strange texts he sent<\/a> a constituent in September.<\/p>\nBack then, Rick Matthew blasted Czyszczon at a commission meeting for sending the texts that say he wanted to \u201cwash\u201d his feet and kiss him and his wife.<\/p>\n
That led more than a hundred women in the city to send a letter to Governor Ron DeSantis asking him to remove Czyszczon from office, which got no response.<\/p>\n
Susan Lovelady was at the commissioner\u2019s meeting when she heard Matthew read the texts during public comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shocked,\u201d she said. \u201cI think everybody in the room was very surprised. My initial reaction was, \u2018So this is what you’re about. This is what you do in your spare time?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
She began a recall petition, needing a few hundred signatures from voters in Czyszczon’s district, which the Pinellas Supervisor of Elections office confirms were certified last week.<\/p>\n
In response, Czyszczon sued the supervisor Julie Marcus, city clerk Lisa-Marie Kennedy, Matthew and Lovelady. His lawyer says the texts aren’t legal grounds for removal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s nothing unlawful,\u201d J.C. Planas said. \u201cIt’s an accidental text, that’s it. If he had grabbed his regular phone and texted, it would not have been misfeasance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMisfeasance\u201d is one of six reasons why Florida law says a local official can be recalled, which means a lawful act done in an unlawful manner.<\/p>\n
Once Czyszczon was served notice, the recall signatures were verified, and he had five days to resign. The deadline to do so is Tuesday, but he’s not backing down.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s indicated he does not wish to resign,\u201d he adds. \u201cAnd we are going to ask the appellate court to stay the issue of a special election while they review the ruling of the lower court.\u201d<\/p>\n
That district court judge said that Lovelady\u2019s name as the chair of the recall committee was sufficiently displayed on the petitions and that Czyszczon\u2019s texts from a city-issued phone were accepted as \u201cmisfeasance.\u201d<\/p>\n
If a special election does happen, Lovelady says he won’t run unopposed like he did last year when he won his seat.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone will run,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are people I’m sure will take that upon themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Czyszczon in fact doesn’t resign on Tuesday, a local judge will set a date for the special election. His appeal could be heard by appellate judges as soon as next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of voters signed petitions to recall Arthur Czyszczon after he sent bizarre texts to a constituent. TREASURE…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-159539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}