No Confidence in April Culbreath

Editorial by Guest Writer

Since last November, we’ve been warning that the new 2024 Republican Primary candidates will come out waving flags, carrying Bibles, and talking about their service in the military or law enforcement as a way to make YOU believe they are MAGA.

We told you these “costumed conservatives” would tell you anything you want to hear, mainly agreeing with everything you say, to make you believe they are “one of us.” As proof, some readers submitted pictures of candidates from around the state dressed like cowboys, even though the only horse these people have ever ridden was the one outside KMart that needed a quarter to giddy up and go. YEE HAW!

Thanks for sending! We had a good laugh!

Now that we are in the swing of election season, we wanted to show you what this costumed character looks like. April Culbreath, Manatee County GOP Chair running for County Commissioner, personifies this trickery.

We’re sharing this so YOU can pass it on to those who are less informed. Let’s help voters get past the patriotic packaging and beyond the rehearsed rhetoric and start judging candidates by what they actually do.

APRIL CULBREATH

She’s a former sheriff’s deputy. She organized Trump Train Manatee. She claims to be a Christian … she even signs her MCREC emails “In His Service.”

CHECK! CHECK! CHECK! Right??

And yet …

• as a Deputy, she has a disciplinary report 12 pages long that reveals abuses of the badge, mostly sex on the job and lots and lots of bullying

• as a Christian, besides the multiple things listed in her disciplinary report, Culbreath is being taken to court for her involvement in the damaged personal property of an MCREC member, plus she recently had charges filed for her mismanagement of MCREC funds (two Board members resigned because of her behavior)

So, being a Deputy doesn’t equate to honor, and being a Christian doesn’t equate to integrity … and what about that “Trump Train” connection?

Despite holding the position of Chair of the Republican Party in Manatee, Culbreath never organized any effort to get Committee Members to strategize, plan or coordinate a Get Out the Vote campaign or to engage in any way in the upcoming March 19th Republican Presidential Preference Primary of which Donald J. Trump is a candidate. (Was that intentional?)

Not only did she ignore the Presidential Primary, Culbreath scheduled the first meeting of the MCREC for MARCH 26. That’s THREE MONTHS into the 2024 Presidential Election Year and AFTER the Presidential Primary was already OVER.

Don’t you usually show up for things that are important to you?

We are facing off with the Democrat Party hellbent on destroying America, but Culbreath tried to go almost the entire first quarter of an election years without even gathering Republicans together to plan?? (Meanwhile, the Manatee County REC had TWO vacant Board seats!)

Why did Culbreath want to be the Chair of the Manatee Republican Party if she had no intention of ever fulfilling the responsibilities of the Chair?

Speaking of responsibilities …

• Culbreath didn’t raise a single cent for the Manatee GOP in 2023 to prepare for the 2024 Presidential election. She still hasn’t raised any money for the MCREC, maybe because she’s too busy fundraising for her own campaign.

• Culbreath scheduled no fundraisers in 2023. No Reagan BBQ. No Lincoln Day Dinner. The tens of thousands of dollars raised through these events could have helped pay for campaign signs, office staff for the campaign office and Republican ads to be run against DEMOCRATS LIKE JOE BIDEN.

• Not only that … but Culbreath did not send the name of one single Republican volunteer to the SOE office from the list of members who signed up to be poll watchers during early voting for the Presidential Primary.

At this point you may be asking if April Culbreath is a secret Democrat . . . or a leftist plant on the down-low.

The truth is that she is neither of those things.

Culbreath is an opportunist—a grifter. She made it clear that she’s campaigning on the back of President Trump after abandoning him for the March 19th Primary.

This is the type of behavior you have to look for when you are evaluating candidates!

It appears Culbreath’s end game is something other than saving the country or helping Trump. She seems to be itching for gainful employment, which we concede will be difficult, because any traditional employer would take a look at her Manatee County Sheriff’s disciplinary report and back away like she’s radioactive.

So Culbreath has to go the political route. In Manatee County, that’s done via “Anthony Pedicini and the Developers,” which means candidates fool the electorate by talking about being a Christian, loving Trump, and being a patriot.

Culbreath may have liked President Trump at some point, but over the last four years, her political ambition has revealed she is beholden to only one person . . . herself . . . county and country be damned. Sounds a lot like politicians at every level of government . . . and it’s why we need to be astute and honest as we evaluate candidates. These small-time, home-grown candidates become part of the local Swamp that eventually drains into DC.

But the tide is turning. In Manatee County, April’s handlers keep her from public events so they’re able to fool some of the masses. But members of the Manatee County GOP aren’t buying her bulls**t anymore.

The Manatee GOP’s Committee Members woke up to Culbreath’s DO NOTHING AGENDA, and the membership responded by scheduling a Special Meeting in January.

The meeting was successful, with members voting in a new Secretary and Treasurer and implementing some fiscal controls so they could get to work winning elections. It was magnificent.

In response, Ms. Culbreath claimed far and wide the meeting was invalid and demanded a NEW election, HER election, which she scheduled for Monday, February 26. This is humorous to everyone watching, since there are dozens of email from Culbreath wailing about the trouble in the Republican Party that would all end if we would just have “unity.” But when the floor is united, Culbreath sabotages the momentum, showing she doesn’t want unity after all. She wants submission. (A perfect example of watching what she does and not what she says.)

The February meeting was no exeption. Before the meeting even began, Culbreath was adversarial—respect and unity be damned!

Culbreath demanded members reject their own duly called meeting in January and their duly elected Board Members. When those Board Members took their place at the front of the room, Culbreath declared she would not start the meeting until they left their place at the table and took their seats with “the others.”

