BY STEPHANIE MENCIMER
INTERESTING HITORY!
excerpt:
The meanest member of Congress hails from a town called Niceville, a sleepy enclave of about 15,000 nestled on Choctawhatchee Bay, just off the Gulf of Mexico. When Gaetz was growing up, it was 90 percent white, solidly middle class, and best known for hosting the Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival—in honor of the plentiful local fish, not the hairdo. The Gaetzes owned a second home, in the nearby town of Seaside, where The Truman Show was filmed. Gaetz, who has devoted his career to getting on television, spent much of his childhood in a house made famous by a character trying to get off TV.
The Gaetzes were conservative and religious, as was the surrounding community. (Two abortion doctors were murdered in the area during Gaetz’s childhood.) Matt’s mom suffered life-threatening complications while pregnant with his younger sister but opted not to have an abortion and was partially paralyzed as a result. Matt Gaetz has said her decision influenced his anti-abortion positions.
But if anyone is responsible for Gaetz’s rise to political fame, it’s his dad, whose deep pockets and even deeper connections in Florida politics are one reason Matt is known in his district as Baby Gaetz. “Matt would be an assistant manager at Walmart if it weren’t for his father,” says Steven Specht, a Democrat who ran against Gaetz for Congress in 2016.
Gaetz is a third-generation politician. His grandfather, Jerry Gaetz, was the mayor of a small town in North Dakota and a state legislator who died in 1964 at the state GOP convention after giving a speech endorsing Barry Goldwater for president. Matt’s father, Don Gaetz, has been a prominent figure in Panhandle politics since first winning election to the Okaloosa County school board in 1994.
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