I'll Be Your Huckleberry
The Paul Truesdell Podcast and Blog September 23, 2026.
Tuesday at Stone Creek
On Tuesday, September 22, I sat in the Stone Creek Republican Club meeting with hundreds and hundreds of Republican residents, and a few non-residents, to hear our State Representative Ryan Chamberlin promote Amendment 3. It would significantly increase the homestead exemption and give tax relief to a lot of retirees. Ryan has worked diligently to abolish property taxes and now to increase the homestead exemption, and he should be respected for his efforts.
This piece is not about Amendment 3. It is about what was going on in the reunion center room before the meeting began.
Two candidates for school board arrived early and worked the crowd. They did the good old fashion shoe leather politicking; however, in my opinion, they spread false narratives to whoever would listen and some were gullible.
Now, I want to make it perfectly clear why I want nothing to do with these two people as candidates or as fake Republicans. And it has to do with media bias, which is a word we like to use about the other side. And yes, I am going to connect liberal media bias with two members of the Marion County Republican Executive Committee who are also candidates for the Marion County School Board.
You see, Republicans are quick to blame the liberal media for fake news. But when two of our own peddles it, suddenly it's perfectly fine. Well boys and girls, it is not. Somebody has to call out the extremes, on a regular basis, to keep things normal. To explain why, with facts and figures, not emotional baseless memes, and so, I have to go back a ways.
When We Ran Outside
Go back with me to the fifties and sixties, and on into the seventies. As kids, we were not overweight. We played outside from dawn to dusk and beyond. We ran. We did things, and we were outside playing football, baseball, basketball, tag, and running the neighborhood, not as hoodlums, but as kids, coming of age, learning, doing, and figuring out life, until somebody's mother called us in for supper.
That is not nostalgia talking. Those are the facts.
Now let’s talk about the Center for Disease Control. The CDC has been weighing and measuring Americans since the early sixties. In 1960 to 1962, about 13 percent of adults were obese. In the early seventies, about one child in twenty. Let me repeat that. Around ten percent of the adult population was obese and five percent of children. The CDC's most recent count, 2021 to 2023, found about four adults in ten, or forty percent, and about one child in five, twenty percent, are now obese.
As Robin would say: Holy cow Batman.
Ladies and gentlemen, when we grew up, we didn't have drug problems as kids, and we didn't have alcohol problems. And there was one more thing going on, and I want nobody to take this personally. There is a thing called fat shaming. I'm not talking about a kid who was a little bit overweight. I'm talking about the kids who were really, extremely, outrageously overweight. The ones who didn't exercise, who weren't out running with the rest of us or playing baseball, and when they were outside, they had a candy bar in their hand. They just didn't stop eating.
We engaged in fat shaming. I admit it. And right or wrong, that kept our nation healthy. And by God, we looked great. Just look at the millions of Polaroid photos, those black and why, grainy photos from back in the day. We looked great.
Four Steps Down
Then, as time went on, it was the media, the left-wing media, that pushed to normalize abnormal behavior. The oddballs. And you know exactly what I am talking about. That was step one. Normalization. Now say that word with me out loud. Normalization.
Step two was celebration. The abnormal, the oddball, the weirdo and the extreme opinion, the argumentative, disruptive employee who causes havoc at work, the drug dependent, and the overall extremist who loves to bash anyone and everyone who will not kowtow to them, well they got the spotlight. That's when the pendulum began to swing.
Step three came when those of us who are the overwhelming majority said, wait a minute, we're not putting up with that. We were vilified for saying it. Now say it out loud, normalization, celebration, vilification. Yes, vilification.
This now leads to step four, which is when it became dangerous for the overwhelming majority of normal Americans. Vilification was one thing but then came criminalization. Yes, we became criminals because we, the majority truly believed in America as great and full of opportunities. Why? Because too many people did not have the guts to stand up and call it the way it is. Criminalization. Yes, criminalization. Today, oh Dear God Almighty, make fun of the weirdo, the fellow who went to school and piled up degrees fifteen times over, piled higher and deeper, and can't get a job and doesn't know how to change a light bulb, and you are the one treated like a criminal. The light bulb, for the record, has not gotten any harder to change.
And so, Normalization. Celebration. Vilification. Criminalization. Four steps, and we took every one of them because not enough people stood up at the first one.
The New Era
Well, there's a new era. That new era began with Donald Trump. That's a fact.
