The target of the right’s ‘revolution’ is pluralistic democracy itself. (WaPo)

Well, it was said that the ancient Chinese curse was, "may you live in interesting times."  From The Washington Post: 

The target of the right’s ‘revolution’ is pluralistic democracy itself

The president of the Heritage Foundation said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Analysis by Philip Bump

National columnist

July 3, 2024 at 11:51 a.m. EDT

A flag waving upside down in front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

The website for the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” — a right-wing policy and administrative wish list — manifests its worldview immediately. Its wish, the site says, is for “you the reader — Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith — to come to Washington or support those who can.”

That archaic differentiation between married and other women is obviously intentional, sending the message that Heritage and its allies seek to turn back the clock not just past “wokeness” but even past the movement to treat women as equal participants in American society. It is a microcosm of what the effort intends: restructuring the country so that the right — meaning primarily straight White men, as was the case 100 years ago — can decide how power and status are allocated.

Kevin Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation and has overseen the organization as it has shifted toward an explicit embrace of Donald Trump and his approach to government. In an interview with former Virginia congressman and college professor David Brat (R) on Tuesday, Roberts articulated his view of the moment.

“Let me speak about the radical left,” Roberts said. “You and I have both been parts of faculties and faculty senates and understand that the left has taken over our institutions.” He said the left was “apoplectic” because, now, “our side is winning.”

I “just want to encourage you with some substance,” Roberts added, “that we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

It is true that, particularly of late, his side has been winning. That is not a function of his side convincing a majority of Americans that its policies or worldview are preferable. Instead, it reflects the Supreme Court’s decisions reversing access to abortion, stripping power from federal agencies and, most immediately, granting broad impunity to presidents (which, Roberts told Brat, was something the right “ought to be really encouraged by”). The court that made those changes is one that arose largely despite popular will, not because of it. The immunity decision, for example, was opposed by most Americans and even most Republicans — at least until the question was framed as granting immunity to Trump.

Roberts describes the moment as a second “revolution,” one that he hopes will remain bloodless as long as, we can impute, the left doesn’t provide too much resistance. But against what is his side revolting?

There’s a hint in his comments leading up to that declaration of war: that the left has “taken over” institutions, including universities. We know what this means from recent context. He’s talking in part about how college students are more liberal than non-college students, a divide that predates Trump but expanded in the Trump era. He’s talking, too, about the perception on the right that college admission and employment are driven by considerations of race and identity that disadvantage Whites. He’s talking about how he and people like him feel others who are not like him are gaining power at their expense.

This is the heart of Trumpism, of course. The gap between college- and non-college-educated Americans began to widen during Barack Obama’s presidency, as populism became an increasingly potent part of Republican politics. The ostensible trigger was taxation, but that was a framing driven heavily by the traditional elements of the GOP, which saw cutting taxes as a central policy goal. Rank-and-file members of the tea party movement often put it differently: They objected to where their tax dollars were going. To people on public assistance — meaning, in their estimation, non-White people who live in cities. To foreign governments. To immigrants.

Trump was a beneficiary of this worldview mostly because he shared it and was willing to amplify it. Make America great again, because it’s not great now, what with Black people protesting the police, Pride flags flying and immigrants seeking new lives in America. Revert America to its previous greatness so that you don’t have to hear Spanish at the supermarket or be aware that someone is dressed in drag. Muffle and sideline those New York and Los Angeles elites who, in the estimation of many Republicans, are actively discriminating against White people and Christians.

This fear of a declining America because of an ascendant left is pervasive on the right. Justice Samuel Alito has spoken of it publicly, as did former attorney general William P. Barr. (Trump does constantly, of course.) The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is centered on securing power for the right primarily as a response to that fear. The Supreme Court’s immunity decision is rooted in the idea that what broke wasn’t Trump’s response to his 2020 election loss but the Biden administration’s effort to hold him to account through the investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith.

That decision was written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who also wrote the 2013 decision asserting that the era during which Blacks were systematically excluded from access to voting had ended. It was an early benchmark in the right’s effort to claw back power for traditional American values, meaning for traditional Americans, meaning for White Americans.

So much of this is about demography and power. America’s demography is shifting, albeit not in the way that most people think. When the baby boom was young, there was a large White majority and a small Black minority. Now, about half of younger Americans are Black, Asian, Hispanic or mixed race, and the density of immigrants in the population is about what it was a century ago. They are more likely to take advantage of shifts in the acceptability of LGBTQ+ identity.

