Local left-wing activist and professional protestor, Sheila Cocchi, and wannabe journalist, Mike Lednovich, are prime examples of the local far left’s efforts to squelch or demean the speech of anyone holding viewpoints contrary to their own.
Recent instances of their shameless attempts to redirect the toxic characteristics they possess onto others were their attempts to denigrate Fernandina City Commissioner, head of the Nassau County Republican party and local fireman, Darron Ayscue.
Weary of their venomous antics Ayscue justifiably struck back in a comment on Cocchi’s muddled Facebook page labeled “What the Fernandina.”
Cocchi, a tiresome local leftist screecher was aghast that anyone would attempt to recall two of the four City Commissioners, who champion Fernandina’s paid parking fiasco. Ayscue is the lone commissioner who opposes the paid parking nonsense and has publicly stated his opposition many times.
Cocchi’s online claptrap included an illustration displaying No Paid Parking and recall advocates standing with black masks and a dark shadow figure behind them. Cocchi called them liars.
Ayscue responded that her insinuation that the recall group had nefarious intentions and that there is some larger movement behind it was garbage. He insinuated that her phony efforts to plant seeds of discourse were unprovable and only served to divide the community, accusations she should be accustomed to by now.
The semiliterate Lednovich immediately sprung to her defense with his typical hypocritical sophomoric twaddle in the online blind “Observer.”
“Vice Mayor Ayscue’s Facebook insults cross the line – again” blared the headline above a Lednovch story. An illustration above the article blared “Idiot, Liar, Hypocrite,” labels Lednovich says Ayscue is guilty of using.
Lednovich said Ayscue “bluntly accused her (Cocchi) of being a “propaganda machine,” saying she fabricates conspiracy theories, and suggested that anyone she supports politically is “40 points behind” by association. Lednovich continued saying: “He went further, calling her “extremely dangerous” and urging voters to simply vote against whomever she supports.
So? Lednovich finally got something right. Where did Ayscue go wrong?’
Ayscue actually should have gone further by asking where Cocchi gets her funding and why she conducts phony Congressman Aaron Bean “Town Hall” meetings which she knows Bean can’t attend. Also, why didn’t he ask where Cocchi gets her funding to rent venues and print literature as she has no apparent source of income.
California transplant Lednovich, a less masculine version of Cocchi, and a failed second term City Commission candidate, who was a laughing stock and embarrassment as mayor, currently writes for the online Observer, a bogus news outlet that serves as the city’s propaganda arm.
Not once did Lednovich attempt to contact Ayscue to ask him about his comments.
Lednovich appears to be the lone “reporter” on the Observer staff. However, based on his articles it’s difficult to determine what’s fact and what’s opinion, since his intellectual dishonesty mingled with a few who, what’s, when’s, where’s, and why’s is blurred by his anti-conservative virtue signaling and intolerance for ideologies opposing his own.
Former News Leader scribes Pat Foster-Turley and Dickie Anderson pen features on nature and historic houses respectively, but there appears to be no other staffers. An assortment of like-minded locals contribute occasionally but any semblance of an objective news staff is nonexistent.
Apparently still stunned by his election loss the dazed and bewildered Lednovich frustratingly and futilely uses his current platform to lash out, scribbling his daftness and spewing sour grapes for the sight-impaired online Observer and its dozen or so leftist readers – six who read it out loud to the other half dozen. During his chaotic Commission tenure California transplant Lednovich has justifiably earned a “Florida Man” label while:
- Purchasing a house near the airport then then complaining about the noise of airplanes;
- The Chip Ross-Lednovich Commission duo being so outrageous it generated political cartoons and articles in state-wide media lampooning them.
- Publicly boasting that it was against the law for a developer to sue the city for loss of revenue then admitting he had no idea what law that might be.
- Constantly wearing a Fernandina Beach Police Department cap when he clearly wasn’t a cop or a member of the department.
- Parading through downtown Fernandina haughtily displaying a Black Lives Matter sandwich board while wearing the FBPD cap publicly exhibiting his support of that murderous cop-hating, defund the police group. At the same time he sported a red clown nose. I’m not making this up.
- Believing as a commissioner that raising taxes and fining and threatening current businesses is more lucrative than attracting new businesses, tourists, and private-sector investment and revenue.
