The Conservative Diva: Silent No More, Part One

Ellen (left) and Daria with their friend "Too Tall Dan" at the first We Surround Them event in Palm Beach County.

CPAC might have made the unfortunate decision to designate Javier Manjarres of The Shark Tank Blogger of the Year for 2011, but as local South Florida Tea Party activists who are very familiar with Manjarres’ unrelenting and unfounded personal attacks against us — not to mention his police record — we can attest to his unworthiness to hold the title.

Javier Manjarres Police Record, Page 1: Burglary and Assault.

Although up until now Ellen and I have opted to ignore the lies and slander hurled against us by Manjarres and his partners-in-crime Gabe Carrera and Patrick Castronovo, their latest attacks on not only our reputations but our businesses have compelled us to respond.

First, we would like to document the history of the vitriol, which begins on the night of Edward Lynch’s primary victory in Florida Congressional District 19 on February 2, 2010. For whatever reason, Javier had taken it upon himself to constantly attack Ed throughout the campaign, presumably as a reaction to Lynch’s refusal to purchase an ad on his Shark Tank blog.

On the evening of Ed’s primary victory over Joe Budd, Javier Manjarres and Patrick Castronovo showed up unexpectedly at Ed’s campaign headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida — prompting Ellen to ask them why they were there since they clearly opposed his candidacy. Their reply, “We want to capture it on film when Ed loses.” Fair enough. Politics ain’t beanbag as the old expression goes.

However, they were not content to stop with a simple political disagreement over which candidates to support. From that point on, they made it their mission to try to destroy Ellen which we can only attribute to some kind of sick obsession. At no time did Ellen retaliate, choosing instead to focus on the big picture — helping conservative candidates in Florida and across the country get elected via her formidable social media influence on Twitter, Facebook and later The Conservative Diva blog. In fact, our political activism is well-documented here, and we invite everyone to check out the videos we’ve posted of us precinct walking, stuffing envelopes and engaging in other productive political activities, along with local activist friends.

As for me, although I was not a Volunteer Coordinator for the Lynch Campaign like Ellen, I did help out in every way I could — interviewing Ed for publications like BrowardNetOnline and promoting his candidacy through my own social media contacts and my involvement with Tea Party Fort Lauderdale — an organization I was in on from the very first corner protest at the corner of US 1 and Oakland Park Boulevard, immediately following Obama’s passage of the second stimulus in February, 2009. At that time, I contacted Eddie Napolitano, back then the President of Southeast Broward Republican Club after having seen the porkulus protest in Seattle by Keli Carender, which inspired me to get in touch with local activists to put something together for South Florida.

Napolitano shared my enthusiasm and organized the first Fort Lauderdale Tea Party event. At the time I was blogging at Palin Drone, where I fully documented every event I attended with photos, videos and commentary. As of matter of fact, Ellen picked me up that day and we drove down together. After that first protest, Tea Party Fort Lauderdale leader Danita Kilcullen suggested we come back to the corner of US1 and Oakland Park Boulevard every week — an idea Napolitano rejected, but I fully embraced.

Ellen Snyder (right) at the first Tea Party Fort Lauderdale protest in 2009.

Daria DiGiovanni at the first Fort Lauderdale Tea Party.

As the weeks went on, our small but devoted band of Tea Party activists faithfully showed up every week in spite of the attacks hurled at us by conservative A.M. talk radio host Joyce Kaufmann — brought to my attention a few times by an understandably upset Danita and fully documented by me at Palin Drone and Smart Girl Politics. I immediately supported Danita’s efforts against Joyce’s regrettable remarks and received this email response in return from the talk radio host and self-proclaimed independent conservative herself:

feel free to attack me on your blog

but you are not as important as you think you are. none of my rantings have been about you. i do a very successful talk show, i am not “leading” anything. whatever i do that people join in is because i believe it has a purpose. i could care less what anyone else thinks about me. when you are standing on principle, personality doesn’t matter. and i am berating this masochistic national tea party movement, certainly not my dear friends ed and stacy and danita. i love them and they love me, even when we don’t agree, so grow up daria.and don’t lecture me about joe kaufman. i have been supporting him and his efforts before you came on the scene. and when joe has a disorganized moment, i don’t pretend it went well. this is the real world, not a novel. if honesty offends you, you just may be a liberal. you keep blogging, i’ll keep talking and we’ll see each other at WEST rallies. just don’t come up to me. the one thing i hate is when i try to help someone and they turn around and stab me in the back. — Stay on the wall !

Note: I copied and pasted the email exactly as written – with punctuation and grammatical errors.

Interestingly enough, Joyce has since become an avid supporter and welcome speaker at Tea Party Fort Lauderdale even as my initial support and encouragement has been forgotten. Be that as it may, I only bring it up to document the many distasteful things I have dealt with from people who are supposedly working for the same cause. Nevertheless, I congratulate Danita on the success of the Tea Party in Fort Lauderdale and wish them all the best. In fact, I kept attending their events long after the conflict with Joyce, keeping my eye on the bigger picture and doing my best to rise above the pettiness. My photos from all Fort Lauderdale events are posted on my Facebook Page, and I encourage everyone to check them out.

In May of 2009, Steven Rosenblum and I launched Conservative Republican Forum on Blog Talk Radio, where among other prominent people, we also interviewed grassroots candidates including Edward Lynch and Marco Rubio.

Here’s video from my coverage of the Fort Lauderdale Tea Party event immediately following the 2010 midterms.

For more videos, visit The Conservative Diva YouTube Channel, the Daria Anne DiGiovanni YouTube Channel and the Diva Media section of this site.