This shift means more voices challenging how American systems tacitly or explicitly advantage White people and straight people and men, and that means more of a reaction. Race and gender are easy scapegoats for problems from job losses to denied college applications to (to use a more extreme example) plane crashes. The people advocating for change are young, meaning more likely to be non-White and meaning more likely to be in college. It overlaps.

Trump promises to stand in their way. So does Heritage’s Roberts; his revolution will reshape government to muffle popular will, sure, but it also recognizes the centrality of social issues, like the use of “Ms.” instead of “Mrs.”

America has for decades been shifting toward a government in which power is distributed broadly and irrespective of identity. On the right, this is a problem; getting more people to vote, for example, is positioned as “rigging” elections since those more people are presumed to be Democrats. So we have Roberts, Trump and their revolution.

This time, though, the aim isn’t a new nation born of equality and the law. It is instead to largely reverse the trajectory of the first American Revolution, centralizing power in one leader who happens to look a lot like them.

Election 2024

Get the latest news on the 2024 election from our reporters on the campaign trail and in Washington.

The first presidential debate: President Biden and Donald Trump faced off in the first presidential debate of 2024. Here are takeaways and fact checks from the debate.

Key dates and events: Voters in all states and U.S. territories have been choosing their party’s nominee for president ahead of the summer conventions. Here are key dates and events on the 2024 election calendar.

Abortion and the election: Voters in about a dozen states could decide the fate of abortion rights with constitutional amendments on the ballot in a pivotal election year. Biden supports legal access to abortion, and he has encouraged Congress to pass a law that would codify abortion rights nationwide. After months of mixed signals about his position, Trump said the issue should be left to states. Here’s how Biden’s and Trump’s abortion stances have shifted over the years.

Show more

By Philip Bump

Philip Bump is a Post columnist based in New York. He writes the newsletter How To Read This Chart and is the author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America. Twitter

Court orders white nationalists to pay $2M more for Charlottesville Unite the Right violence. (Denise Lavoie, AP)

From the Associated Press: 

Court orders white nationalists to pay $2M more for Charlottesville Unite the Right violence. (AP)

FILE - White nationalist demonstrators walk into the entrance of Lee Park surrounded by counter demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. A jury Monday, July 1, 2024, awarded ordered white nationalist leaders and organizations to pay a total of more than $26 million in damages to people who had suffered physical or emotional injuries during the event. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

BY  DENISE LAVOIE

Updated 9:37 PM EDT, July 1, 2024

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Four years after violence erupted during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, a jury ordered white nationalist leaders and organizations to pay a total of more than $26 million in damages to people with physical or emotional injuries from the event.

Most of that money — $24 million — was for punitive damages, but a judge later slashed that amount to $350,000 — to be shared by eight plaintiffs. On Monday, a federal appeals court restored more than $2 million in punitive damages, finding that each of the plaintiffs should receive $350,000, instead of the $43,750 each would have received under the lower court’s ruling.

A three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the jury’s award of $2 million in compensatory damages, but found that a state law that imposes the $350,000 cap on punitive damages should be applied per person instead of for all eight plaintiffs, as a lower court judge ruled.

The ruling stems from a federal lawsuit against two dozen white nationalists and organizations that participated in two days of demonstrations in Charlottesville to protest the city’s plan to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. 

On the second day, after the “Unite the Right” rally had been declared an unlawful assembly, James Alex Fields Jr., a white supremacist from Maumee, Ohio, intentionally drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring dozens more. Fields, who was one of the defendants in the civil case, is now serving a life sentence for murder and hate crimes.

The 4th Circuit panel rejected a request from the defendants that the court ask the Supreme Court of Virginia to rule on the question of whether each plaintiff can receive $350,000 in punitive damages, saying in its ruling that it found the state law’s language and history “clear enough to predict how Virginia’s high court would rule.”

“Over two years ago, the jury used its $24 million punitive damages award to send an unmistakable message to the defendants and to the public about the outrageous misconduct that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia. While the law compels us to reduce the award, it’s long past time for that message to be delivered,” Chief Judge Albert Diaz wrote in the 3-0 ruling.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they were pleased by the court’s ruling.