In his first administration, as the 45th president, you had Republicans doing everything they could to defeat him. Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House are true RINOs – Republicans In Name Only. If you want to know why you have to be extremely firm with the people who interfere with progress, look no further than what Donald Trump went through, not only at the hands of the lamestream media and Democrats, but also with the Little Lord Fauntleroy’s within the Republican party.
Folks, we've made a lot of progress getting back to making America great again. Reversing the outflow of jobs, for one. And we have an election coming up that could reverse that progress, on a national and local level. And I am now going to focus on the local level. Get ready, I am taking the gloves off going forward.
The It's-My-Turn Candidate
Here is something that doesn't get said enough on our side. Extremes on both ends are extremes. The left has its abnormal candidates, and we have ours. Yes, we have our abnormal candidates. Locally, a lot of them are far-right, negative, mud-throwing candidates. Mudslingers themselves and leading their minions on social media with endless lies and mudslinging. True pigs at heart. And they are gunslingers too.
You see, you have the: it's-my-turn candidate. Let me repeat that, the: it’s-my-turn candidate. We have one in Marion County. She waddles around babbling, and I truly mean babbling by losing her train of thought and complaining that there’s a cabal following her and filming her, and we have it on film, and she says: I'm the head of the Republican Party, therefore it's my turn to run. Are you kidding me? Again, never forget Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, and Jeb Bush, the poster boys for “it’s my turn.”
Look what happened when we nominated it's-my-turn people for president. Bob Dole in 1996. Mitt Romney in 2012. Losers, both of them, and the country got four more years of the other side each time. Then Donald Trump, who waited for nobody's permission, beat them all and became the 45th president of the United States.
Here is how the: it's-my-turn candidate works. First, because it's his turn, you should not oppose him or her. She shuts out the opposition. In a recorded Marion County Republican Executive Committee Meeting, she, the chairwoman of the Marion County Republican Executive Committee can be heard telling the vice chair to shut up and sit down. Yes, boys and girls, disagree with the hen and she’ll shout you down. Then begins realization that she and her argumentative sidekick are not going to win. And they don’t just go negative, the absolute lying begins.
What Was Said in the Room
Which brings me back to Tuesday in Stone Creek, and for that matter, at many of the Republican Club meetings across Marion County. After those two candidates made their rounds, friends and clients came back to me with what they heard. They didn't name me by name, but as it was said: we all knew who they were talking about. And it was negative. All of it. You see, these two have been known to say that they are the real Republicans, despite both have libertarian roots. Remember that and it all makes sense.
Here’s their political sales pitch. And this is the whole thing. They want you to believe that every dollar spent on the school system is a waste. As if it's all fraud. As if every member of the school board, with the exception of one, is stealing. And if anyone has a connection to private industry, are members of the local chamber of commerce, or by God Almighty, joined the Chamber and Economic Development Council, that is, by itself, proof of big business collusion. I am not joking. These two despise the business community and they are strutting around as Republicans. Neither has a spit of private sector business or school experience, and yet they have the gall to run for the School Board? Well, that’s hutzpah, I’ll give them that.
These two unqualified candidates remind me of Elizabeth Holmes, who is now in prison for fraud. You might remember a company called Theranos, the one Holmes founded by pretending to be the female version of Steve Jobs and claimed she could run hundreds of blood tests based on a single drop of blood. Oh she got away with it for a long time, and it was solely based on hutzpah and a star-studded board of rubber stamp directors. In the end, enough was enough and off to jail she went, but only after damaging the lives of countless patients.
Now let’s go back to our School Board race and look at what that claims the tea drinker and waterboy are making. It's the same as saying every member of your city council and every member of your county commission is a cabal, and they are all stealing money at the direction of your chamber of commerce. Not one bad apple. Not a few. Everybody but one. If that were true, you'd be reading about indictments, not hearing it whispered at a club meeting. And then, they claim proof by way of donations. It goes like this. “Oh, this guy and gal gave money to my opponent and not me. That guy and gal belong to the chamber of commerce and economic development council, so that’s proof that the fix is in. Businesses in this county are bad. Vote for me.” Well, like the old tuna commercial would say: Sorry Charlie. You see, the tea drinker and waterboy are not getting substantial donations because those of us who know them, want nothing to do with them and their kind.
