With friends like Maxwell Frost, Val Demings needs no enemies

Some law enforcement veterans who were colleagues of Rep. Val Demings emphasize that the former Orlando police chief "would never defund the police" in an ad that the Democratic congresswoman is using to boost her challenge against Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.

Unfortunately, one of the aspirants for the seat Demings is leaving seems to be intent on dragging her back into this black hole of the ultra-liberal policy disaster, where the notion churns up chaotic imagery in the minds of middle-class working families, who might then be easily converted to the GOP.

“People think that defunding the police or reimagining public safety means no public safety, and that’s not true,”said Defund the Police candidate Maxwell Alejandro Frost, apparently unaware of the toxic impact that rhetoric has on the Democratic standard-bearer in the state.

“It means the best public safety for everyone [and] the best security for everyone,” said Frost, who probably believes Santa rewards good boys with presents but has a weak grasp on Republican manipulation of issues.

"It would be swell if Frost bandied about the idea with his classmates but with the backing of a cryptocurrency billionaire and a campaign funded by outside money that raised an amount greater than the combined total of all other nine contenders, the youngest candidate is able to step all over Demings attempts to put the concept behind her," said one source close to Demings. "However, it would be even better if he would simply shut up."

Even if Demings pivots to discuss how some law enforcement agencies’ steps toward reform, like banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants, are policies that should have been in place before Floyd’s death elevated them to the national discourse, she cannot win an argument with Rubio if the topic makes Democrats look weak on crime and dangerously out of touch with Americans who are more concerned about getting no answer when they dial 9-1-1 than they are about being shot in a traffic stop.

Frost surrounded himself with big-money PR and advertising firms that have deep connections to the Nancy Pelosi wing of the Democratic Party even though he claims to be progressive. They helped him craft an image as a radical reformer, which does not jibe with his multi-million campaign fund but sounds good in Facebook ads.

Such consultants may be more interested in keeping money flowing than scoring the kind of unlikely victory achieved in New York in 2018, since Frost lags in polling that suggests that the Aug. 23 Democratic Primary is a two-way race between state Sen. Randolph Bracy, who has some notable Republican support, and former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, who has represented Orlando in Congress three times.

Bracy and Grayson are waging campaigns that speak more to the concern of local residents, at least the adults, rather than the X-Box playing population, but Frost is dragging the debate for Demings back to a few isolated incidents that she would rather not have on top of voters' minds.

After one violent confrontation on June 3, 2020, Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolón—who Mayor Buddy Dyer appointed as Orlando's first Hispanic police chief in 2018—said tear gas was used on protesters at City Hall after rocks, bottles, and a brick were thrown at officers.

Rolón and Dyer said almost all the large, protests were peaceful after an unarmed, nonviolent black man, George Floyd, died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer although local officers responded with force once they were attacked by a few stray malcontents.

Twenty-eight people were arrested that night but despite the fact that Maxwell Alejandro Frost was not one of them, the candidate has fraudulently claimed he was "beat by police" in order to bolster his credibility among the twenty-somethings across the country that are sending him thousands of small donations.

Frost also made the incredulous claim that he was a 'gun violence survivor' even though he was not a 'gun violence victim' and he has reasserted that lie long after his mendacity was confronted. This —and his first strike negative mailer attacking Bracy and Grayson — prompted someone to create a website that highlights his proclivity for deception.