A right-wing extremist who once cheered the prospect of executing gay people just won a seat in the Florida Legislature.

Republican Marshall Rawson won 68.15 percent of the vote in Florida House District 10, easily beating Democrat Merrillee Malwitz Jipson in deep red North Florida. His victory was widely expected in the heavily Republican district. But in August, Rawson won the GOP primary for the open seat in a surprise victory over Chase Brannan, the son of retiring Florida Rep. Chuck Brannan.

Some of his extremist rhetoric had been reported in local outlets like Clay News & Views, which in January spotlighted a 2023 post on Twitter, now X, in which Rawson shared a report on Uganda charging men with “aggravated homosexuality.” Responding to the prospect of the men facing the death penalty, Rawson wrote, “This is how you would run the pervs and miscreants out of Florida.”

Florida Politics reported on Rawson’s lengthy involvement with the League of the South, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2000. He also criticized the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and posted that “taking old dead communist heroes of the past and dressing them up as Christian Conservatives isn’t conservatism, it’s defeatism.”

Seems there's a new George Wallace in the south.

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[–] 3 points 6 hours ago*

Nah. We did - this may get long but is relevant. I went to school here when we were 49th in the US and the US close to the bottom worldwide. Literally had no teacher for half of 6th grade, had one book for 5th, kids getting high in elementary, fighting a every day, no art, science once a week. I really only got educated in college. When I had kids I homeschooled them because I remembered how bad it was. But then I found schools to fit the first 3 using the school choice and WOW, it was so good. Those 3 were so prepared for college, 2 got good scholarships at private schools and one got through state school in 3 years, all with amazing grades. The schools in my county were very good.

But it's getting so bad again, my last kid unfortunately missed the good schools wave. They are at community college and crawling back, and yes it's the fault of the continued conservative government wrecking education with their back to basics bullshit. When they were just about diversity in education and different paths for different kids it was great, now they don't want kids to learn anything outside of their doctrine and while it's not quite as abysmal as when I went to school, it's very bad again.

If we are ranked well we are just skating on earlier success, it's getting worse.

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