Headline Surfer® graphic / Rob Giliald is shown in a Volusia County Branch Jail mugshot on Aug. 12, 2015 charged with simple battery on an elderly motorist while asllegedly intoxicated at the entrance to a gated community. Charges were later dropped.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- No matter where you turn, politics is uglier than ever at the local, county, state and federal levels, at least from the hometown perspective here at the World's Famous Beach®.
Take Daytona Beach City Commisioner Rob Gilliland, for example, who looks more like the Joker in Batman than an elected municipal leader, especially after he's been drinking.
And why not? He's one of the "yes" men to the influential Daytona insiders.
Who can forget Gilliland's arrest, accused of punching an elderly man while suspected of driving under the influence during an incident at the entrance to a gated community last year.
As for the criminal charge, the State Attorney Ralph Joeph Larizza took care of that by having the charges dropped, despite the allegations of the alleged victim and a witness against Gilliland.
As for Gillilabnd described by Daytona Beach cops as reeking of booze, he claimed the odor mut have come from beer being spilled on him while walking on Main Street during Bike Week (something this veteran reporter has never had a problem with in covering the annual biker rally for the better part of 20 years).
At the county level, you have the elected council members whose campaigns are subsidized by the influential insiders from the Speedway.
Lowry, a minister, received a whopping 82 percent of his campaign funding in an 11th-hour push from the insiders in the 2014 general election, after DeBary's Rich Gailey, supported by the Republican Party of Volusia County, won the non-partisan primary, but not by enough to avoid the November run-off. And by then, Lowry was ab
And there was Denys, promising during a Daytona Beach News-Journal debate last summer that she would not vote to take cars off the beach. But after the election, she did just that.
Not to be outdone, Daniels, who told his colleagues, "We need to lance the boil that is Waverly," got them to make his former law partner, Jon Kaney, a special investigator to look into campaign finances.
But Daniels sheepishly offered a "no comment" when confronted by HeadlineSurfer.com about he and his county-employed wife, Marsha Daniels, claiming double homestead exemptions until they got caught and werre sent notices with fine on of all days April 1, 2014. Two day later, Daniel and his wife, Marsha Daniels, the No. 2 person at the Ocean Center, paid a fine to settle the issue.