Florida State Senator Caught Up With the Law – The Gantt Report
By Lucius Gantt – Tears are flowing in The Gantt Report nation today as my good friend Mandy Dawson has gotten caught up in some legal hocus pocus and was recently arrested in her Daytona Beach hometown for alleged tax issues.
I feel bad for Mandy because Dawson, a former state Senator and member of the House of Representatives was a strong supporter of The Gantt Report and a relentless voice for all Black media owners and media professionals.
To overzealous law enforcement officials, Mandy Dawson was sort of low hanging fruit. There are constant investigations of Black and other elected government officials and most charges are dismissed, hushed up or covered up.
Dawson’s name surfaced in a federal public corruption probe headed by the U.S. Department of Justice that centered on Alan Mendelsohn, a Hollywood eye doctor and so-called major player in the political fundraising world.
When he agreed to snitch on everybody and began cooperating with investigators, Mendelsohn told them that he had passed along $82,000 in payments to Dawson through an intermediary between 2003 and 2005, when she was a senator. He did it, he said, in hopes that she wouldn’t vote against legislation he was pushing.
The charges filed against Dawson on Wednesday do not explicitly link the alleged tax evasion to the Mendelsohn payments, and Dawson has not been officially accused of any wrongdoing connected to him.
Mendelsohn testified that Dawson had insisted that he and his associate, lobbyist Steve Hull, hire her friend and former aide, Venica Blakely. Mendelsohn told a federal judge that he believed some, if not all, of the $82,000 given to Blakely was being funneled to Dawson.
Let me just say, I love Mandy but I have never seen her in our many years of friendship with more than a few hundred dollars. She often sat on substantial legislative committees and even chaired a Health Care Committee and perhaps more.
But Mandy Dawson was no political kingpin and Mandy Dawson’s votes and influence could not have led or orchestrated any prevailing or defeated legislation!
Lesson learned in this situation is a lesson already known by most American citizens and that is if authorities want you charged or arrested, you will be charged or arrested.
I don’t know any other Florida legislator in all my years of lobbying and consulting political campaigns that has been arrested because a snitching lobbyist “believed” money given to someone else was diverted to a legislator.
Nowadays, it is easy for lawmen to track you or accuse you based on your spending habits. If Mandy had a lot of money what bank was it in, what bills were paid with it and who shared it with her?
No disrespect, but I can’t name three legislators in the past 20 years that had less monetary assets than Mandy Dawson.
According to reports, authorities questioned, wiretapped and tried to entrap many elected legislators and all they could do is falsely accuse Mandy Dawson of being a bribery, kickback tax evading political boss.
I don’t think so!
Mandy, I still love you and support you and Florida’s Black media professionals and Black children and Black citizens should too!
