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'Embarrassed' candidate leaves race
By BARBARA BEHRENDT, Times Staff Writer INVERNESS -- Don Bates, who proclaimed himself one of the "God guys" in his campaign for School Board, quit the race Friday after the Times confronted him with his having been arrested and charged with masturbating in public at the Crystal River Mall in 1994. Bates, 55, admitted the arrest and the offense and said he did not expect it would come to light. "It was expunged. I went through the expungement process," Bates said. "I'm sorry that this has to be printed." He said he would step down from the District 1 race for the board, leaving Louis Miele the only candidate for the seat that will be vacated by Carol Snyder. Bates was at the forefront of a highly publicized battle last year when Snyder proposed that the School Board try to rotate various prayers at the beginning of meetings rather than using only Christian prayers, a long-standing tradition. Bates rallied Christian friends and other church members to sign a petition voicing "no confidence" in Snyder's leadership and publicly blasted Snyder's stand at public meetings. When she chose to retire, he stepped into the race. "Obviously, I do not want to cause any problems to the school system so I'm going to resign. I'm not going to run," Bates said. He also said he planned to resign from the Citrus County Republican Executive Committee. "I'm going to be embarrassed one way or another," he said. "I apologize to those who supported me, but this is the only correct decision that can be made. I don't want the voters to have to mull over in their minds whether they should forgive or not forgive." Bates blamed depression, use of pain medications and a pending divorce for his "aberration" and claimed that he had only the highest goals for his campaign. "I thought I had something to offer," he said. According to the Crystal River Police Department, in November 1994, Bates called a 29-year-old man over to his car in the parking lot of Sears at the mall. As the man approached the Nissan Maxima, "he saw the man was naked from the waist down and was masturbating. The complainant said that vehicle then took off out of the parking lot." The man got the license number of the car. Later an off-duty Crystal River police officer spotted the vehicle in the parking lot of the Citrus Center in Inverness in front of the Golden Corral Restaurant. The officer went inside and found a man matching the description given by the witness. It was Don Bates, who was a manager at the restaurant. He was also the owner of the car. Bates, now retired, no longer works for Golden Corral. Bates was arrested on a warrant for indecent exposure and also faced charges of driving with a suspended license. "It was a bad day. There was just a lot of stuff happening and I was in a very depressed mood. I went for counseling afterwards," Bates said. "I was abusing some painkillers," Bates said. "It was a situation where there was a lot of depression. I was going through my second divorce and my self-esteem was pretty down. . . . I can tell you that I had thoughts of taking my life." Because Bates went through a pretrial intervention program, the indecent exposure charge was dropped. Then he sought to have the case wiped from his record through the expungement process, and he thought that would be the end of it. But the process was only partially completed, and the reports on the case were still housed at the Crystal River Police Department. The arrest for indecent exposure was not his only run-in with the law, although on a biographical form Bates submitted to the Times for the election, he did not report that he had been arrested before. In December 1989, he was charged with shoplifting. He explained on Friday that he had gotten into a dispute with a merchant in Pinellas Park when he lived in that area. He was angry over a settlement about sunglasses he had bought and stormed out of a store with another pair he had not paid for, challenging the shopkeeper to call police. He did, and Bates was arrested but later the charges were dropped. To withdraw from the election, Bates will have to file his final campaign contribution report, closing out his account. Although his race will still appear on the ballot in the Sept. 10 election, the race results will not be counted, according to an elections official. Bates' withdrawal from the race came just a day after the Citrus Times published excerpts from a letter he wrote to supporters. The letter, which was sent to those who supported his efforts to discredit Snyder for her stand that not all prayers opening board meetings should be Christian, stated that support for Bates would mean that the "God guys" would win again. He went on to quote scriptures to solicit donations from his supporters. Asking supporters to raise $5,000 toward his campaign, he wrote, "I agree, that is a lot of money. But Scripture does admonish us, "Ye have not because ye ask not.' " The news of his previous arrest and resignation came as a shock to those close to the race. "You're kidding me," Snyder said when a reporter told her the news. "I feel sorry for him, but I can't say I feel sorry that he's leaving the race." Miele was flabbergasted by the news. "Oh my God," he said. "I'm probably supposed to be excited but I feel bad. . . . I feel bad for him." -- Barbara Behrendt can be reached at behrendt@sptimes.com or 564-3621.
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