Sen. Dennis Baxley (R-Fl, District 12) was elected to the State Senate in 2016 from central Florida, including Sumter County and parts of Lake County and Marion County. He was also the Mayor of Belleview City, and served intermittently in the Florida House of Representatives between the year 2000 and his election to the State Senate. He currently chairs the senate’s Ethics and Election committee.
On Climate Change
In 2019 Baxley sponsored a bill (#330) to allow school districts to teach alternatives to what he considers “controversial” theories like climate change and evolution. Baxley’s legislation is designed to create doubt in the well-established facts of global climate change in an effort to control the climate change policy conversation.
The need for the bill was suggested by the Florida Citizen Alliance which opposes “indoctrination” in the public schools.
Baxley is quoted as saying, “Nothing is ever settled if it’s science, because people are always questioning science. If you look at the history of human learning, for a long time the official worldview was that the world was flat. Anything you now accept as fact comes from a perspective and you learn from examining different schools of thought.”
Other
Baxley has been called the Steve King of Florida. He has fought for anti-abortion “fetal heartbeat” legislation and over the years has been accused of racism for his comments on immigration and support for Confederate history.
Two weeks after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA, Baxley appeared at a Save Southern Heritage Florida event. In an interview before the banquet he said that he “…does not believe Confederate monuments should be taken down and that removing Confederate iconography is actually what triggers racist violence.”
Baxley claims credit for the state’s Stand Your Ground law. “As the father of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, Dennis Baxley believes that our Second Amendment rights are the bedrock of our nation’s freedom. He will fight against the erosion of this fundamental freedom.”
The Daily Kos has also featured Baxley’s extremism.
See Also
Florida Citizen Alliance
Marco Rubio
Ron DeSantis
Climate of Denial