Committee members ignored Culbreath’s preposterous and unfounded demands to submit. As with most bullies, the standoff was short lived. Culbreath capitulated, picked up her proverbial ball, and went home, taking her rag-tag team of 7 with her.

The mood of the room lifted as soon as she left, and the Vice Chair was able to call the meeting to order with the support of an organic, united, groundswell of ‘We the People.’

Eddie Speir, Candidate for Congress, D16, captures the evening beautifully. We share his report below in the hopes that you’ll be encouraged.

We are going to see a lot more of these propped-up patriots as we head into June. Don’t fall for their theater.

Candidates may have devoted a lifetime to law enforcement. They may have “Christian” credentials. They may wear a Trump shirt and talk about MAGA. It all looks good, but we must look beyond the packaging to what they do.

If they’re claiming to support “We the People” as they censor the voice and the will of the people, they are not one of us.

Which brings us back to Manatee County, emotional blackmail, and the honest account of Eddie Speir.

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Manatee County REC: We The People

Healing Begins from the Emotional Blackmail

Emotional blackmail is a dysfunctional form of manipulation that people use to place demands and threaten victims to get what they want.

The undertone of emotional blackmail is if you don’t do what I want when I want it, you will suffer.

She describes how emotional blackmail tactics are used by abusers to threaten in order to get what they want. In placing demands and threats, they create feelings of fear, guilt, and anger to solicit compliance from their victims. In doing so, they divert blame and responsibility to the victim for their own negative actions. –Karen Doll, Psy.D., L.P. in Positive Psychology

Monday’s Manatee County Republican Executive Committee MCREC meeting was a powerful organic galvanization of We the People.  For those who aren’t familiar with Robert’s Rules of Order, the Chair has some basic responsibilities.  First, she needs to be impartial during debates, and she needs to recognize members to give them the floor to speak. This meeting started much like the December meeting, with the Chair, April Culbreath, taking the microphone, chiding the crowd, and lecturing on how the meeting would go.  From there, Garin Hoover stood up, raised his hand, and asked to be recognized. The Chair, April Culbreath, very conspicuously and incorrectly ignored him.  He persisted in requesting to be recognized.  And she persisted in ignoring him.  Remarkably, no one else spoke or made any other comments.

April said she would not respond to “those kinds” of comments or people.  At this point, Garin criticized April’s performance as chair, which had brought about so much disunity and dysfunction. Then, the crowd erupted in approval of Garin’s comments.  At this point, April began to pack her things.  Kevin Van Ostenbridge then walked up to April and looked like he gave her counsel, and she walked around, gathered some things, and left with County Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge, candidate Keith Green, and Steve Vernon.  It was the Anthony Pedicini gang.  There may have been a few others as well.

But the vast majority stayed. Somebody that April had asked to lead the prayer in December got up to lead the group in prayer as is customary at our meetings.  But instead of praying, she continued to lecture on how disrespectful and improper the members were. She even said that God is ashamed of them/us.  I heard a comment from the crowd, “So if we disagree with you, then God is ashamed of us?!?!?” It was a poignant moment of clarity for many of us.

Shortly after this comment, the crowd spontaneously prayed the Lord’s Prayer.  It was a loud, defiant, and powerful statement that we can pray ourselves and don’t need the condescending lecture from a presumed moral superior. After the prayer, and without being directed, the group gave the pledge of allegiance, and then we all sang the national anthem with a renewed sense of patriotism and unity.

After a few minutes of trying to ascertain what had happened, did April quit, or did she walk out of the meeting, the group, led by our newly elected secretary, Sandra Freese, and Treasurer, Jacqueline Heisse, looked to Nathan Knight as the vice chair to call the meeting to order. He did, and together, the REC modified the agenda and went through the meeting. There were plenty of disagreements, but everybody’s voice was heard.  Vigorous debate on various issues took place in an orderly and respectful fashion. Difficult decisions were made as a group.  One of those decisions was a vote of no-confidence in Chair April Culbreath. This vote was unanimous, from what I could tell.  Continuing the success of January’s special meeting, we finished all the items on the agenda and ended early. Everybody I could see left the meeting satisfied that business was taken care of professionally and productively, just like the special meeting that took place in January without the Chair.

One event that happened during the meeting would be easy to overlook, but I believe its implications are powerful and far-reaching.  A member felt the need to apologize to an old friend and everybody in general because she didn’t believe what other members had warned about April and the division she, and that small group, had caused. She was quickly forgiven and appreciated by the individual and the group as a whole.  The courage it took to speak those words in such a public setting was remarkable.  Most people walk away after having been burned.  This person didn’t.  She persisted and now leads by her example and gives others a path back to unity and healing. This is another first step in the healing process.

But what are we even healing from?  We are healing from the divisive effects of Emotional Blackmail.  It is a manipulative attitude that states, “If you disagree with us, then God is ashamed of you.”  “If you don’t like what we are doing, then you are causing disruption.” And “If you don’t agree with me, then you are helping the democrats, and all of the problems in the country are because you can’t get along with us.”

Healing is happening around the shared values that we, as Americans, all hold dear.  It was this healing that I had referred to in my campaign kickoff meeting back in October.

Watch Video Here

American values of the love of freedom and a defiance of tyranny.  Tyranny in all different shapes and sizes, from political manipulations, lawfare through rules, and intimidation and emotional blackmail.  The current chair has lost the consent of the governed, and her small group has been desperately seeking some legal loophole to discredit the majority.  The 90+ members wanted to have their voices heard and to participate in the political process.  They held firm to ensure that the voice of, We the People, was not silenced.

To find out other ways you can join the campaign or to join us for my first-ever Zoom Townhall Meeting on 3/5 at 6:30pm please visit:

Eddie Speir For Congress