Hello! You’re reading HeirMail, the only newsletter to come from me (hi) setting a Google Alert for the word “heiress” and then just writing about whatever pops up.
….insurrectionists. You get it!
(I’m sorry if I successfully made you think “Stancellis,” that was disgusting of me and I did it on purpose.)
CTRL + F:
A correction
Julie Jenkins Fancelli and the question: Is Publix bad?
Finding a little bit of humanity in the Publix debacle (but really, really far away from the Capitol and JJF herself; honestly’s a whole new story).
That’s it, no one else.
I have a confession: I hate the Julie Jenkins Fancelli story. I hate it so much that I… wrote more than 3000 words about it and am sending this newsletter out two days earlier than usual.
But I do hate it; it’s not fun to write about. It makes me want the whole self-assignment off my plate, so that is just what I am doing now. (Heir Mail #14 will arrive on Valentine’s Day, which: yes, that feels correct.)*
I can’t have it hanging over my head, and I can’t risk anything new happening between now and Saturday. The initial news, which appeared last edition, was relatively late-breaking for my designated newsletter writing hours, and last week I needed to wrap early so I could watch the Wendy Williams movie, Wendy Williams: The Movie, with my three-person adult single pod! I have a life after all!
But when I told my friend Fritz, moments after my discovery, that an heiress to the Publix fortune had funded the rally that came directly before the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, he already knew.
(Fritz, as an aside, named this newsletter, but does not subscribe. It’s fine.)
It seemed like a dereliction of duty to not include in the email, so I invited JJF to “eat my ass and choke on it.” Maybe not my most dignified? And now, it’s Thursday night as I write this, I’ve been watching The Alert and there have been 19 stories about Julie Jenkins Fancelli, and her massive donation, not even including Facebook posts and doubles. If you’re trying to judge if a story, heiress or not, is a big deal, media coverage is certainly one metric. (All 19 of them are listed at the end of the newsletter — we’re really playing with the form this week!)
And there’s interesting stuff in there, I want to bring it to you — mostly because Wednesday night I made myself sit down and go through everything that’s out there and I read it all, damn it — but I can’t look at it anymore. So, I’m going tell you about Julie or Julia Jenkins Fancelli, a woman I dislike so much I even bristle at using the house style of this newsletter, i.e. calling absolutely everyone by their first name (because they’re not bettah than me).
And then, I have an adjacent story I want to tell you. It’s not about an heiress, it’s a man’s story, of all things, but there are still a lot of details, and some thoughts, and some feelings too (mine).
*It also feels correct that this edition, #13, is so cursed.
Part I
Usually we end, not start, here but:
Estimated net worth: And, it’s a correction! Last week I gave the Jenkins family number as $6.8 billion, as of 2015, that was from the last time I’d checked Forbes in early December 2020. (I was, duh, too lazy to look again.) Forbes has since updated, however, on 12/16 of last year, putting the family at $8.8 billion, a full $2 billion up.
They’re America’s 39th richest family. They own 20% of Publix. The other 80%, I’ve noted before, is owned by employees, which is cool.
And the company? It’s a big un: according to the corporate site, retail sales in 2019 reached $38.1 billion. “Currently, [they] employ over 225,000 people.”
Part II
In the wake of this revelation, people want to know: is Publix bad?
Of course, all companies are bad! Capitalism is nihilism, bay-bee! And also when it comes to this specific situation, Publix’s proverbial hands might not be as clean as they’d like you to believe.
Shalini Ramachandran, Alexandra Berzon, and Rebecca Ballhaus reported the story for the Wall Street Journal in the February 1st edition of the paper, revealing for the first time that Julie donated $300k, 3/5 of the event’s cost, in conjunction with her buddy Alex Jones. If you don’t know Alex, congrats; he’s the star of Waking Life and a “performance artist” for legal reasons. And worse.
Julie, who has also shown up in this newsletter previously as Julia, IDK why, apparently reached out to Alex to offer her piles of cash. But how could she know that this event that was marketed with violent language could turn violent? On Sunday, January 31st, she gave a statement: “I am a proud conservative and have real concerns associated with election integrity, yet I would never support any violence, particularly the tragic and horrific events that unfolded on January 6th.” But ya ahhhh, Blanche, you ahhhh in that role of materially supporting the tragic and horrific events that unfolded on January 6th.
In this scenario, I am Baby Jane; anger always makes me Bette Davis. | Giphy/ Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
[I should say that Snopes makes a distinction here, explaining that while Juli? supported the rally “there is no evidence that Fancelli’s donation directly supported the riot.” Which, sure, she didn’t buy that one dude’s zip ties, that we friggin know of — and I’m glad Snopes exists and is precise — but we here at Heir Mail feel comfortable extrapolating blame, considering big baby Alex was up at the Capitol steps with a bullhorn.]
The WSJ story notes that Julie(/a) also “donated more than $980,000 in the 2020 election cycle to a joint account for the Trump campaign and Republican Party.” There’s a photo of her in there, in a coral baseball cap and a kelly green collared shirt, looking like a person for whom money has done nothing good or even a little interesting.
Publix, for its part, has tried to distance itself from Julie(/a). She doesn’t “represent the company in any way,” they say.
Other stories, especially the local Florida outlets, add bits and pieces that fill in the narrative further: News 4 JAX adds that her husband’s name is Mauro Adolfo Dino Fancelli and they live in Florence, Italy, as well as linking a Lakeland Ledger report that Publix itself had donated nearly $425,000 through its PAC in 2020, with 58% of that to Republicans (“including donations to senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, though neither Republican was up for re-election”).
