Hey Florida! There is an alternative to four more years of this kind of thing!

Here's a NY Times article by Dana Canedy published August 16, 2002:

New Child Welfare Head in Florida Is Drawing Fire.

The latest controversy at the agency, the Florida Department of Children and Families, involves a 1989 religious essay which carries the name of Mr. Bush's appointee, Jerry Regier, on its cover. The essay, entitled "The Christian World View of The Family," supports spanking of children that may cause "temporary and superficial bruises and welts" and denounces abortion, parenting by gays and women in the work force.

Women, the essay says, should work outside the home only if the family is in a financial crisis and should consider such employment as "bondage."

...The agency's previous director, Kathleen A. Kearney, resigned on Tuesday, after months of embarrassments, starting with the agency's admission in April that it had lost a child in its care, 4-year-old Rilya Wilson, without noticing for more than a year...

Child welfare advocates and Mr. Bush's political foes said the fact that the governor was caught off guard by Mr. Regier's association with the coalition proved that Mr. Bush had acted too hastily in replacing Ms. Kearney. After her resignation, agency critics urged Mr. Bush to convene a panel to conduct a national search for her replacement.

Instead, Mr. Bush, who is seeking re-election in November, announced Mr. Regier's appointment two days later, on Thursday. His critics now say he did not sufficiently review Ms. Kearney's successor and made the appointment for political expediency.

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/17/national/17CHIL.html

The New York Times The New York Times National August 17, 2002

New Child Welfare Head in Florida Is Drawing Fire
By DANA CANEDY

MIAMI, Aug. 16 — Gov. Jeb Bush's appointee to head Florida's troubled child welfare agency is not even on the job yet and already the appointee, a former Oklahoma social services administrator and founder of a conservative Christian group, has come under fire.

The latest controversy at the agency, the Florida Department of Children and Families, involves a 1989 religious essay which carries the name of Mr. Bush's appointee, Jerry Regier, on its cover. The essay, entitled "The Christian World View of The Family," supports spanking of children that may cause "temporary and superficial bruises and welts" and denounces abortion, parenting by gays and women in the work force.

Women, the essay says, should work outside the home only if the family is in a financial crisis and should consider such employment as "bondage."

The essay has led to calls from Democrats for Mr. Bush to withdraw his appointment of Mr. Regier and has put the governor's office in the position of having to do damage control on a move that itself was supposed to control damage.

The agency's previous director, Kathleen A. Kearney, resigned on Tuesday, after months of embarrassments, starting with the agency's admission in April that it had lost a child in its care, 4-year-old Rilya Wilson, without noticing for more than a year.

Mr. Bush's office issued a statement on Mr. Regier's behalf today, in which Mr. Regier tried to distance himself from the essay and the group that published it, the Coalition on Revival of Fresno, Calif. While his name appears on the essay, excerpts of which were published today in The Miami Herald, Mr. Regier said he was not an author of it.

Mr. Regier is the founder of another conservative religious organization, the Family Research Council in Washington, but he said he was merely a co-chairman of the Coalition on Revival when it published the paper and had severed his association with the group years ago because of some of its extremist views.

Mr. Regier's name, though, still appears on the Revival Coalition's Web site as a member of the group's national steering committee.

"While not compromising my core principles, certainly, as it relates to this paper, there is much content and Biblical interpretation held by members of the Coalition on Revival with which I do not agree," Mr. Regier said in his statement. "In my 20 years of service in the area of children and families, I have never been soft on child abuse or wavered in the protection of children, so it is not my position that corporal punishment should result in welts or bruises."

Mr. Regier's statement made no mention of his views on abortion or parenting by gays, which has been a high-profile issue in Florida because of a state law prohibiting gay individuals and couples from adopting.

Of his views on working women, Mr. Regier said: "My own wife of 34 years is a registered nurse, and I am extremely supportive of her career. I support women in the work force as well as women holding an equal role in marriage."

Child welfare advocates and Mr. Bush's political foes said the fact that the governor was caught off guard by Mr. Regier's association with the coalition proved that Mr. Bush had acted too hastily in replacing Ms. Kearney. After her resignation, agency critics urged Mr. Bush to convene a panel to conduct a national search for her replacement.

Instead, Mr. Bush, who is seeking re-election in November, announced Mr. Regier's appointment two days later, on Thursday. His critics now say he did not sufficiently review Ms. Kearney's successor and made the appointment for political expediency. Mr. Regier served in the first federal Bush administration as head of the National Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

"I am stunned that the governor, after such scandal involving the last agency head, would not take more deliberate steps toward finding a more suitable replacement," said state Representative Frederica Wilson, a child welfare advocate and Miami Democrat in whose district Rilya was living when she vanished. "Appointing Regier has created another major problem for our state."

Mr. Bush's office said the governor had no knowledge of the essay before he named Mr. Regier, but declined to comment further. Mr. Regier did not return calls.

Representatives for the Coalition on Revival could not be reached. The group's Web site says its mission is to "help the Church rebuild civilization on the principles of the Bible so God's will may be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Mr. Bush's political adversaries wasted little time contending that he had put the fate of Florida's most vulnerable children in the hands of a right-wing extremist.

The state Democratic Party called on the governor to withdraw the appointment and begin a new search for a replacement for Ms. Kearney. Janet Reno, the former United States attorney general who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, questioned whether the controversy would render Mr. Regier ineffective in his new job.

"With all of the challenges facing DCF, one would think that the governor would pick someone who would not be a lightning rod for controversy or divert attention from the work that needs to be done," she said.

The controversy is not likely to be decisive in the governor's race, one expert on Florida politics said, but is another embarrassment for Mr. Bush and dashes any hopes he had of putting a positive spin on Ms. Kearney's exit.

"Any expectation that this will be a smooth appointment just went out the window," said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. "It leaves Floridians as frustrated as ever with DCF."