Dave 'Watchdog' Miner, former Manatee School Board member, lawyer, advocate, dies at 77

Dave "Watchdog" Miner would walk the halls of the Manatee County School District offices during the holiday season, chocolate-covered cherries in hand. He relished in giving them out to staff as a thank-you for their hard work throughout the year.

"It was just a small gesture of gratitude that he would give and thank everyone," former Manatee County Schools Superintendent Cynthia Saunders said. "It gave him a way to go around and do the handshakes."

Miner, a former Manatee School Board member, Vietnam veteran and local lawyer, died last week at the age of 77. First elected in 2012 after unsuccessful campaigns for the board in 2004 and 2008, he served two terms on the School Board and was a vocal proponent of the local option school tax referendum passed by Manatee voters in 2018. The property tax allows the district to increase teacher pay and provides an influx of funds to different vocational programs.

Saunders said the Manatee community has lost an "advocate for students" in Miner, who attended board meetings regularly as a citizen long before he was elected as a School Board member, and wrote legislative platforms to increase school funding in his work as a lawyer.

Miner lost his bid for a third term in 2020 to Mary Foreman, and congratulated her on her victory. At the time, he called his efforts to help get the property tax approved in 2018 one of his proudest moments as a board member, saying proponents brought "to the public the reality of our finances and what we have to do to have a first rate school district that has proven itself to be capable of being a top if not the very top district in the state."

Miner ran with his nickname "Watchdog" on the ballot in 2008, and his campaign slogan was "Watchdog, not lapdog. A Herald-Tribune article about his candidacy noted that a kitchen cupboard in his Bradenton office was crammed with videotapes of Manatee School Board meetings, and shelves held hundreds of school district agendas and budgets. He spent hundreds of dollars every year requesting public records from the district and for years had "made it his personal mission to challenge and harangue school officials and question board spending."

His blunt style has made him unpopular with some district officials, the article noted.

Miner also ran for the chairmanship of Manatee County's Republican Party in 2006, narrowly losing to Kathy King.

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut schools down in 2020, Miner took the closures hard, Saunders said. He was a people person who loved face-to-face interaction.

"He was so accustomed to going to football games or going to the FFA banquets and serving the strawberry shortcake," she said. "And when some of those things were restricted, and you certainly couldn't have that close contact, that was hard for him. He really enjoyed walking around and seeing the community in that regard so that he had first-hand knowledge."

Sometimes his face-to-face interactions with other board members turned intense. In 2018, former board member Scott Hopes, who faces potential state charges for violating Florida's open government laws, alleged that Miner tried to run him over with his car after an encounter between the two outside the board chambers following a meeting.

At the time, Hopes said Miner was lucky Hopes' gun was in his car, calling Miner a "crazy person." Miner denied trying to run him over and was critical of Hopes' flaunting of his gun.

“That’s his way of trying to intimidate anyone who is critical of him to say, ‘Be careful, I may have a gun on me, I’ll shoot your brains out,’” Miner said at the time. “And I don’t think that is a good way to encourage discourse.”

The incident followed months of heated board meeting interactions between the two regarding the upcoming public vote on a tax referendum, which Miner supported and Hopes did not.

Charlie Kennedy, a former Manatee School Board member who served with Miner, posted to Facebook about Miner's death to express his condolences, calling him a "true Manatee County original."

"He was his own man, and a little quirky at that, but his love of our schools and our students was never in doubt," he wrote. "Rest in peace Watchdog."

Cindy Spray, a current Manatee School Board member, also posted to Facebook about Miner's passing.

"I picked his brain for School Board and about local Manatee County history from the first time we met, to hiring our Superintendent this year," Spray wrote. "You will be missed by many!"

Miner is survived by his son Joey, daughter Sarah and granddaughter Jacqueline.

Follow Herald-Tribune Education Reporter Steven Walker on Twitter at @swalker_7. He can be reached at sbwalker@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Dave 'Watchdog' Miner, former Manatee School Board member, dies at 77