Originally Posted - July 27, 2006

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He didn't have to endorse anyone in the campaign for the Florida Senate, 8th district which includes Jacksonville.

However, Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed former state Senate President Jim King.

Jim King (left), president of the Florida Senate from 2002-2004 and Senate majority leader from 2000-2002, is being challenged for the position by Randall Terry (right), an anti-abortionist, "separated from his church".

It's a case of two buffoons seeking political office. Both of them played a significant role in the death of Terri Schiavo and like Michael Schiavo, Terry is now exploiting Terri Schiavo for his own political gain.

Had Randall Terry not made a circus out of the somber issue with his asinine demonstrations at the Woodside Park hospice with jugglers and bugles, and not agitated and irritated lawmakers, Terri Schiavo might well be alive today.

If we lived in Jacksonville and had a choice of either Randall Terry of Jim King representing us, we'd move.

Fueled by their love and devotion to their daughter and their efforts to save her life, to care for her, to obtain the proper therapy and rehabilitation that she was entitled to have, denied by her estranged and conflicted husband, the Schindler family placed their trust in the wrong hands and made decisions which ultimately worked against them and Terri, such as choosing Randall Terry as their spokesman. He did more to inflame the issue than act as a mediator.

Terry made a circus out of the Schiavo debate and perhaps was a leading cause why the Florida Legislature failed to enact legislation that would have saved the life of Terri Schiavo.

One of the core issues of Terry's campaign against King is the death of Terri Schiavo. In 2003, King as Senate President had supported Gov. Bush's attempts to keep brain damaged Terri Schiavo alive and endorsed the passage of Terri's Law, but in March 2005, over a meal of fried chicken and salad in a Tallahassee restaurant, King and eight other Republicans of the Florida Senate met and resolved not to support legislation being introduced by Sen. Daniel Webster to help save the 41-year-old disabled woman for her death by the court-ordered starvation and dehydration at the behest of Michael Schiavo, based solely on self-serving hearsay evidence, testimony which has now been shown to be wholly unreliable and perhaps even concocted.

Bush said that Terry was more of a hindrance in the effort to save the life of Terri Schiavo. "Randall Terry during that period and afterward made no positive contribution….related to Terry Schiavo. None", Bush was quoted as saying. "He was a hindrance in our effort to save this woman's life".

We wholeheartedly agree.

Bush said that Terry's activism turned off lawmakers who had been undecided in the legislative debate over the bill that would have reinserted Terri's feeding tube and saved her life.

Terry and his religious zealots, as Michael Schiavo calls them, exploited the supporters for money, loaded buses and stormed the Capitol at Tallahassee and then tried to strong arm the legislators. One right to life lobbyist who has an open door policy with the legislators said that they closed their doors to her and said Terry and his "thugs" roamed the Capitol like vigilantes, were loud, obnoxious and threatening. Terry's antics and those of his followers turned a lot of legislators off and they voted against the bill simply because of Terry.

Terry and his explosive manner and questionable tactics was for certain the wrong person to be the "spokesman" for Terri Schiavo's parents and is likely one of the main reasons why efforts to save the disabled woman failed.

As Terri Schiavo lay dying of dehydration, corpulent King was stuffing his face with fried chicken and dictating death for the disabled woman who had struggled to tell the world that she wanted to live. Had she been allowed to have the therapy and rehabilitation dictated for her by the court in 1992, she may have been able to clearly tell the court and the world what her wishes were but Michael Schiavo couldn't risk that. If she could be rehabilitated to speak and express her wishes, she may have been able to tell the world what really happened to her the night of Feb. 25, 1990, when her life forever changed.

"I believe that there is a heaven and that's where Terri Schiavo is going to go and that's a trip that's long overdue", King was quoted as saying as he blocked the legislation from proceeding after the House had passed a bill which would have reinserted the feeding tube withdrawn from her on March 18, 2005, and would have saved her life.

"Had God not wanted what happened today to happen, He would have intervened", King said.

