Florida state Rep. Spencer Roach interviewed at his home in North Fort Myers yesterday. (Image: Fox4)
July 21, 2023 by David Silverberg
Until now, Southwest Florida has been free of political violence despite some strong passions and fanatical loyalties.
However, yesterday, July 20, state Rep. Spencer Roach (R-76-DeSoto, Charlotte and north Lee counties) revealed that someone had fired a bullet into his home.
“I called (the Lee County Sheriff’s Office) this morning because someone shot out my front window at my home,” Roach told Florida Politics. “Honestly, I’m a little shaken up about it. They shot through the window of the kids’ room, where the foster kids sleep.”
What makes the shot at Roach’s home more significant than the everyday shootings that occur in gun-saturated Southwest Florida is that it appears politically motivated. Like a first drop of rain that heralds an approaching storm, it could be a precursor of greater violence to come unless the perpetrator is found, arrested and prosecuted—swiftly.
The Roach record
Roach pointed out to The News-Press that “As you can see, there’s 20-25 houses on this street and there's only one that got a bullet hole in it. I have to think that was deliberate.” He spoke to virtually all local media about the incident and it has been extensively covered in print, broadcast and online.
It’s not the first time a gunshot threatened Roach. In August 2022, a bullet was fired into the wall of his district office. However, that was found to have been an accidental shot from a neighboring women’s self-defense class.
Roach, a Louisiana native and Coast Guard veteran, is a staunchly conservative Republican. He backs Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for president. In the Florida legislature he proposed that school board races be made partisan. In September 2021 he sent a letter to the superintendent of Lee County schools threatening to seek his firing if he didn’t immediately withdraw a mask mandate for school students (this after an outbreak of COVID in the schools).
But Roach has also enraged extreme, Trumpist, Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans.
In January 2022 he penned an op-ed that appeared on the website Florida Politics titled, “No Coronation for Donald Trump in ’24.”
After predicting (incorrectly) that Trump wouldn’t run for president, that DeSantis would and would beat Trump, “all hell broke loose,” he wrote. “Overnight I’ve become a pariah within the Republican Party. I’ve been vilified by many of my supporters and called out as a ‘RINO,’ ‘sellout,’ a ‘traitor fit for GITMO,’ and publicly denounced as a ‘Never Trumper.’” (To clarify, Roach maintained that while not a “never Trumper” he was also not an “only Trumper.”)
It wasn’t the only reason for Roach to feel outcast.
In December 2022, Roach denounced the election of Michael Thompson, an extreme Trumpist and fringe conservative as chair of the Lee County Republican Executive Committee (REC). Thompson won the election by a single vote after numerous, contentious rounds of balloting. Roach called the outcome “a dark day for the future of the Lee GOP.”
This brought forth a new round of vitriol.
“Apparently Spencer Roach has just jumped the proverbial shark and is now a full-on establishment RINO,” posted a MAGA supporter calling himself Ragnar Danneskjöld on Facebook. “He really doesn’t like it that you ‘holocaust deniers’ (aka America First folks) won the Lee county REC. There has always been doubts as to his ‘conservative’ bonafides, now he’s let us all know the real Roach. That’s one of the benefits to the America First movement…these RINOs just have to expose themselves, like moths to a flame, or bugs to a roach motel.”
Most recently, the Lee County REC considered resolutions condemning the Florida legislature’s vote providing a resign-to-run loophole that allowed DeSantis to run for president and contending that a new Florida law allowing permitless carrying of concealed firearms did not go far enough. The resolution argues that under the Second Amendment, citizens do not need even that permission.
“Amongst the delegation, I’ve been the most vocal critic of this new regime, what I would call a hostile takeover of the Lee County Republican Party, so there’s no love lost there,” Roach told Florida Politics after the shooting.
“But I don’t (think they’re behind the shooting). I hope not. It’s Florida politics, so nothing would surprise me, but I have a hard time believing those people — many I’ve known for years — would be so upset with my political decisions that they’d come and try to assassinate me.”
Commentary: Marceno time
Given that the crime scene is in Lee County, it’s in the jurisdiction of the tough-talking, publicity-seeking, ostentatiously aggressive Sheriff Carmine Marceno.
While the most dangerous place in Lee County may be anywhere between Marceno and a microphone, the sheriff has produced results. The shooting into Roach’s house is a new opportunity for Marceno to back up his talk with action.
Solving this crime should be a priority. Like the breaking of a single window pane, allowing it to go unsolved and unpunished invites bigger, badder and possibly more deadly crimes.
Furthermore, the fact that this seems politically motivated makes its resolution even more important. It was in an atmosphere of unpunished political violence that fascism thrived in post-World War II Europe. Historically, political violence has fed on itself and proliferated, bringing down law, order and democracy.
Roach himself seems to recognize the stakes.
“Perhaps my greater concern for the future of the GOP lies in the vicious backlash I have experienced since daring to express an opinion contrary to accepted dogma,” Roach wrote in his January 2022 op-ed. “Blind loyalty to Trump has become a litmus test of conservative bona fides, and any opinion to the contrary — real or perceived — is met with immediate public reproach, repudiation, and ostracization.”
And now it may be met with bullets.
Whether the latest bullet represents a broken pane or a drop of rain, history imbues this kind of crime with much more significance than just a random discharge. It needs to get more than just an ordinary response.
Liberty lives in light
© 2023 by David Silverberg