In July of 2010, hoping to help reform our local Republican Party from within, Ellen and I (along with other activists) were sworn into the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee. But what should have been an uplifting evening turned into a nightmare when we arrived to find Javier Manjarres passing around a disgusting flier featuring one of Ellen’s Facebook photos and claiming she was unfit to be a precinct committeewoman:

“Do we really want this woman to represent the Palm Beach Republican Party? Please share with your friends.”

Javier proceeded to approach everyone in attendance that night to convince them to vote against Ellen. His effort failed and both Ellen and I were sworn in that night.

On July 31, 2010 Manjarres sent the following email to Edward Lynch, Daniel Diaz, Jessica Dornblaser, Chris Leggatt and me, which I am copying in its entirety here:

From: TheSharkTank <sharktank411@gmail.com>
Date: July 31, 2010 9:46:56 AM EDT
To:edward@edwardlynch.com, danielpdiaz <danielpdiaz@aol.com>, daria_anne67@yahoo.com, jessica.dornblaser@gmail.com, Chris Leggatt <chris@lowryforcongress.com>, lowryforcongress <lowryforcongress@gmail.com>
Subject:Just a little tender loving for you all-make sure some others mentioned in here get to see this. xoxo

As you all know, I usually never comment on the Shark Tank, let alone any other blog. But today I feel compelled to express the pain I have bee feelin in my stomach from laughing at all of you hypocrites and malcontents over the past week or so-actually, I have been laughing at all of you train wreck victims for awhile now.

I appreciate that all of you are so enamored and obsessed with me and the Shark Tank- It seems as if all of your lives revolve around me- I am truly flattered.  Regardless of what you think of it, or how you try to discredit it, the fact remains  is that you will always read the Shark Tank.

Btw, whomever is defending me on the Sun-Sentinel post, you have brought great joy to El Sharko by making all of these idiots that are posting there think it is really me posting. Priceless! Thanks!

@Ellen
You are Queen Bozo the Clownette. Just because you were a liberal Democrat in the past, I am not going to feel bad about you and give you a pass. You are a cancer that is immune to all forms of rational radiation. You have embarrassed the Lynch Campaign, the Lowry Campaign and now the McCollum campaign. Your antics are laughable and your demeanor is reprehensible. We have been documenting your antics for months now, the future looks very bright for you. (sarcasm)

@Jessica
I don’t believe anything you say. Its amusing to me to see how you and everyone else throws Ellen under the bus, when you are all just as guilty as she is. One of your friends just notified me that you and Ellen are behind all of the Shenanigans of the past week. I am sick and tired of Ed and Tim making excuses for you because of your age. You are a woman and like I said before, Tim needs to pull up his pants and put you in your place. Your historic emotional rants have caused problems and have embarrassed scores of people around you.

@Daniel Paul Diaz
You need to find a girlfriend, really. You are pathetic when you say you are a devout Christian/Catholic or whatever you are this week.  Btw, the Sunkist  company is still trying to get you to stop using their Charlie Tuna trademark illegally. I was nice enough to send them all of your personal contact information so you guys can work it all out. Cheers!

@Daria
Really disappointed in you. I have always considered you to be the smart one of the bunch. I read your post on Jessica’s wall yesterday and it cracked me up. You judge without knowing any of the facts. You believe everything and anything your ya ya yahoos tell you.  You are smarter than that.

@Shona
Concern yourself with your own love life, not mine. Why do you care if I date 20yr old girls?

@Lowry Campaign
Leggatt, Lowry, Fat boy- you are all complicit. You fools don’t even realize that you are going to lose this race. The Democrats want you to win because they know the kind of beat-down they are going to give you over the DWS incident. Word of advise to you, take cover because you are about to get smacked down- and I am not talking the Democrats.

@BREC
Get over the fact that Charlie is an Independent. We all know that your hidden agenda is to vote Charlie in and AG McCollum. You are in for a rude awakening.

XOXO

–
Javier Manjarres
Managing Editor
The Shark Tank
www.shark-tank.net

Advertising opportunities available
sharktank411@gmail.com

Author’s Note: The purpose of Part One was to lay the foundation and provide a history of Ellen’s and my activism and subsequent attacks from Javier Manjarres, Gabe Carrera, Patrick Castronovo and in my case, Joyce Kaufman. Hopefully, the source links we provided to back up our statements will provide readers with the additional information they need to fully understand the extent of the vitriol. Additionally, we have all the jpg files of Manjarres’ complete police record, which we will happily send out to anyone who would like to see them. We welcome all interested parties to contact us via email: conservativediva@yahoo.com.

Addendum from Marty Hughes, Broward Republcan Executive Committee Member:

The point here is not to pit anyone against Javier Manjarres or his friends, but to get you to understand that what he is doing is wrong. It’s immoral and more importantly, his misrepresentation of the facts is the only action that is currently threatening the solidarity of the BREC. He seeks to stir up controversy in order to make money. I urge you to stop feeding this divisive behavior and join together and win in 2012. As Rico says, “a house divided is a house that falls,” therefore, be careful what you read and even more careful who you support. We have the most important election season in our nation’s history at our door. We need unity more than ever and now is the time to shut out those who would seek to divide us. It is crystal clear that Javier Manjarres seeks profiteering at the expense of our volunteering. Finally, I ask you Mr. Manjarres, what is your purpose at the BREC? Are you there to further Republicans or yourself? Can you stop the attacks and help us all win in Broward County?

Coming Soon: Silent No More, Part Two — complete with fake Facebook profiles, a staple of Javier Manjarres’ smear campaign.

UPDATE: Per their requests, I have removed two of the people named in the above email.