By: Susan Clark Armstrong

My Daddy always said that a person’s private life was between them and Jesus.  PJ O’Rourke said giving money and power to people in government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. 

Last year a lot of Jesus stuff was revealed about sheriff Darryl Daniels. It was icky stuff most of us wanted Jesus to keep to himself, but the sheriff laid it out there and made us look at it.  Last week the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) released an investigative summary about more Jesus stuff, plus crimes Daniels had committed, proving he is the poster guy for the whiskey and car keys theory. The sheriff was arrested, then suspended from his job.  Gov. DeSantis appointed FDLE Officer Matt Walsh as the new interim sheriff.  

Given the icky and the whiskey stuff about Darryl, it seems county voters fall into five categories:  1) I didn’t vote for him last time and I’m not voting for him this time. 2) I voted for him last time, but not this time. 3) I early voted for him and now I wished I hadn’t.  4) I love you Darryl. You were set up because of “the timing” and I’m still voting for you. You were a good sheriff.  I will always, always love you Darryl. 5) Wait! Who is Darryl Daniels? 

Some folks on social media are characterizing the 4s as “Kool-Aid” drinkers for their undying devotion even in the midst of Daniels’ unraveling. But I believe a lot of the 4s are victims of the Cult of Darryl Daniels.

Historically, cult leaders are very charming, charismatic, persuasive people with big egos.  They crave power, attention and excesses, especially sexual. These cult leaders use people’s trust to manipulate them and to prey on the vulnerable.  And, worst of all, they usually use the Bible to do it.

I’ve watched Daniels work a crowd. He appears to have all the cultist traits and behaviors and has dragged his on-line religious degree to the pulpits and the panties of all he could persuade, coerce, and intimidate. The FDLE’s investigative summary tells some of that story and his mug shot above tells more. 

Let’s look at the 4s reasoning, aside from the love part. The 4s discount the Jesus stuff , as well as his illegal activities. They believe the former sheriff was “set up” because the information was released and he was suspended five days before the election. 

There is a reason for the delay. On-line documents show the FDLE served a subpoena to get Darryl’s emails.  In December, 2019, he hired an expensive attorney from Jacksonville to fight the subpoena and that fight continued until recently. The timing issue would have been eliminated if he had surrendered the emails.  But without the timing issue, the former sheriff would have nothing to hang his cowboy hat on. 

Was he a good sheriff? Let’s look at his last 3 ½ years.

One of Daniels’ first acts was to restructure the salaries of the road deputies, lowering their pay which was already pretty low. 

His attrition rate was akin to rats jumping from a sinking ship that was on-fire and filled with viral cats, rat poison and dynamite.  It appeared Darryl did not replace all those making the jump, yet blamed his lack of officers on his budget.   He asked for and received more budget money than any sheriff has ever asked for or received in the history of the county. With that money, he traveled more than a peripatetic prostitute with unlimited frequent flier miles. Sometimes he took a female companion with him who was not his wife…that’s Jesus business.

To prove the whiskey theory, from January 2017 to June 2020, Daniels purchased 185 vehicles for over $4.4 million.  Three, or more, were for his own personal use and some were for pretty girls in his office.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent to develop a new mission statement and to “rebrand” the sheriff’s office, including vehicles, uniforms, badges and anything that would sustain his name, image and ego. The sheriff spent $19,496 on cowboy hats and he’s one of few who wears one. One of the deputies said it was because most of them were “embarrassed” to be seen in one. He also spent $19,857 on a boondoggle trip to Disney World.

Darryl hired Public Information Officers (PIO) and, with lots of our tax dollars, turned the unit into his own personal movie studio where his PIOs transformed him into a cowboy prince in a white hat.  At his direction, PIOs produced videos which turned the confiscation of a couple of bags of weed into a major meth house bust and dazed and confused stoners into drug lords, while murderers, robbers, and rapist went free. He constantly pulled officers off their jobs to star in his videos and to be his entourage for campaign fodder.   

Daniels wasn’t always good about showing up for work. Maybe because the FDLE found there were 27,371 cell phone “interactions” with his girlfriend “including consensual exchange of sexually explicit messages, videos and images” from December 2017 to May 2019. Deborah, apparently a mathematically gifted Facebook commentator, noted that in this 17 month period, this was “1600 per month, 53 per day and IF you are awake 14 hours a day 3.8 calls per hour”…definitely Jesus business. The exchanges continued up to the time he had his pregnant paramour arrested for stalking after his wife found out about the affair.

Last week we learned from the FDLE report the sheriff stalked an unsuspecting young woman he had seen in a picture and used county resources to do it, then sent the frightened women smutty texts. He lied to the FLDE about issues surrounding the order he gave to arrest his girlfriend and directed his staff to destroy evidence of his criminalities. 

I could go on, but you’ve probably heard enough. All of Darryl’s squandermania took place while our county is critically short of deputies. No, he was not a good sheriff.

No matter what happens tomorrow, Darryl Daniels will still be on suspension and cannot serve as sheriff. Some officials say, if Daniels wins the election, the governor may permanently remove him from office for his crimes, and we’ll do this all over again in the Spring at considerable expense. So, tomorrow we’ll see if he has enough following of 4s in our county to give him the popular vote even after all his misdeeds. I’m not a drinker. But if he triumphs after I watched my county live in the shadow of his shame and senseless wrongdoing…I’m going to be needing some whiskey of my own.