Carl Baxter, a diehard Black Trump supporter from Florida, was two weeks into his new job promoting Republican policies when he realized he had been underpaid for canvassing neighborhoods and knocking on doors.
But when he called his white supervisor to complain, Roxanne Buckels told him he was a “slave” who should be grateful he was receiving any money at all, according to a federal lawsuit filed by Baxter on Monday, which accused Buckels of stating the following:
I know you are doing the work and I can see the doors that you are hitting on my iPad on my side. At least you are working as a slave (sarcastically) but at least you are getting paid, many slaves today do get paid, many used to never get paid. Are you a slave?
Baxter, who is president of the Republican Club of North and East Fort Myers, was offended by the remark and asked Buckels to contact her supervisor. News of his lawsuit has opened Baxter to criticism online.
“(A) a Black guy sucked into a white-supremacy hate cult – he needs to sit in his stupidity. (B) I hope he loses. You don’t join a white-supremacist group then get mad when they discriminate against you. Principle of the matter,” one X user wrote.
“Hard to feel sorry for him given MAGA’s not exactly been quiet about what they think of minorities….,” another user chimed in.
Buckels’ supervisor, a white man named Tim Hennessy — who previously attempted to pay Baxter into providing dirt on a Cape Coral City Council member — joined them in a three-way phone call to discuss the issue, Baxter’s claim states.
That conversation led to another three-way phone call between Hennessy, Baxter and Jamie Franz, a white woman who works as an operations manager for Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing nonprofit that had hired Baxter to promote its agenda — but has also never supported Trump.
Franz wasted no time in firing Baxter, he claims.
However, it’s been more than two months since he was fired, and he still hasn’t received the money owed to him, according to the lawsuit filed by Jay P. Lechner from Lechner Law in Tampa.
Listed as defendants are two groups: Americans for Prosperity and a company called ICC Compliance LLC, which is doing business as TalentWave. The lawsuit states the two companies were “joint employers” of Baxter and accuses them of racial discrimination, retaliation and wage theft.
After his termination, Plaintiff has asked Defendants to pay his unpaid wages and mileage reimbursement. Yet, Defendants have never paid Plaintiff for the time he spent performing work for them and they never reimbursed him for his mileage.
Defendants intentionally subjected Plaintiff to disparate treatment race discrimination in violation of Section 1981 by subjecting him to less favorable benefits, privileges, terms, and conditions of employment than those experienced by similarly situated non-African-American employees.
Specifically, Defendants refused to pay Plaintiff for his employment services (instead, calling him a “slave”) but did pay similarly situated non-African-American employees for their employment services.
Baxter was hired as a grassroots organizer and began working on June 14 at a rate of $20 an hour and was to be paid weekly. He was also supposed to be reimbursed for his mileage.
His main job duties required him to canvas neighborhoods and speak to voters about the policies being drafted by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative-libertarian advocacy group founded by Charles Koch and the late David Koch, neither of who have ever supported Trump.
Baxter, on the other hand, has long supported Trump, according to several photos on his Facebook page where he is usually wearing a red MAGA cap and is usually the only Black man standing among groups of white Republicans.
The lawsuit states that Hennessy approached Baxter shortly after he had started working and offered him $500 to provide “dirt” on Cape Coral council member Patty Cummings, who earlier this month pleaded guilty to three felony counts of fraud for lying about where she lived while running for office in 2022, according to WINK News.
Cummings, suspended last year by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shortly after her arrest, was sentenced to 24 months probation after pleading guilty. Baxter refused to accept the $500 to dig up dirt on Cummings because she was a loyal Trump supporter like himself.
The lawsuit states that “AFP’s goal was to stop President Donald J. Trump from winning the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential primaries and, locally, to oppose politicians who support President Trump.”
