Content warning: This article contains violent anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and praise for the practice of lynching. Reader discretion is advised.
The leader of a fringe political party in Florida called the Jeffersonian Party appeared at a Naples City Council meeting on Jan. 13 to extol the history of lynching in the United States and claim “violence is acceptable” to stop a local LGBTQ+ Pride event from taking place in June.
Cody Davis, the party’s chair, began the organization as the Vote Men PAC in 2022. He later converted the organization to a political party and gained ballot access in Florida in 2024, although the party has yet to field any candidates for office. Public records list the party’s address at a Staples office supply store in Naples.
Davis made his remarks as the city council debated approving Naples Pride’s permit application to use the city park in June. Davis previously appeared alongside members of the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Church Militant at a March 1, 2023, protest of the Pride event outside the city council.
‘Lawful violence is acceptable’
Davis appeared at a Naples City Council workshop on Jan. 13 to speak during the public comment period about Naples Pride’s permit to use the city’s local park for their annual celebration.
Referring to Pride as “the homosexual event,” Davis began his comments by claiming the early state governments “believed it was appropriate that those who engage in homosexual behavior be executed.” He also said the Supreme Court case, Lawrence v. Texas, that overturned Georgia’s law criminalizing sodomy — which applies to both heterosexual and same-sex intimate relationships — was an act of “judicial tyranny.”
“Here in America, the death penalty for the crime of homosexual intercourse lasted longer than the antebellum South today,” Davis said. “Today, the states usually don’t enforce laws around sexual morality in response to the Supreme Court’s Lawrence decision of 2003, but on Dec. 25, 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Thomas Ritchie on the topic of judicial tyranny, and he said, in reference to tyranny of Supreme Court justices, quote, Americans should raise their voice against it, and more should uplift their arm.”
After extolling the history of lynching, Davis said: “The consensus of Americans for centuries was that lynching, when done correctly, is both completely lawful and appropriate. They understood that lynch law is embedded in the American legal tradition, and there’s no legislature, no executive and no judiciary that could ever change that.
“Americans of Thomas Jefferson’s persuasion have no other logical conclusion to draw,” Davis said, “but that lawful violence is acceptable in response to the kind of savage behavior being proposed to take place here [in Naples]. And I pray that God will remove the people that are trying to do these horrible things in my community.”
Although no council members objected to Davis’ comments at the time, at a council meeting two days later the city’s police chief said, “It’s a real threat, and we take it real and we plan for it that way.”
Political connections
Florida campaign finance records show that between 2022 and 2024, Vote Men PAC received about $4,000 in contributions, mostly from Davis. In an Oct. 23, 2023, interview, Davis told a Palm Beach Post reporter, “We need men to lead and women to follow.” The reporter noted that the PAC targeted races “where a man is running against a woman in order to donate money to the male candidate.”
In 2023, Vote Men PAC contributed to four candidates. Three of the candidates returned the donations, citing the PAC’s extreme ideology. Afterward, the group named the politicians on a webpage it titled “cowards and criminals.” The Florida Politics website reported in August 2024 that the only politician to accept a donation from the group was Steve Shives, a Republican running for the state’s 27th House District seat.
A review of the Vote Men PAC’s X (formerly Twitter) page shows Davis alongside Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest gathering in January 2024 in Arizona. According to the post, Davis presented Cruz with a postcard for the PAC.
Along with a photo posted in October 2022 with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Davis claimed, “I had the great opportunity of meeting [DeSantis] and telling him about the Vote Men Political Action Committee I founded.”
In June 2024, Vote Men PAC disbanded. Davis reconstituted the group — including redirecting its website — as a new political party called the Jeffersonian Party in October 2024.
According to the group’s website, the party advocates a “return to the traditional understanding of equality” as a “rejection of hereditary distinctions that were present in British society without any regard to a destruction of the distinctions of nations and races.” It also advocates ending America’s alliances with Israel and NATO and the creation of private armed militias.
Picture at top: Cody Davis, founder of the Jeffersonian Party, poses in front of Jefferson Davis Memorial in Fairview, Kentucky, in a photo posted to Instagram announcing the establishment of party seemingly inspired by Thomas Jefferson. (Photo from Instagram)