“Today’s decision restores over $2 million in punitive damages from the jury’s verdict, which sent a clear message against racist and antisemitic hate and violence,” attorneys Roberta Kaplan, David E. Mills and Gabrielle E. Tenzer said in a statement.

Lawyers for the defendants did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

The verdict from the 2021 trial was a rebuke to the white nationalist movement, particularly for the two dozen individuals and organizations accused in a federal lawsuit of orchestrating violence against African Americans, Jewish people and others in a meticulously planned conspiracy.

Listen to 7/3/2024 Hamilton Nolan Interview with Anne Schindler on WJCT, First Coast Connect

Listen to NYC journalist and St. Augustine native Hamilton Nolan interview on labor unions by Anne Schinder on First Coast Connect, this morning at 9AM, 89.9 FM, wjct.org/listen.  As the Washington Post writes, " In his new book, “The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor,” journalist Hamilton Nolan seeks to explain what he calls “the dizzying potential of organized labor, as well as the heartbreaking flaws that hold it back.”  Hamilton Nolan organized Gawker journalists into a union local circa 2015, after a six week campaign. As the proud only offspring of my mom and dad, two volunteer labor union organizers, the late Mary Elizabeth Donlon Slavin and former 82nd ABN Divn. paratrooper CPL Ed Slavin, Sr., I am delighted that America's union support is at a 50-year high. Circa 1970, it took my mom some 50 minutes to get some 40 union cards signed for International Union of Electrical Workers Local Union 440 at Camden County College in Blackwood, N.J.  I helped my mom picket. We won.  Fun fact: Hamilton Nolan is the son of St. Augustine's esteemed civil rights historian David Nolan.

Elect Ed Slavin to Anastasia Mosquito Control Board of St. Johns County, Seat 1

May I have the honor of your vote on or before November 5, 2024 for Commissioner of the Anastasia Mosquito District of St. Johns County, Seat 1?

Here's my 2022 Q&A with the League of Women Voters, reprinted from this blog:

What motivated you to run for office?

It's our money. I've been a watchdog on mosquito control since 2006. Mosquitoes could bring us the next global pandemic. We will be prepared with data, research, education, and environmentally-friendly, non-toxic natural pesticides. My dad was an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper, infected with malaria in Sicily. Dad recovered in Army hospitals, but we saw dad suffer lifetime effects. LWV's Ms. Robin Nadeau asked me to help her investigate Anastasia Mosquito Control of St. Johns County, buying a $1.8 million no-bid, luxury Bell Jet Long Ranger helicopter incapable of killing a single skeeter, not unlike buying a Porsche to use with a snowplow. We persuaded AMCD to cancel illegal, no-bid helicopter contract, saving $1.8 million in 2007.  

What do you see as the most pressing issues for this office and how do you propose to address them?
Advancing research and education while protecting scientific integrity and employee whistleblower rights; safeguarding the independence of AMCD, an independent scientific and technical organization; protecting public health, the environment and public funds. Let's assure that "whistleblower" ethical employees are heard and heeded whenever they raise concerns. Let's resist any further effort by the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners to take over independent AMCD, as attempted by former SJC County Administrator Michael Wanchick and County Commission Chairmen. I oppose allowing arbitration clauses in AMCD contracts, Yes, I've been a watchdog of mosquito control environmental protection and spending since December 2006.

What training, experience, and characteristics qualify you for this position?
Helped persuade our independent mosquito district to cancel unwise, no-bid luxury $1.8 million helicopter contract. Won declassification of our frail planet's largest-ever mercury pollution event (Oak Ridge, Tenn. Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant),triggering nationwide cleanups; recommended for Pulitzer Prize by DA. Clerked for USDOL Chief Administrative Law Judge Nahum Litt and Judge Charles Rippey. Staffer for Senators Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart & Jim Sasser. B.S.F.S., Georgetown U.; J.D., Memphis State U. Your watchdog, termed an "environmental hero" by FOLIO WEEKLY (after reporting City's illegal dumping of landfill in lake and illegal sewage effluent pollution of our saltwater marsh). Shall we ask questions, demand answers & expect democracy?

How important are environmental concerns when making decisions for the Anastasia Mosquito Control District?
Very important

Explain your answer.
Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" informs good science and use of non-toxic natural pesticides as much as possible. Amid global climate change, the next pandemic could be a mosquito-borne disease. Let's protect AMCD independence, education and applied research to protect public health and our environment. I support AMCD's leadership on natural pesticides. I once reported FEMA and AMCD to federal environmental law officials when bald eagles were exposed to organophosphate pesticides. Support AMCD working with other mosquito control districts and officials to share scientific knowledge to protect all of us "non-target species": mosquito control workers, residents, tourists, pets, horses, livestock, bees and other pollinators, flora and fauna. 

