It may be time for someone to do a wellness check on St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson.
That was my reaction after reading a six-page manifesto that was mailed to some St. Lucie County residents with the sheriff's signature a few days ago. The letter was marked as paid for by Pearson's campaign, and its talking points are consistent with a Facebook video Pearson recently posted.
While Pearson may have thought he was making a strong and coherent argument for why voters should select him in the Aug. 20 Republican primary, the letter sends the opposite message.
He comes across as paranoid and delusional, unwilling to acknowledge the criticisms leveled against him over the past several months are justified and the direct result of actions he has taken.
Rather than own up to his shortcomings, Pearson presents himself as being attacked by some vast conspiracy (where have we heard that language before?) that's determined to keep his awesomeness from shining through at any cost.
Swamp fever may be taking hold, all right
Of course, he's given a name to this sinister group of evildoers: The "St. Lucie Swamp." In his letter, Pearson claims to be under attack from "a host of monsters," including "fake Republicans" who have allied with a "liberal Fake Newspaper" (the capitalization is his) to stop "the first conservative sheriff St. Lucie County has had in decades."
The letter also takes aim at U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe (whose first name he misspells), a "Joe Biden appointee," and State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl, a "career bureaucrat" and a "fake, soft on crime, Republican."
In addition to his creative uses of capitalization and punctuation, some passages in the letter are underlined or highlighted for emphasis.
(As a side note, proofreading seems to be a recurring problem with his campaign. Some of his public campaign signs misspell the word "governor" and a limited run of Pearson bumper stickers made the unfortunate promise to send criminals a "massage.")
Massaging his message
The overall tone is like that movie scene where the Wizard of Oz bellows "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" after being unmasked as a fraud by Dorothy's dog, Toto.
"Everything these swamp monsters and fake Republicans are doing are lies," Pearson wrote. "They are literally making things up and they have their fake news media lap dogs go along."
'Care' about criminals? Who does that?
What lies has anyone told about him? That part he doesn't say.
And speaking as only one media "lap dog," I had only met Richard Del Toro, considered Pearson's main primary opponent, once for about 30 seconds before the recommendation interview TCPalm's Editorial Board held for the sheriff's candidates Tuesday evening.
It should be noted that, despite all the bravado Pearson suggests he's shown in facing the so-called "swamp monsters," he skipped that interview rather than take the opportunity to confront the "fake Liberal Newspaper" and his opponents to set his record straight. (He also didn't respond to multiple emailed requests for comment about the letter, but that's nothing unusual.)
According to Pearson, Lapointe is soft on crime and supportive of the "Black Lives Matter ideology." Why? Because, as TCPalm reported, Lapointe criticized Pearson for publishing unauthorized videos of arrested suspects on social media, including one which, in the prosecutor's words, "comes across as if the sheriff is posing with an antelope that he just shot on a safari."
"He asked me to care about the criminals we arrest," Pearson wrote in his letter. No, we wouldn't want to treat people as innocent until proven guilty. No sir. Not in St. Lucie County.
I wonder how Pearson would feel if the Florida Department of Law Enforcement were investigating one of his family members and decided to post an arrest photo as a hunting trophy.
For that matter, given Gov. Ron DeSantis recently confirmed Pearson is again under investigation by the FDLE, Pearson himself could end up starring in a different role on social media if other law enforcement officers didn't show the type of restraint he lacks.
About that 'governor's choice' stuff ...
Speaking of DeSantis, Pearson refers to himself a couple of times in the letter as the governor's choice for the position. DeSantis did name him as an interim appointee last December following the abrupt resignation of former Sheriff Ken Mascara, but the governor hasn't announced any endorsements in the upcoming election.
In his letter, Pearson somehow failed to mention DeSantis picked him days after Anthony "Tony" DiFrancesco, one of the sheriff's political allies, hosted a fundraiser for the governor's then-active presidential campaign, then DiFrancesco and other family members donated more than $100,000 to DeSantis and supportive political action committees.
Records provided by the governor's office show DeSantis' staff began vetting Pearson as a potential interim appointee for the sheriff's job almost immediately after the campaign contributions were made.
I guess when you're only writing six pages, some pertinent facts must be edited out.
Pearson's letter also admonished Bakkedahl to "stay in his lane." That's no doubt a reference to the guest column Bakkedahl published in our newspaper, in which the longtime Republican prosecutor criticized Pearson for running his office "like a frat house replete with gang signs, shameless self-promotion and the constant search for clickbait."
Bakkedahl rightly concluded Pearson's actions could undermine public confidence in law enforcement.
However, one of the most damaging distortions in Pearson's letter, in my view, is his claim the so-called "swamp monsters" have been discrediting the work of other law enforcement officers because of the criticism he's receiving.
Look inward for the source of your pain, sheriff
That's absolutely untrue. This isn't about the brave men and women who are in the streets every day and night, keeping the community safe. It's about Pearson, and the way he's single-handedly trying to undermine the excellent work they do.
Pearson's own deputies must understand this distinction, since the employee union that represents them endorsed Del Toro.
In reality, if people value the role law enforcement plays in a democratic society, it's their duty to hold accountable individuals, like Pearson, who abuse that public trust.
Pearson's letter also takes the "swamp monsters" to task because they ask "ridiculous questions about my past and bring up things that have long been investigated and dismissed."
It's hard to know what he means there. That could be a reference to the FDLE investigation that implicated Mascara and Pearson as having orchestrated a "ghost candidate" campaign to unseat one of Mascara's rivals in 2020.
No criminal charges were filed as a result of that investigation, but Mascara still faces possible sanctions by the Florida Commission on Ethics for his role in that 2020 campaign.
It could also be a reference to a 2018 traffic stop of suspected drug dealers. That case was dismissed amid questions about the credibility of testimony provided by Pearson and at least one of the other officers on the scene.
Pearson's letter also urged people to cancel their subscriptions to the newspaper and "start getting your news directly from the source." Relying solely on government controlled news sources sounds like a headfirst leap into totalitarianism to me.
In all seriousness, the letter seems like the words of a man who's under a tremendous amount of strain. That's unfortunate, but he brought this upon himself by accepting the sheriff's appointment and then trying to parley it into a full-time elected position based on some well-documented backroom political dealing.
Pearson is trying to blame everyone else around him for wounds that are almost entirely self-inflicted. My six-word rebuttal to his six-page letter?
It's not us, Keith. It's you.
This column reflects the opinion of Blake Fontenay. Contact him via email at bfontenay@gannett.com or at 772-232-5424.
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