On December 18, Scott appointed Carter to the FAMU Board of
Trustees (BOT). There’s already talk in Tallahassee that moving Carter from the
BOG to FAMU is part of an effort to fast-track him into the FAMU chairmanship
in time for a likely presidential search in the upcoming months. June 30, 2016
is the deadline for a discussion on whether President Elmira Mangum’s
employment will be renewed. She began a three-year contract on April 1, 2014.
Carter’s former colleagues on the BOG can create a vacancy
in the FAMU chairmanship as soon as they get ready. Current Chairman Cleve
Warren’s term expired more than a year ago on January 6, 2015.
The BOG has sent numerous signals that it isn’t supportive
of Mangum. It gave a negative response to the Work Plan that Mangum presented
in June 2015 and told her to make big changes to it before the September BOG meeting.
Carter also publicly mocked a group of FAMU alumni in
elected offices who sent the BOG a copy of a letter they signed calling for
Mangum-critic Rufus Montgomery to be removed as the FAMU BOT chairman back in August. The group included Rep. Alan Williams, Sen.
Arthenia L. Joyner, Sen. Dwight Bullard, Rep. Mia Jones, Rep. Shevrin Jones,
and Rep. Bobby Powell and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, Carter said that “the
mayor should be reducing my taxes in Tallahassee, and let the people with
responsibility for leading FAMU lead FAMU.” The article added that: “He also
said the legislators should have been focusing their attention on redistricting
maps, an urgent matter for the state.”
The alumni elected officials that Carter blasted kept quiet
about the statements he made in response to them.
Carter didn’t claim to speak for the full BOG but his
statements were still very telling because he mainly just followed the lead of
most of the BOG members while he was on the board. He wouldn’t have had the courage
to say anything that he thought would put him at odds with the majority of the
BOG membership.
The appointment of Carter to the FAMU BOT now follows a
POLITICO Florida report that noted “allies of Governor Rick Scott and former
governor Jeb Bush in the state university system are moving to take closer
control of Florida's only historically black public university.” The article
added details by discussing the BOG’s selection of BOG member “Alan Levine, a
Scott appointee and longtime aide to Bush, to oversee FAMU's implementation of
the [Work Plan].”
If Carter becomes chairman of the FAMU BOT, it will serve as
the tightest hold that the BOG has had over FAMU since former BOG member Castell
Bryant was the interim president and former BOG chancellor Debra Austin was the
provost from 2005-2007.
Back in 2012, Rattler Nation reported on under-the-table
lobbying efforts to get then-BOG member Ava Parker into the FAMU presidency.