Davenport Politics: The Secrets Behind the Non-Election

It’s official. Once again, there will be no elections to our Board of Commissioners for Davenport voters. Our next mayor will be the daughter of incumbent, career commissioner Tom Fellows. You know, like All in the Family. Her name is Donna Fellows-Coffey. She’s listed as the publisher of the Four Corners Sun, a hyperlocal media outlet, which doesn’t hesitate to use its power to impact Davenport elections. She’s been on the Board for some time, yet for all these years she’s been a commissioner, our now-upcoming mayor will never have been through an election cycle, not even once. She’s never had to face an election opponent. Moreso, it is clear from a campaign ad she placed last year that she has no intention of leaving our Board, ever.

Yesteryear being part of her coded message in that ad, indicating a support of MAGA & Trumpsteinian ideology that all Americans did very well during our Golden Age. You know, yesteryear, when everybody did great.

Adherence to ethics in politics has been officially dead in Davenport, Florida, for some time now. Why?

Certain local leadership think it is okay to run our city by their own rules instead of the rules that can be found in the People’s Charter of Davenport. So, after over a decade of encouraging my fellow Americans to vote locally and communicate with our Board during public meetings, I have started to wonder if the non-voters in our community and those who gave-up voting were right all along.

Were they? Is it really no longer worth one’s time to vote in the City of Davenport, Florida?

We need adherence to our Charter. To achieve that goal, we need a new rule that prevents those less-than-ethical among us from campaigning for power in politics ahead of everybody else and for terms exceeding decades. (For example, there is in fact a term-limit ordinance in Davenport, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at our history of elected officials. 10 years here. 20 years there.)

Year-round campaigning and campaigning outside election time started with a former mayor. This was a mayor who proved to be without ethical value and without one iota of humility, even campaigning during the city’s annual WinterFest parade. Parade-goers booed but no one heard in City Hall. This was a mayor who hadn’t been approved to run for any public office in Davenport at the time of that campaign.

Now Donna thinks it’s okay to break common decency rules too, which are nothing more than conventions unless commissioners do the right thing and put it in writing. Davenport does not have a written rule that prevents such lapses of judgement. We rely on their common sense so they don’t commit anything that gives them an unfair advantage in elections. But, as we have seen since Trumpstein was carried down his golden escalator, politicians no longer pay mind to ethics, nor morality, nor adherence to even a Charter written by its own people. Law & Order my ass!

You see, what Donna did was prevent other prospective candidates from having any chance to run on a fair and even foundation. That increases voter apathy in the 8% of voters we still have left being patriotic.

Donna’s dad, career commissioner Tom Fellows, did it last year, but far worse in that he allegedly committed lawfare, that is, using the city’s attorney to justify his run for office, when he was clearly not qualified to run, per the actual words of our Charter. Donna will continue to sit on the same dais as her dad on our Board of Commissioners, the same dad who obtained his current position on the board on a less-than-ethical foundation. Is this really what the good people of Davenport want? To quote Mark Twain, more of this crap?

Back to the Non-Campaign

When Donna started campaigning, it was outside of any election season and without being qualified by the city to do so. (In Davenport, one has to be qualified by the clerk to push out a campaign.) Donna led her 2026 campaign with a full-page advertisement in her own newspaper’s annual calendar, a political ad placed to appear in March, the month before our elections. It was arranged for placement last year, six months before the city started its qualification process.

Cart before horse, Donna?

And, how could she be so sure she would be named as qualified when the time came?

Oh, that’s right! NepoBaby.

Note: Her ad says she’s running for Seat 4. Apparently, within the past few weeks someone suggested she take our mayorship. Who in the world could’ve given her the idea to do that? Hmmm.

Regardless, her advertising gave Donna a clear competitive advantage in 2026, that is, if anyone had tried to run against her. But, as is obvious, only a stupid person would’ve wasted their time running for our Board, especially against the odds we have here, against someone who was permitted by the city to a half-year unfair advantage over everyone else. Everyone.

Davenport is now over 22,000-people-strong. We are about 2,000 people smaller than Haines City, yet our leaders still relish the “small town” attitudes and “feel” of our community. Great! Relish all you want but make sure you are serving us. The rumor mill that starts deep inside our city walls says we’re small. Reality says we’re not, not anymore. But, it’s what our leaders, and definitely Donna, want us to believe, their alternative reality. Yesteryear. Really?

Did you know that in the April 2025 election, less than 8% of 8,962 registered voters in our city actually came out and voted? It was a full percentage point worse than the previous year, wherein only 9% voted.

In 2025, we had 1,224 new registered voters in our city but only two more new votes.

Two!

I’d like to meet the person who doesn’t think this is pretty fucked up.