St. Johns County is growing rapidly. How does this impact the management of mosquito control?
Overdevelopment increases the expense of mosquito control and increases exposure of families to mosquitoes from wetlands. St. Johns County Commissioners, developers and their big money clout decide way too many unwise development decisions. This requires our nimble small mosquito control special taxing district to innovate, with sensitive adaptation of mosquito control techniques to protect entire new neighborhoods, which seem to spring up overnight, adjoining wetlands. Public education, applied research, sound science-based policies and non-toxic mosquito control methods, are all essential to protecting public health from mosquito-borne diseases. AMCD exists to prevent any outbreaks of deadly mosquito-borne diseases. We must do it right!

ST. AUGUSTINE EX-MAYOR JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, JR. LAW LICENSE REVOKED (HCN, FLORIDA BAR)

Karma calling.  Mayor JOE BOLES was defeated by reformer Nancy Shaver, who won by 119 votes in a 2014 runoff election.  Ex-Mayor JOE BOLES dropped out of sight, refusing to shake Mayor Shaver's hand at her December 1, 2014 inauguration, presided over by Florida Supreme Court Justice Peggy Quince. In 2023, JOE BOLES' license was suspended for 90 days last year. By May 30, 2024 order, now in effect, BOLES's law license has now been revoked. Caught red-handed selling real estate to his own daughter from a dead lady's trust, for "less than fair market value." St. Augustine's cringe-worthy  ex-Mayor JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, JR. has surrendered his law license, accepting a "disciplinary suspension" as a result of the Florida Supreme Court granting his unopposed petition.  https://lsg.floridabar.org/dasset/DIVADM/ME/MPDisAct.nsf/DISACTVIEW/6A8B64A99BECC69D85258B2F000B1F3C/$FILE/_20.PDF  https://www.floridabar.org/public/acap/disc-docs/?icn=202430622&member=437522. A dogged devious developer doormat, BOLES was a St. Augustine Elder law lawyer, a former debt collection attorney, former PZB Chair and longtime Chair of the Council on Aging, where he marketed his "free (sic) wills," with strings. BOLES successfully asked the Florida Supreme Court to authorize disciplinary revocation of his law license for at least five years.  The Florida Supreme Court granted his motion. This avoids an open public hearing and ends the matter, unless he is criminally prosecuted.  Text of Florida Supreme Court order:

The uncontested petition for disciplinary revocation, as provided by Rule 3-7.12, Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, with leave to seek readmission after five years, is granted subject to the continuing jurisdiction of this Court. See Florida Bar v. Ross, 732 So. 2d 1037, 1040-42 (Fla. 1998). Disciplinary revocation is tantamount to disbarment. Florida Bar v. Hale, 762 So. 2d 515 (Fla. 2000). The disciplinary revocation shall be effective thirty days from the date of this order so that petitioner can close out his practice and protect the interests of existing clients. If petitioner notifies this Court in writing that he is no longer practicing and does not need the thirty days to protect existing clients, this Court will enter an order making the revocation effective
immediately. Petitioner shall fully comply with Rule Regulating The Florida Bar 3-5.1(h). Petitioner shall also fully comply with Rule Regulating The Florida Bar 3-6.1, if applicable. In addition, petitioner shall accept no new business from the date this order is filed until he is readmitted.

Judgment is entered for The Florida Bar, 651 East Jefferson Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2300, for recovery of costs from Joseph Lester Boles, Jr. in the amount of $1,315.00, for which sum let execution issue.

Not final until time expires to file motion for rehearing, and if filed, determined. The filing of a motion for rehearing shall not alter the effective date of this revocation. As with disbarment, in seeking

 

CASE NO.: SC2024-0586

Page Two

readmission to The Florida Bar, petitioner “may be admitted again only upon full compliance with the rules and regulations governing admission to the bar.” R. Regulating Fla. Bar 3-7.10(n).

MUÑIZ, C.J., and CANADY, LABARGA, COURIEL, GROSSHANS, FRANCIS, and SASSO, JJ., concur.

