Joe Mullins, the former Flagler County Commissioner disgraced out of office two years ago after recurring scandals and outrageous behavior, including belligerently trying to get out of a traffic stop by telling a cop that he ran Flagler County, announced on Friday that he will run for the congressional seat Rep. Mike Waltz is vacating to join Donald Trump’s cabinet as national security adviser.
Mullins had attempted to get out of a ticket months earlier in another county, when the Florida Highway Patrol trooper in that case threatened him with jail if he got out of his car.
By then, more than three years into his tenure as a commissioner, Mullins had built a notorious reputation for tawdrily denigrating opponents on his social media platforms or on a half-hour radio commercial he still pays for on Flagler Broadcasting’s WNZF and a few other stations.
Using air time, he called for the decapitation of liberals, and on social media wished liberals “chain[ed] and muzzled” or shipped out of the county on rail cars, an allusion to the transfer of Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II. He repeatedly bullied or insulted his fellow-county commissioners, who tried to censure him, He has been openly bigoted against women or members of the LGBTQ community, and has used anti-Semitic tropes publicly to depict this site’s editor as a roach or a virus.
Mullins’s tenure on the County Commission bracketed four years of disruptive, at times dysfunctional governance for a panel that only began to regained its footing for decorum with the election of Andy Dance in 2020, and more decisively with the defeat of Mullins and the election of Leann Pennington in 2022.
Pennington, at the time a little-known resident of Flagler County’s west side, overwhelmingly defeated Mullins in the 2020 Republican primary as she took 69 percent of the vote, the single-largest contested commission primary victory in recent memory. (See: “Mullins Doesn’t ‘Run the County’ Anymore as Pennington Crushes Him.”)
David Ayres, the Flagler Broadcasting general manager and host of Free For All Fridays, whose network has profited from Mullins’s advertising dollars for years, was nevertheless surprised as he asked Mullins whether what he’d heard was true–that Mullins was running for Waltz’s seat.
“Absolutely I am, and I’m very excited about it,” Mullins said on the show last Friday. “Lots of people reached out, asked me to consider running.” Mullins typically claim his decisions are the result of emails from “lots of people,” consultations with “lots of people,” or pleadings from “lots of people.” Somehow, the people are never named, nor do they tend to identify themselves.
Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to set a special election for Congressional District 6, the Waltz district, which includes all of Flagler County and parts of Volusia, St. Johns, Marion, Putnam and Lake counties, with a population of 780,000.
“If you think about it, this is the year of the comebacks,” Mullins said. ” I never claimed to be perfect, but at the end of the day, I’ll work hard for my community, as I’ve always done.”
He wrapped his announcement around the Donald Trump victory and referred to Trump’s nomination for attorney general of Matt Gaetz as paving “a new way.” Gaetz is the former Florida congressman the New York Times described in terms that easily apply to Mullins: a “master of insults,” a “right-wing mudslinger,” and an “internet troll” who makes “unsavory comments” even about people’s appearances. Gaetz is under investigation for sexual misconduct, illegal drug use and other issues.
Ayers was still surprised. “People listening now are going, Holy crap. Joe Mullins?” Ayres said on the air, enumerating some of the problems Mullins has faced over the years. Mullins then went on a strange tangent, saying he’s had a “lot of ups and downs” with his businesses but had “a lot of torturous interference with our business.”
He said the business was going through a refinancing a few months ago when “someone started sending anonymous letters to the bank saying, ‘Go to FlaglerLive’ or ‘go to Augusta Press and dig in deeper about this individual.’ We found out who did it. We know who’s done it, and we actually are about to file some lawsuits, and some couple of media sources is going to be involved in it. FlaglerLive is definitely involved, and we’re going to go after them.”
FlaglerLive, of course, is involved in no such thing, though Mullins’s history of fabrications, innuendoes, slanders and libels goes back to his self-transplanting from Augusta, Ga., to Flagler County ahead of his 2018 run for office. (See: “Joe Mullins Falsehoods, Mischaracterizations, Misleading and Baseless Statements: A Fact-Check.”)
Mullins went through a divorce a few years ago, a private matter made relevant to his public persona only to the extent that Mullins, who still describes himself as a successful man of business, declared himself “Insolvent,” “Riddled with Debt” and “Potentially Bankrupt.” More recently, a half dozen of his properties in Georgia were ordered into receivership, a court process that includes public orders by the court.
Mullins owns two properties in Flagler County. He used to claim a house at 311 North Pine Street in Bunnell as his homestead. He still owns it, but it is no longer homesteaded. That property’s 2023 tax bill was overdue; a certificate was issued, and a payment plan established. Two of four payments have been made (in June and September). Mullins’s condo at Hammock Beach is now his homesteaded property. It is current on taxes through 2023.
On the radio, Mullins said his businesses “are fine. I’m fine. Listen, I’m a businessman. We go up and we go down and we fight back.”
Pennington, the county commissioner who beat Mullins, reacted today to the congressional run. “One of my favorite quotes about elections is by Alexander Hamilton,” Pennington said, with this citation: “This process of election affords a moral certainty that the office will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” Pennington then said: “If the people deem him to be the right person for the job, then so be it. We will soon find out who the people feel is most qualified to represent the district.”
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