On this date in both 2020, 2021, 2022, as well as 2023, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” first profiled Florida State Senator Dennis Baxley, a man who is referred to as “The Steve King of Florida”, because holy s***, is he vomiting out some white nationalist talking points. Baxley was first elected to the Florida House of Representatives from 2001-2006, before returning in the 2010 Tea Party Wave (of course he came with the Tea Party), and after winning two more elections unopposed and serving for six non-consecutive terms in the lower chamber, he moved up to the Florida State Senate in 2016, narrowly winning the GOP Primary for that seat by a few hundred votes.
So for a time, nobody was paying Baxley too much mind in Tallahassee, but maybe they should have. In 2007, he raised a stink when the state of Florida voted to change the state’s song so that it no longer used the term “Darkeys” in its lyrics.
As years went by, Baxley continued to make public comments supporting the legacy of Confederates, and thumbed his nose at acknowledging any other non-white group in Florida’s state history. In 2014, he fought against adding a memorial to fallen Union soldiers to the same patch of land inside the Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park that held three monuments honoring Confederate soldiers, saying, "My biggest concern is that this is revisionist history and that these decisions are being made by park officials and not an elected body." A year later, in 2015, Baxley hailed a decision by Marion County commissioners to fly the Confederate flag at their government complex and would also oppose a bill in the House that would ban the display of Confederate flags on state and local government property.
By 2017, Dennis Baxley wasn’t even being subtle about how racist he was. Or
“I don’t want to celebrate defeat. I would rather celebrate overcoming the heartbreak of slavery. I wouldn’t want to build a memorial to child abuse; I wouldn’t want to build a memorial to sexual abuse. I have a discomfort about memorializing slavery. ... I would like to take it in a more positive direction than a memorial to slavery.” And… we’re just going to point out that if this stooge didn’t want to “celebrate defeat” then maybe he shouldn’t be championing the Confederacy so much, since they were, y’know, defeated.
Only a few weeks later, people already keeping a close eye on Baxley noted that he went to a pro-Confederate event only two weeks after the events at Charlottesville, Virginia, which was a fundraiser being held by “Save Southern Heritage Florida”, a group that claimed “leftists and Antifa” were responsible for the violence in Charlottesville (online conversations show the white nationalists were planning violence for weeks ahead of time, incidentally). Baxley lied and claimed he was attending to “condemn racism, bigotry, and violence” at the closed door event.
We’ll pause from discussing Baxley’s racism to point out that in 2005, he sponsored Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law that resulted in the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman. He scoffs at the idea that he might have any blood on his hands, because of course he does. But that isn’t his only foray into idiotic extremism when it comes to guns. In 2018, when asked about gun control in the wake of the shooting at Parkland, he said that we shouldn’t ban guns to stop gun violence, because “Spoons are used to eat stuff to kill yourself with obesity, but we're not picking up spoons to get rid of obesity."
We’re not even touching the surface of how low this guy will stoop. In the wake of Hurricane Irma in October of 2017, Dennis Baxley tried claiming that 14 deaths in one Florida nursing home where staff failed to avoid deaths from exposure after the air conditioning system failed that there was no negligence, saying, "Look at the population. You're dealing with the 90-somethings. Some of these deaths would naturally occur, storm or no storm."
In 2019, it hasn’t just been frustrating to see Baxley trying to allow for “alternative science” to be taught in schools, and giving “opposing views” to things like climate change or evolution… Go figure that most of his sources during debate on such a measure in the Florida State Senate was supplied by a hate group that says LGBTQ people are guilty of “deviant behavior” and has a decidedly Islamophobic agenda for public schools.
No, we’re more freaked out about how Baxley started making calls recently for stricter anti-choice legislation, but it was the reasons he gave that turned some heads, as he began adopting white nationalist talking points again, and lamented that Western Europeans were “disappearing” because supposedly enough abortions were happening that the Western Europeans were “being replaced by folks that come behind them and immigrant, don’t wish to assimilate into that society, and they do believe in having children. So you see that there are long range impacts to your society when the answer is to exterminate.”
Baxley spent 2020 addressing the threat of Covid-19… HAHAHAH of course he didn’t, this fascist tried getting legislation passed to ban gender reassignment treatments for transgender youth, and sponsored two separate bills to try to find an end-around to get prayer in schools by claiming he wanted a “moment of silence” in classrooms. And what was Baxley’s first priority at the start of 2021? Voter suppression, as he sponsored a bill to make it more difficult to vote by mail, because that’s what a record number of Democrats did in 2020. CAN’T HAVE THAT.
In 2022, he was the sponsor of Florida’s idiotic “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, and after widespread pushback against this bigoted, homophobic piece of legislative trash, which he outright admits is to keep LGBTQ youth in the closet, still soldiered ahead by lying and claiming that even Disney supported the bill, because what even is reality to Republicans obsessed with going back to the “good old days” when you could treat gay people like they’re abominations.
Dennis Baxley won re-election to the Florida State Senate in 2022 with 62% of the vote. Mercifully, he is term-limited in 2024, and this time next year, he’ll be a political afterthought and be able to ironing his white robes with all the extra time he’ll have.
One Year Ago, January 23rd, 2023: Dennis Baxley (FL)… 2023 Update
Two Years Ago, January 23rd, 2022: Dennis Baxley (FL)… 2022 Update
Three Years Ago, January 23rd, 2021: Dennis Baxley (FL)… 2021 Update
Four Years Ago, January 23rd, 2020: Dennis Baxley (FL)… Original Profile
Five Years Ago, January 23rd, 2019: Steve McLaughlin (NY)
Six Years Ago, January 23rd, 2018: Dan Kirby (OK)
Seven Years Ago, January 23rd, 2017: Gary Kiehne (AZ)… 2017 Update
Eight Years Ago, January 23rd, 2016: Gary Kiehne (AZ)… 2016 Update
Nine Years Ago, January 23rd, 2015: Gary Kiehne (AZ)… Original Profile