A True Copy Test:

SC2024-0586 5/30/2024

SC2024-0586 5/30/2024

AS Served:

CARRIE CONSTANCE LEE WARREN 

WILLIAM LINDSEY 

PATRICIA ANN TORO SAVITZ 

Photo credit: Greg Travous/ Hans Holbein the Younger;s Henry VIII portrait

From Historic City News:

Florida Supreme Court revokes Joe Boles’ law license

 Posted on 06/28/2024By Historic City News

Historic City News was informed this afternoon that the law license of former mayor Joe Boles has been revoked in a disciplinary action that has been expected for some time.  Boles, who was first admitted in 1984, practiced elder law, estate planning, wills, trusts and probate law with his stepson, William Masson, at 19 Riberia Street in Saint Augustine.

In April of last year, Historic City News reported that Joseph Lester Boles Jr was suspended for 90 days after an investigation by The Florida Bar revealed that in several instances, Boles engaged in a conflict of interest by appointing himself as surrogate beneficiary in probate matters without advising the beneficiaries to first seek independent counsel. In that case, Case Number SC22-1628, Boles failed to make the required disclosures before having the parties sign waivers of their rights and appointing himself as backup successor trustee or personal representative in violation of  Florida statutes.

In the current case, Case Number SC24-0586, Joseph Lester Boles Jr engaged in a course of conduct in which he would provide a Last Will and Testament “for FREE” to persons over the age of 65.  The new investigation revealed that Boles drafted the documents, naming himself as the personal representative or successor trustee.  This allowed Boles to potentially receive fees as part of the estate or trust.  Boles failed to follow the instructions of several testamentary documents while he served as the trustee.  In one example, Boles sold a decedent’s home to his own daughter — allegedly for lower than fair market value.

As a consequence, Boles has received disciplinary revocation of his license, which is tantamount to disbarment.  Disbarred lawyers may not re-apply for admission to The Florida Bar for five years and they must undergo a rigorous process to regain their law license – if it is regained at all.  Such lawyers are required to pass a detailed, updated background check and to retake The Florida Bar examination.

---

The Florida Bar is the state’s guardian for the integrity of the legal profession.  The Florida  Supreme Court, The Florida Bar and its Division of Lawyer Regulation, are charged with administering a statewide disciplinary system to enforce  Supreme Court rules of professional conduct for the more than 112,000 members of The Florida Bar.

THE FOREVER KING:
THE BLOGGER, THE LEASE AND THE ST. AUGUSTINE MAYOR'S RACE
An activist is raising hell about a lease agreement he says enriched the mayor at the public’s expense
By Susan Cooper Eastman
Folio Weekly
Posted 8/20/14

“I think people have a right to know how much they are making on the deal. I think the city has a duty to protect the taxpayers and the city, and we are being bamboozled by Boles and Weeks.””
“If I were the mayor, I would have sold out my interest once I became mayor.””



When a storm blows across Florida, it happens suddenly and violently. Dark clouds gather in the sky. The rain pours down in blinding sheets. Claps of thunder sound like cannon fire. It feels like the end of the world. When St. Augustine’s Ed Slavin takes on a fight, he comes on like a Florida thunderstorm. The only difference is that Florida thunderstorms start brutally and end quickly, while Slavin’s torrents seem unceasing.

The bespectacled St. Augustine blogger and activist dresses nattily in oxford shirts and khakis with a mad professor mind-of-its-own shock of gray-and-black hair hurtling about his head. Slavin possesses a brilliant mind, a finely calibrated sense of outrage, and the mental acumen to both thoroughly investigate and mightily agitate. His partner referred to him as “the pest that never rests” in a letter recommending Slavin for the University of Florida’s law school.

Slavin received his B.S. degree from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He interned in the Washington, D.C., office of Ted Kennedy and at the U.S. Department of Labor. As the editor of the Appalachian Observer, he uncovered a massive cover-up by Union Carbide involving mercury poisoning in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He earned his law degree at Memphis State University and represented whistleblowers in landmark cases in Oak Ridge and Washington, D.C. He was disbarred in Tennessee in what he regards as retaliation, although he admits to calling an opposing lawyer a “redneck peckerwood,” and his disbarment involved charges that he harassed judges.

Neither that disbarment nor his relocation to St. Augustine in 2000 curbed Slavin’s crusading nature. He still slings arrows, does copious research, gathers records, wages public harangues, and knows how to layer hyperbole with exacting case law.