In 1988, King had sponsored the Death With Dignity law that provides that oral declarations of a patient's wishes are valid. The law provides that Floridians can refuse medical treatment and allows family members or loved ones, even friends, to withdraw life support. However, in 1988, nutrition and hydration was not considered to be medical treatment.

The law wasn't applicable in the Schiavo case anyway because she left no living will and the oral declarations she allegedly made weren't witnessed by anyone and were supposedly heard only by Michael Schiavo, an individual who had more to gain by the disabled woman being dead than alive. Although his hearsay wasn't supported by anyone at the time of depositions prior to the 2000 trial which resulted in Terri's death warrant, by the time of the trial two of Michael's relatives, a brother and a sister-in-law, had also suddenly had their memories jarred by Schiavo's attorney and claimed that Terri had made statements to them about artificial life support.

Judge George Greer found that the Schiavo family was credible and that her family members or friends were not, although he totally discounted and eliminated the most revealing testimony of Terri's best friend, Jackie Rhodes, from his decision.

In 2003, when King had yielded to intense public and political pressure to support Terri's Law which was championed by Gov. Bush and saved the woman's life but was later ruled unconstitutional. King later said that that "was probably the worst vote I ever made in my years of being a legislator". He said there was "no question" that he would not vote that way today and had pledged that "if it comes up again, I will not do it".

And he didn't.

"I don't want anything on the floor in that Senate that is going to give platforms to people who want to roll back the hands of time for whatever reason", King said. "As soon as you put something on the floor, as well-intended as it may be, anybody can amend it. Then all of a sudden I'm sitting there facing a bill or bills that can dismantle what I consider to be my legacy".

The voters in the 8th district had a very viable chance to vote King out of office, undermine his legacy----until Randall Terry announced his candidacy, using Terri Schiavo as his campaign platform. Terry then tried to attach himself to the Scott Thomas case, the brain damaged Jacksonville man who has made astounding strides towards recovery after sustaining head injuries, allegedly at the hands of his wife. Randall Terry simply cannot be allowed to further profit from his exploitations. If he doesn't get his way on some bill that he would sponsor if elected, would he stage violent, disruptive protests outside the Senate chamber as he has done at Planned Parenthood offices or bring in his evangelicals, this person who claims to be so Christian.

Terry, founder of the anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue, a controversial group which storms abortion clinics and is said to operate "outside the law", is another New York reject. He was reportedly censured in 2000 by his Binghamton church where he had been a member for 15 years, for a "pattern of repeated and sinful relationships and conversations with both single and married women".

Terry has described Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, as a "whore" and an "adulteress" and arranged to have a dead fetus presented to Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

The New York Times reported on July 20, 2001, that one of Terry's most avid followers in Binghamton was James Kopp, charged in the 1998 murder of a doctor who performed abortions in Buffalo. Kopp was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

In November 1998, The Times reported that Terry had filed for bankruptcy in an effort to avoid paying massive debts owed to women's groups and abortion clinics that have sued him".

In 2003, New York courts ruled that Terry wasn't paying a "fair share" of child support to his ex-wife while at the same time, he was soliciting non-tax deductible donations on his web site, later placing a down payment on a house valued at $432,000 in Ponte Vedra Beach. The same month, he filed a sworn affidavit with the New York court, claiming he was three months behind in his rent and had been selling items to live.

On his website, Terry claims to have received a supportive letter from Mother Teresa. However, other members of the order have denounced Terry as a dangerous extremist which seems to be closer to the truth.

Chuck Colson's former chief-of-staff, James Jewel, has opined that "Jeb Bush's handling of the Schiavo conflict is in contrast to the rantings of Randall Terry about Jeb "blinking" and not doing enough. I find the Schindlers to be wonderfully sincere and incredibly sympathetic characters but they made a terrible decision naming Terry as their spokesperson. He has been a disaster for the pro-life movement throughout the years and is the wrong voice for this case and any other when we need measured reason and effective discourse".

Someone has to lose and someone has to win in an election and sometimes, the vote has to come down to the lesser of two evils.

Such is the case for the Senate race in District 8. Jim King is a poor choice to represent the people of the district. Randall Terry is a worse one. 7-27-06

© 2006 North Country Gazette