Frontrunner to replace Joyner likely to be just as weak in defending FAMU

Over the past two legislative sessions, no one in the current Florida Legislative Black Caucus (FLBC) has made an attempt to defend FAMU with the level of boldness and leadership that Carrie Meek demonstrated while she was in the state House and Senate.

Senate Minority Leader Arthenia Joyner, the highest ranking FAMU graduate in the legislature, will leave in November due to term limits. She’s done a poor job of looking out for FAMU since 2015 and it doesn’t appear that the frontrunner to replace her has any intention of doing a better job.

Joyner has endorsed state Rep. Ed Narain for the District 19 Senate seat she currently holds. He is leading all of his Democratic primary opponents in fundraising. The SaintPetersBlog reported yesterday that Narain “led the money race through June 24 with about $100,000 in his campaign account, followed by fellow Democratic Rep. Darryl Rouson with about $41,000 and former Democratic Rep. Betty Reed with about $16,000.”

Narain, who attended Saint Leo University and Stetson, was elected to the Florida House in 2014. He won the race for the chairmanship of the FLBC as a freshman lawmaker.

Joyner, Narain, and the rest of the FLBC members have ignored a number of recent attacks against FAMU. In 2015, FAMU lost control of a multi-million dollar college budget after 28 years and saw its alumni become a minority in the 11 appointed university Board of Trustees seats. But the FLBC still doesn’t seem to see a problem and has kept quiet.

That FLBC’s decline in commitment to defending FAMU comes at a time when news reports have raised serious questions about its operations, especially when it comes to its relationship with the Florida Conference of Black State Legislators (a nonprofit foundation).

A January 2016 article by the Florida Times-Union also reported on a controversial FLBC-coordinated visit to the Wind Creek Casino & Hotel in Atmore, Ala. Narain was among the five caucus members who participated. According to the newspaper: “It does not sit well with everyone that Narain and the others stayed overnight and were feted by the Poarch Creek Indians, who are lobbying hard for the Legislature to approve slots in Gretna.”

That news report about the casino visit led the Orlando Sentinel editorial board to name Narain its “Weekly Chump” on January 27. It editorialized that the trip “was technically legal, but optically terrible — like the hunting trips Republican leaders took in 2013 on Big Sugar's tab. If Narain et al. wanted to add to the cynicism about state government, they hit the jackpot.”

FAMU hasn’t received Carrie Meek-level representation in the Florida Senate for years and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change in the near future.