Commissioner Holly Davis reveals she is a puppet of "influential" pressure groups and individuals

By John Labriola -

The Citrus County Commission's annual reorganizational vote will take place at 1 p.m. at the Nov. 30 county commission meeting. The five-member commission will decide who will serve as the commission's next chair, a position that rotates among commissioners every year.

The selection of a chair – who presides over commission meetings and signs various documents authorized by the commission – is ordinarily a fairly routine matter that doesn't generate much discussion or debate. But this year's chair election has exposed fault lines on the commission that reveal the alarming extent to which certain commissioners may be controlled by powerful special interests and liberal elites in the community who want to run the county behind the scenes. 

The chairmanship normally goes to whoever has held the position of First Vice Chair over the preceding 12 months. The current First Vice Chair is Commissioner Ron Kitchen, but at the Nov. 9 commission meeting Commissioner Holly Davis insisted on opening up an unprecedented and awkward discussion about the chairmanship vote in order to ask Kitchen to bow out. She then embarrassed herself by admitting she has "received quite a bit of pressure from various influential people in the county" to block Kitchen's bid for chair. (See video above.)

Davis' shocking and unprofessional admission prompted Commissioner Scott Carnahan to ask her to name the "influential" power brokers who are pulling her strings. Davis refused to give a direct answer but defended herself for showing deference to the ultraliberal Citrus County Chronicle's editorial board, the Citrus County Builders Association, and Clark Stillwell, an Inverness attorney who represents the interest of developers.

Commissioner Ruthie Schlabach also revealed she has received pressure from various unnamed figures to oppose Kitchen as chair but claimed she told them to "pack sand," although she said she had "concerns" about Kitchen's ability to serve as an effective spokesman for the commission because of his refusal to talk to the leftist Citrus County Chronicle's biased editorial board. 

Kitchen said he found the entire discussion begun by Davis "quite upsetting" and insisted he wasn't backing down.

"I was all prepared not to do it until I found out there was this coup attempt to make me not chair next time, and when I heard about that I said I will not go down quietly just because you want to do that," Kitchen said.