrated LGBT Pride Month. The obnoxious propaganda displays of rainbow flags and sexually perverted books have been history since county residents loudly protested them in 2021. 

In the last five years, the county also has ended its membership in the far-left American Library Association, removed a pornographic "LGBT teen novel" from library shelves, and canceled the library system's subscription to the woke BookPage magazine, inspiring other counties to do the same.

But all these gains could be reversed if liberals disguised as "Republicans" take back the majority on the county commission this summer.

So far, all the candidates running for the commission are registered Republicans, but not necessarily conservatives. If no Democrat or third-party candidate enters the race by June 12, the Aug. 18 Republican primaries for Commission Districts 2 and 4, both of which are countywide races, will not only be final, but Democrats and all other voters also will be able to vote in them. 

The District 2 race pits conservative Commissioner Diana Finegan against her 2022 opponent Stacey Worthington. While Worthington has worked to moderate her image in the last four years, voters may recall that in 2022 she supported allowing LGBT Pride displays in the libraries. She also continues to have the financial backing of Citrus County Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Josh Wooten, a former Democratic county commissioner who has aggressively promoted the LGBT agenda and DEI.

The District 4 race features three candidates, only one of whom is a conservative. The incumbent is Rebecca Bays, who over the last four years has voted for higher taxes, opposed spending cuts, appointed LGBT activists to the Library Advisory Board, and approved controversial residential developments. She is also related by marriage to Wooten, who backs her financially and who shares a grandson with her. 

One of Bays' challengers is Holli Herndon, an educator who has laughably argued that the woke positions she has taken in her campaign actually represent the views of the majority of Citrus County voters, which she claims to know because she has asked her supporters what they think. Her financial supporters include left-wing extremist Gordon Myhre, whom readers may recall recently applied to become a member of the Library Advisory Board and is active in the rabidly anti-Trump Citrus County Coffee Coalition, where he has advocated for abolishing ICE. Last year, he also urged the county to continue spending tax dollars on its now-canceled $3,300 annual subscription to BookPage.

Herndon has stated that she opposes honoring slain conservative icon Charlie Kirk with a road-naming or even a temporary book display, and she has refused to condemn wokeness. At a candidate forum last week hosted by the Conservative Women’s Political Network of Citrus County, Herndon was unable to answer a question by conservative District 4 candidate Jennifer Grogan – who pastors a church and runs a small business – about whether she believes a man can become a woman. 

"Would you teach that to children?" Grogan asked. "I think that's more the concern of the community, that you are in the education system and we don't want our children educated in that. I want my children brought up with family values – a husband and a wife and marriage first. We want to bring them up the right way, and I believe wokeism is not the right way. I think people are believing a lie. So are you willing to stand up and not do that?"

"I'm standing on facts. It is not my business to tell people how to live their life, and it is not my business to tell people what religion they are or to set definitions," Herndon replied.

Grogan pressed her. 

"But if you truly are a man biologically and you're stating you're a woman, that is not a fact; that's a lie," Grogan said. "You are influencing the youth."

But Herndon doubled down on her wokeness.

"No, I'm not going to stand and say somebody's right or wrong," she insisted.

Other issues discussed at the forum included raising Citrus County's sales tax by 1 percent, which Bays said she supports, and the moratorium on data centers that the county commission unanimously approved last week, which all the candidates agreed with.

Early voting begins on Aug. 7.