And he Just. Doesn’t. Stop.

Slavin’s current targets include St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections Vicky Oakes, for failing to provide early voting sites close to St. Augustine’s historic downtown; public officials whose publicly financed trips to promote St. Augustine’s 450th anniversary celebration in 2015 he thinks are a waste (his criticism led to cancellation of a $25,000 trip for commissioners in 2010); the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, for planning to demolish a 1926 Mediterranean revival building and put up a parking lot; the city’s dumping of solid waste and raw sewage in Lincolnville, the historic black neighborhood that encompasses much of The Ancient City’s southwestern peninsula; and the arrests and outlawing of street artists and musicians in the city’s historic district, as well as the continued employment and SWAT team promotion of a St. Johns County Sheriff’s deputy who was the subject of a blistering New York Times/Frontline investigation questioning whether he murdered his girlfriend (the official story is that she killed herself).

But most of all, the focus of Slavin’s ire of late has been St. Augustine Mayor Joseph L. Boles, who is seeking reelection this year. In Boles, Slavin sees remnants of the advantages that come with being part of the white hometown elite — vestiges of the good-ol’-boys network from which the city needs to untether.

Case in point: Slavin has hammered Boles repeatedly about the deal he and former mayor Len Weeks made 25 years ago with the St. Augustine City Commission to lease a prime piece of commercial real estate in the heart of the historic corridor. Slavin and others estimate that Weeks and Boles have netted between $2 million and $3 million in profit from the arrangement over the years. Slavin believes Boles and Weeks should end the lease, and turn over control of the property and, with it, the building they erected there. Boles and Weeks have both pointed out that is exactly what will happen when the lease permanently expires in 10 years. But Slavin says the city is losing money right now, money it could use for infrastructure, for historic preservation, for the city’s 450th birthday celebration, and the city’s mayor should act in the interest of the greater good, not personal self-interest.

“I think [Boles] ought to tear up the lease and let the city take back the property. Let the city make the profits instead of him and Weeks. I think of it as an exercise in fiduciary duty,” Slavin says. “I think people have a right to know how much they are making on the deal. I think the city has a duty to protect the taxpayers and the city, and we are being bamboozled by Boles and Weeks.”

The lease is perfectly legal — no one disputes that — but to Slavin, it’s an example of a public servant enriching himself at the public trough, something akin to the infamous deals worked out in the elder Mayor Daley’s Chicago. Ahead of next week’s mayoral primary election, Slavin’s banging that drum every chance he gets.

It’s about more than just the lease, really. Slavin sees Boles as a symbol of the old, connected and wrong; the lease symbolizes the way things used to be done between the families who had power and connections, a relic in a mayoral race that’s shaping up as a fight among a long-serving mayor and two relative newcomers.

St. Augustine historian David Nolan (father of former Folio Weekly staff writer Hamilton Nolan) agrees that Boles represents the homegrown St. Augustinian. For many people with roots in the city, he says, that’s a good thing.

“I think Joe is a candidate of the good ol’ boys,” Nolan says. “He’s certainly been around longer, and he is a lawyer and he has represented them and probably written the wills and done other legal work for all of the former mayors supporting him. He’s not as backwards as his predecessors, the ones who supported beating down Civil Rights demonstrators. But [the city’s old guard is] most comfortable with him.”

Joseph Boles has been the mayor of St. Augustine since 2006. (The city elects mayors to two-year terms.) His family moved here in 1967. In his first job as a St. Augustine teen, Boles dressed up as Ponce de Leon and rode a horse up and down St. George Street. If Boles wins, he will be the longest-serving mayor in the city’s 450-year history. But in this election, the hometown candidate faces a new guard of would-be change agents who say the city focuses too much on its tourists and not enough on its residents.

“The 450th is great, but what’s going to happen after 2015?” says Ken Bryan, one of Boles’ two challengers. “Meanwhile, the city is deteriorating.”

When the lease deal was struck in 1989, neither Boles nor Weeks had yet sought public office. Boles was an attorney specializing in estate planning and elder law. Weeks was a contractor and builder. In a city of just 11,575 people, they were both known quantities. Boles’ father was the director of the Lightner Museum. Weeks’ father ran Flagler Hospital.