That doom and gloom political pablum of oversimplification and intellectual weakness plays to the dumbest among us. The people who gravitate toward memes, the ugly, and nasty in campaigns will connect with the tea drinker and waterboy. The people who will say make America great again but don't know what it takes might buy into their lies. And here’s another thing, there are weak sisters among us who, when making America great again requires some pain for the gain, will fold like a cheap umbrella. And then, when they realize what has to be done, and who they put in office, will cry a river and want a do over. Well, on November 3rd, there’s no do over. That’s a Democrat thing, not a Republican thing.
And I Want to Be Fair Here
Three things, before somebody else says them.
First, I heard what those candidates said both firsthand years ago and secondhand yesterday. I wasn't standing next to them, I didn’t need to. Friends and clients told me, and I trust my friends and clients. I also have what they heard in writing and am ready for the record.
Second, the good old days had their own troubles. The kids on our street may have been clean, but the country was not. By the count of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Americans drank more alcohol per person in 1981 than in any year since Prohibition. I bring this up because the Chairwoman of the Marion County Republican Executive Committee is on record, recorded with film that I have, standing before the Ocala City Council, saying she’s has a twenty-year opioid dependency and needs her kratom laced tea drink to get through the day and take the edge off. Not exactly a student body role model in my opinion, or that of the overwhelming majority of the voters.
Third, and this is the big one. Somebody will say: Paul, you're complaining about negative candidates, and now you're announcing a shaming campaign of your own. Fair question. Here is the difference. They say everybody is stealing and hand you nothing. I'll tell you what someone did, give you the number, and name the source. A lie doesn't get shamed out of existence by a louder lie. It gets shamed by a fact. And those who know me, know I dot the i and cross the t. I go deep and connect the dots. And this is just the start of that process from now until the day of the election. You see, some things in life, like education, cannot be left to those who are know-nothings.
Can't Hide His Stripes
Bat Out of Hell came out in 1977 and became one of the best-selling albums ever made. Within about a year, Meat Loaf was wrecked. Cocaine, the bottle and a tour that never let up took his voice, and his own songwriter, Jim Steinman, said he sounded like the little girl in The Exorcist. He had a breakdown that ended with him on the ledge of a high-rise in New York. By 1983 he was bankrupt and buried in lawsuits. Then he climbed back. He was a preacher's grandson, raised in the Church of Christ, and years later he said he prayed every night and thanked God for his blessings. He put the road and the drugs behind him, and in 1993 Bat Out of Hell II went to number one, sixteen years after the first one. Hollywood would have turned that script down as too much. But a zebra can't hide his stripes. The same wild streak that built the career was still there at the end. And so I ask you, can a zebra hide it’s stripes and can obnoxious libertarians who got into the Republican Party, keep pulling the wool over the eyes of a small percentage of the uninformed and gullible? Yes, and that small minority is not the majority.
Facts and Figures
There are normal people who run for office, on the left and the right, who respectfully disagree on the issues and want to talk facts and figures. I respect those people. I may disagree with you, but a respectful conversation is everything to me. But when the left or the right puts up the abnormal ones, the ones like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and AOC, who vilify everybody else and are outright liars, I want nothing to do with them. And we as Republicans must admit that we have a few of those of our own, and two are running for the Marion County School Board.
If you follow me, you know how I work. I give you facts and figures. I give you the details. I go deep. I write and explain things in ways a lot of people can't. And yes, I do long-form writing, videos and audio, because they have to be done.
The Idiocracy is believing that if you call everybody a thief loud enough, you've made America and Marion County Florida, great again.
So, going forward, it is going to be time to unleash the shaming of some candidates. With facts and figures. That day is coming.
My friends, go back to that room on Tuesday. Hundreds of people came out on an afternoon to learn how a property tax amendment works. That is not a crowd that needs memes. That is a crowd that can handle the numbers and deserves to get them. That room was filled with Stone Creek retirees who live in a deed restricted community for a reason. They don’t want extreme lifestyles in their neighborhood. The overwhelming majority like to get along rather than fight and call names. These are men and women who accomplished much in life and understand that the 12-year-old today, may be their nurse in ten years. And they don’t want a nurse with a drug problem or an administrator who stirs trouble at work by participating in destructive team building.
I am Paul Grant Truesdell, founder of The Truesdell Companies, and I am voting for Sarah James and Mike Mills for School Board, and I ask you to do the same. Let me repeat that. I am voting for Sarah James and Mike Mills for School Board, and I ask you to do the same.
And when it comes to Tea Drinker Smith and Argumentative Barber, it’s a hard: Hell No.
And to the mudslingers and the it's -my-turn crowd, as Doc Holliday said in the movie Tombstone: I'll be your Huckleberry.