Santa Rosa Commissioner's anti-Democrat rant angered 20 residents enough to file ethics charges

The Florida Commission on Ethics last month reviewed 36 citizen complaints against public figures to determine whether the complaints stood up to legal scrutiny.

Twenty of those complaints had been filed against one man, Santa Rosa County Commissioner James Calkins.

The sheer volume of complaints filed against Calkins is noteworthy. No other elected official whose name appeared on the Ethics Commission July 28 docket was facing more the two.

"I'm not surprised at all by that number," Gulf Breeze resident Sandy Dimick, one of those who reported Calkins, said of the complaints processed by the Ethics Commission. "And I imagine those complaints came from both sides of the aisle."

The complaints were filed between June 6 and June 15, in the days following Calkins' comments calling Democrats evil and speaking out at a County Commission meeting against a candidate nominated for a Marine Advisory Committee seat because of her party affiliation.

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Outraged residents, Democrats and Republicans alike, lined up at their next public forum opportunity, the same day the first of the complaints arrived in Tallahassee, to protest the statements. Calkins did not back off of his position, nor did he apologize.

"I will not vote for a Democrat to be appointed on any board in Santa Rosa County," he said. "We have a lot of Republicans qualified to serve in this position and I absolutely cannot support a Democrat."

Public records indicate the Ethics Commission reviewed all 20 of the complaints against Calkins in an executive session meeting held July 28. In each of the cases the board dismissed the claims based on a "failure to constitute a legally sufficient complaint."

"The complaint does not detail any corrupt acts that occurred through any act or omission in a public position," the finding in each case said. "The act of a politician utilizing allegedly inflammatory partisan rhetoric might be unbecoming to some but the complaint does not demonstrate in a factual nonconclusory manner that (Calkins) gained a benefit from these alleged acts."

Efforts to reach Calkins Thursday were not successful.

Many of the complaints were exact replicas of one another, and Jean Siebenaler, who serves on the board of the Santa Rosa County Democratic Executive Committee and as a legislative liaison for the party, confirmed the Democratic Women's Club of Florida had sent out requests to submit complaints against Calkins to an email list.

"With what was going on we asked for help in contacting the Ethics Commission," she said.

The filing of a complaint is no simple task. Each complaint must be duplicated and notarized before it is sent to the Ethics Commission.

"It's not just filling out a form and hitting a send button," Dimick said. "That there were that many tells you a lot."

Like Dimick, Siebenaler did not believe all of the complaints filed against Calkins had been sent to the Ethics Commission by Democrats.

"It was not a concerted effort on the part of the Democratic Party," she said. "It was a community effort after what went on at the commission meeting."

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The letters chronicled the events of May 25, when Calkins "stated that he would refuse to vote for a very qualified candidate to serve on a committee solely because she was a Democrat."

"Mr. Calkins biased diatribe from the commissioners' dais was nothing short of hate speech directed at Democrats and intended to threaten citizens who are not registered Republicans that they are not welcome to participate in their local government," the letter states. "This is dangerous and could lead to violence, which is a significant concern as we head into the 2024 elections."

The form letter calls for Calkins to be sanctioned for a violation of Florida Statute 350.041, which regulates the standards of commissioner conduct.

"He conducted himself in an unprofessional manner during the performance of his official duties; he exhibited impropriety and he absolutely did not act in a manner that promotes confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the commission," it said.

Some letter writers seemed to rely generally on the template, but diverged somewhat from the exact format. One Gulf Breeze woman pointed to Calkins' continuing practice of not abiding by the rules of his position by "publicly cheering on the insurrectionists on Jan. 6."

"It's a pattern. He is dangerous," the complaint said.

One Milton resident told the Ethics Commission; "because of the political rhetoric like that of Mr. Calkins, I do not feel safe in my own home town."

Other writers cited what they believe are violations of Florida Statute 112.3136, which prohibits commissioners from using their position to solicit items of value. It was implied that when Calkins made the statement he might reconsider the nomination of the Marine Advisory Committee candidate if she were to register as a Republican that he was seeking something of value to himself by gaining another GOP voter.

In her communication to the Commission, Dimick renounced Calkins' actions since even before he was elected, recalling his alleged recruitment of a write-in candidate to close the 2020 election to anyone but Republican voters and cause "the disenfranchisement of over 60,000 voters."

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"Since his election, Mr. Calkins behavior has become an issue of concern and embarrassment for all voters of Santa Rosa County. Mr. Calkins has proven himself to be unserious, basing his votes on the most trivial and unrelated facts," Dimick's complaint letter said. "He has, in fact, become dangerous to the health and safety of the residents of Santa Rosa County."

She urged the Ethics Commission to explore the possibility that Calkins' reckless words and actions were creating a hostile work environment within Santa Rosa County government.

"Many county employees are Democrats. This type of open hate speech, on the record, makes county staff endure a hostile work environment, subject to bullying, offensive comments, discrimination or sexual harassment that makes the worker fearful and intimidated to be at work," Dimick wrote. "Mr. Calkins is a walking recording of offensive remarks."

Siebenaler said she isn't convinced that partisan politics didn't play some role in the Ethics Commission letting Calkins off the hook. She said she was discouraged that the board could overlook what appeared to be sound arguments put forward by many people.

"Clearly he conducted himself unprofessionally while performing his elected duties," she said. "At least 20 people argued he acted in a manner that did not promote confidence and impartiality. Based on that response, I'd say people are angry and fed up with hate being promulgated by certain elected officials."

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Santa Rosa Commissioner James Calkins survives barrage of ethics complaints