The friends saw an opportunity on St. George Street. The state had been managing the city’s historic properties. When that ended, the state shut down all the public restrooms. The public and the St. Augustine Record railed about the lack of facilities for visitors to the tourism-fueled city. Boles and Weeks approached the city commission with a deal. If the city would lease them the vacant land at 81 St. George St., originally for $100 a month, they’d build a restaurant and other commercial space there — along with public restrooms. The city commission signed off. Boles, Weeks and another partner built and operated the Florida Cracker Café at the site, leased space there to Savannah Sweets, and included public restrooms behind the café as part of the construction.

Over the next 25 years, the rent for buildings along St. George Street skyrocketed; however, the 81 St. George St. lease amount stayed cheap. Weeks and Boles, who recently opted to renew the lease for another five years, pay $1,600 a month. The pair sold the Florida Cracker Café business for $150,000, but they still own the building it’s in and pay taxes on it. When the lease expires in 2024, the building Weeks and Boles built will become city property.

For that reason, Weeks and Boles see nothing wrong with the lease. In fact, they think they’re doing a public service.

“We were just normal guys who offered an opportunity to the city and the city thought it was a good deal for them,” Weeks says. “We took it on as entrepreneurs. I don’t feel guilty.”

Boles and Weeks have refused to disclose how much they earn leasing space to businesses at 81 St. George St. But by examining what the city of St. Augustine receives in rent for a comparable business, it’s possible to get a rough idea how much the Florida Cracker Café and Savannah Sweets might pay Boles and Weeks.

The Café del Hidalgo leases a 1,276-square-foot city-owned building in the historic district at 35 Hypolita St. for $6,596.55 a month, or $5.17 per square foot. If Boles and Weeks leased their 2,466-square-foot building at 81 St. George St. to the Florida Cracker Café and Savannah Sweets at the same rate the city leases space to Café del Hidalgo, they would charge a combined $12,749 a month. Subtract the restrooms’ square footage and Weeks and Boles would charge about $10,300 a month.

The $1,600 they pay the city is only for the land, however, not what they built there.

After a July 25 city commission meeting at which Slavin spoke out about the lease, Boles defended his arrangement with the city, explaining that he and his partners took a risk. When the lease ends, he added, the city will have an asset: “I make no apology for it. I think it is a win-win and the most perfect public-private partnership.” (Boles did not return calls for this story; instead he had Weeks call on his behalf.)

While Slavin often seems to be a crier in the wilderness — he and former mayor George Gardner are the lease’s fiercest critics — Bryan and fellow candidate Nancy Shaver have seized upon it, too. Bryan, who served on the St. Johns County Commission from 2008 to 2011, says that while the lease might not be illegal, it is unethical.

“If I were the mayor, I would have sold out my interest once I became mayor,” Bryan says. “It’s the only ethical thing to do to remove the appearance of impropriety; that is what one should be concerned about as an elected official.” He says he would seek an audit of all city leases and contracts if he wins the top city spot.

Shaver, a business management consultant who moved to St. Augustine about five years ago, says that the lease arrangement taints the mayor’s office. “I have no doubt that it is not illegal, but it is not something I would ever consider ethical or something that would be appropriate for an elected official in that position,” she says.

She’s especially critical of the fact that only Boles and Weeks — not the city — have the right to renew or terminate the agreement every five years until 2024. Shaver says that is “highly unusual, where the person who owns the property has no ability to terminate the lease.”

Still, despite his many criticisms, even Slavin credits Boles with helping to move St. Augustine into modernity. Boles, after all, commemorated the city’s violent and important role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act, extended retirement benefits to domestic partners, and recognized the annual Gay Pride celebration. And as his supporters point out, he has — whether it’s for the city’s ultimate benefit or not — worked tirelessly on the upcoming 450th anniversary celebration. They argue that he deserves to see it through.

“Truthfully, I hope Joe wins,” Weeks says. “I think he has done a great job as the face of St. Augustine in his eight years as mayor. I think he deserves to be mayor for the 450th because he has done so much to promote the city and to promote the 450th. He’s worked really hard. The 450th will be something to remember.”

No matter what happens on Aug. 26 — if no candidate achieves a majority, the top two will go to a runoff on Nov. 4 — the election will be historic, and not just because of the upcoming anniversary or Boles’ longevity. If Shaver wins, she’ll be St. Augustine’s second female mayor. If Bryan wins, he’ll be St. Augustine’s first black mayor. A victory by either would mark a new era in St. Augustine politics.