The photo posted here of the former City Commissioner wearing a red clown nose while proudly displaying his allegiance to the murderous and destructive BLM crowd was posted on his Facebook page while he was still on the Commission.
By continually wearing the FBPD cap, he continues to confirm his intellectual shallowness. As Louisiana Senator John Kennedy once said about a similar politico in his state: “He’s not the dumbest guy in town, but he should hope the dumbest guy doesn’t die.”
It obviously didn’t bother Lednovich that BLM works closely with numerous domestic, left-wing, pro-Palestinian organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine and members of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Activists belonging to these organizations celebrated Hamas’ atrocities, including in America’s streets and on America’s college campuses. This is the crowd Lednovich was proud to publicly endorse. He has never explained why.
In an angry screed attacking his successor, Mayor Bradley Bean, an irate Lednovich wrote: “When was the last time a Fernandina Beach mayor hurled insults from the center seat? And should the mayor – a figurehead of goodwill for the city – engage in that type of conduct?” Lednovich could have answered that question by looking in a mirror. He wrote that tripe despite his own history of embarrassing the city every time he opened his mouth or appeared in public proudly toting his BLM sign while wearing a FBPD baseball cap.
In the bizzarro world he lives in he thinks the residents that he ill-served as a commissioner and voted him out of office are interested in his Observer ramblings.
At a City Commission meeting a fed up Mayor Bean accurately fired back at the muddled local media that includes clueless frauds like Lednovich, and the sightless Observer labeling them “fake news.”
Lednovich didn’t like that. He thinks he’s the fictional Daily Planet’s Perry White, not an incomprehensible ill-informed hack who can barely write at a third grade level. Nobody could comprehend him when he babbled on as a commissioner and his Observer ramblings prove that nothing has changed? A commissioner who served with him once joked: “Lednovich had to study for a blood test.”
At the Observer Lednovich once spat sour grapes at Mayor Bean for gaveling his former comic loudmouth sidekick Chip Ross silent hilariously writing: “Bean was armed with a wooden gavel – which he pounded three times to silence Commissioner Chip Ross, who was in mid-sentence.” Yeah! that was Mayor Bean’s job, to silence boors and rude interrupters.
When he was a Commissioner Lednovich once told me it was against the law to sue the city. When I asked him what law that was he stammered something about having to look it up and I never heard from him again.
More examples of Lednovich’s glitches in public include once telling a local group there should be a cap on how much money people can earn.
Fortunately he can no longer embarrass the city as a member of the City Commission. However, he has no problem continuing to publicly embarrass himself.
Apparently his nonsense hasn’t impacted the Observer’s advertising revenues. Maybe because it doesn’t have any.
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Speaking Of Crossing The Line: The annual kick-off for the 2026 Cross The Line Paddle for Veterans will be held on Sunday February 15th at the American Legion Post 54 on South 3rd Street from 12:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Admission to the event is free and food will be available from Smoke-n-Da Cockpit.
At the event registration for the upcoming June 13th Paddle for Veterans will open and Cross the Line Foundation Board members will be there to assist with registration. A presentation will be given at 1:00 p.m. highlighting the paddle and this year’s paddle recipient “Building Battle Buddies”, a Nassau County non-profit which trains and provides service dogs for Veterans throughout Florida and Georgia.
The American Military Historical Society will display artifacts from WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.
The 8th annual Cross the Line Paddle for Veterans will be held on Saturday June 13th. Registration for this year’s paddle is $75.00.
Some pretty heavy criticism for the Commission, a former member and also the over the edge of the cliff leftist Cocci. But unfortunately, most is well-deserved. What a dysfunctional city. I used to think the city council members in my Kalifornia city of a quarter of a million were lightweights, but now they seem like heavyweights compared to what what the City of Fernandina Beach offers, except for Daron Asycue, who is far better than I expected.
Very well said Dave. Lednovich is a left wing democrat and thank goodness, no longer involved in local politics. He is a clown (as evidenced by is red clown nose antics) and at best, a lousy publisher of a left wing news rag. It is hilarious to see his Observer headlines. He and Sheila Cocchi are two peas in a pod.