Opinion: Braswell Is a Woke Activist, a Grifter and a Deadbeat

When Allie Braswell last ran for office vying for the position of Florida's CFO, voters saw right through the four time bankrupt and three time divorcee, forcing an early close to his candidacy. But Braswell, ever the political masochist, now hopes to give the State House a chance in a run for district 45.

Unfortunately for Braswell, voters once again are beginning to see the candidate's history of insolvency and personal chaos under the microscope, and his record speaks volumes.

After leaving the U.S. Army under dubious circumstances, Braswell jumped around from job to job failing to remain with the same company for more than a couple of years.

During this time, Braswell was irresponsible with his finances and struggled to hold down his marriages, with each ending in divorce. The three time divorcee declared bankruptcy four times: 1995, 1997, 2008 and 2015, and has been evicted from at least one apartment. In addition at least one of Braswell's homes was foreclosed upon after defaulting on his mortgage.

But Braswell's rocky legal and financial history doesn't end there. Braswell was sued by the Chrysler Financial Company and received a judgement for $4,800 as well as another auto company following his failure to pay on $26,800 loan for a Mercedes Benz E320. In this same period, Braswell also owed money to his home owners association and the Town of Oakland, FL for unpaid water bills.

Perhaps the most concerning and irresponsible mark on Braswell's record was a suit against the candidate or $15,000 for auto negligence after causing “permeant injury” to another person when he crashed into another car after missing a turn. The case was settled at an unknown amount.

One would think this series of events might make anyone rethink their career or trajectory in life. But not Allie Braswell, and his politics proved to be just as toxic as his personal life.

Braswell started to get involved in politics when he became the President and CEO of the Central Florida Urban League and became a Black-rights activist. Braswell received public attention when he exploited the Trayvon Martin shooting in 2012 as an opportunity to get Democrats out to vote and also called on the repeal of Florida’s Stand you Ground laws.

Braswell spring boarded off his platform from Trayvon Martin, which included a CNN appearance and decided to run for Florida’s Chief Financial Officer position. Braswell was forced out of the race after four days when his bankruptcies and financial records were reported on, turning him into the laughing stock of that year in Florida politics.

Braswell's grifting career in "woke" politics began in 2017 when he went back to school, receiving a master’s degree in human resources. He supplemented that with a certificate at Cornell University in “Advanced Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” serving as a "woke" consultant at a medical clinic and a credit union.

Braswell’s company, the Braswell Group offers seminars to businesses as well as a “Cultural Inclusion Assessment” which involved an index to track a company’s progress towards “inclusion.” Braswell lectures on diversity and calls for corporations to “have values systems that are measured and tracked.”

His incendiary rhetoric often targets white people, Republicans and Trump supporters, but Braswell recently even brought the medical field into his sights, waging an attack on the character of physicians and executives alike at the height of COVID-19 pandemic:

“’Racists don’t wear sheets when they are seated in the C-suite, in the boardrooms of hospitals & medical schools, or editorial boards of medical journals. So it is up to our allies in those rooms to recognize evil where it exists and purge it from the culture of medicine.’”

Moreover, Braswell resigned this summer from the Winter Garden Theater due to the discontent of staff and patrons alike as a result of his "woke" tendencies and reported mismanagement of funds, a trend that seems to keep reappearing in the former chairman's life.

The facts paint a grim picture of a man who not only fails to manage his own affairs, but also attempts to impose the most extreme politics of the day on both the community and his colleagues. Allie Braswell is not qualified to serve in a place of public trust, given not only his radical ideas on policy but also his record of financial mismanagement. Residents of State House District 45 must now decide whether to elect this woke, grifting deadbeat to office. Let's hope, for the sake of our state, they make the right decision.

Braswell faces Republican Carolina Amesty in November's General Election.