The Bradenton Herald digs up the Fancellis’ 1972 Times Wedding announcement (fun!), which tells us he’s in charge of his family's fruit and vegetable wholesale business. More than that, they note the social media backlash and boycott of the supermarket and explain it further, pointing out there has been growing anger at Florida Governor’s Ron DeSantis order the Covid-19 vaccine only be distributed at Publix. According to BH, Julie(/a) donated $25K to Ron’s own PAC last October. Huh!
BH also pulls in a Broward New Times story that complicates the “Julie =/= Publix” narrative a bit, explaining that Alma Foods, formerly owned by her and Mauro, sold millions of dollars of produce to Publix between 2013 and 2017, which stopped right when Julie parted ways with Alma.
Bay News 9’s investigation also ties her more closely to Publix, explaining that she is the president of George Jenkins Foundation, Inc. which seems to be the same org that the chain “once touted” that their charitable arm, Publix Super Markets Charities, began as. (George was Julia’s father, the founder of Publix.)
(This report also seems to imply that the Julie(/a) slipperiness might not be cute nickname stuff, writing “the Federal Election Commission shows contributions in 2020 of about $2.5 million from Julie Fancelli, Julie Jenkins Fancelli, Julia Fancelli, Julia J. Fancelli, Julia Fancelli II, and the Julia J. Fancelli Living Trust.” Seems on the up and up!)
What should we all conclude from this? Bradenton resident Nancy Curtis in the Tampa Bay Times, writes that she’s done with Publix, saying “it’s obvious where her money comes from. It is her right — and the company’s right — to spend their money wherever they please, specifically on politicians whose values and morals differ radically from mine. But I do not have to continue to provide their ability to do so.” It is clear! You do not have to! While saying “fuck you” by withholding your money is pretty ineffective on an individual level — it sure feels better than adding to their bottom line.
It’s infuriating for corporation to have a local stranglehold on the next big step out of the pandemic. And the concern that Publix’s exclusive contract means that it’s harder to get shots to people from lower income communities without easy access to the store is a real one. Maybe you don’t have to buy chips there.
At the same time, if you’re in Florida, and going to Publix is the literal only way you can get the vaccine because of something that rhymes with shmruption you certainly shouldn’t think twice about that. I would take the vaccine dribbled direct from Stephen Miller’s mouth if that was the only way.
But I tricked you; I have an even more complicated answer for you at the end. I just had to go and get it from someone else.
Part III
I don’t know if it came through in my tone? in the last section? But I have a lot of hostility here. It feels like a dangerous way to write.
This whole newsletter thing is supposed to be fun, but it’s also kind of a test of empathy — a hard test, for me. I mean, we’re talking about money and gossip and dresses and money! It’s a barbed genre. I do like to see how much circumstance and media narrative and destruction and callousness I can hold in my hand without totally closing it into a fist. Sometimes I fail; sometimes I worry maybe that posture suborns extreme wealth! But I prefer pinpricks, and I try to balance making jokes with finding humanity in these very, very wealthy heiresses. At least I try not saying anything so glib that I actually regret it later.
I’m too angry about the events at the Capitol to think generous or even interesting or useful things about the woman who funded the event immediately preceding the violence. Not to contribute to ~the left’s victim narrative~, but I feel the violation from that day on an unexpectedly personal level. It’s embarrassing to articulate! I just know that there are people in the Capitol who would want me dead if they knew and also cared who I was.
And my anger has made me wonder over the last few weeks if I feel the same way about them. I don’t totally know my answer, not the way I’d like. This feeling is worse, or scarier. Call me soft; I would prefer not to feel that way about anyone.
So staring directly at Julie(/a) too long made me look around for something at least fun. Something at least else. A distraction.
Enter, Gregory Fancelli, her son.
Spoiler though: Gregory is not where the humanity is going to come in, at least not in the real way. He’s a great distraction though, and I don’t mean that in the Nicky Hilton’s hot husband way.
No, Gregory happens to come off as a top-tier chode. He has also donated to Trump. Here’s his Insta; please observe his hair choice, his many half-nudes of young women, and the fact that he posted a throwback pic of him at the Capitol in the ‘90s on January 8th. Probably for no reason, he probably really disapproves of what happened there, like his mom totally does!
But most amusingly, according to Corporation Wiki, Gregory was previously the manager of a number of LLCs, mostly formed in 2008, including: Tony Stark LLC (that’s Iron Man), Jack Bauer LLC (that’s Kiefer in 24), Chaz Michael Michaels LLC (Will Ferrell in Blades of Glory, although according to IMDb its “Chazz,” so, can’t even do that right), one named after the company from Step Brothers, one in honor of the snuff film film 8mm, and two for Tropic Thunder.
Gregory, oh my god, you corny loser.
Years ago I wrote about all the various Kardashian LLCs, and I do think naming corporations just a rich person past time, like race horses and boats. It would 100% be one of mine.
Gregory used them, though, to donate a bunch of money to a man named Billy Townsend in 2016, who would go on to be elected Polk County School Board District 1. Billy just left that position just last October, having lost his re-election bid following implications of racism and while quoting extensively from the Pixar film Ratatouille. Another asshole, it sounds like!
Well, who knows. The question of who is and is not an asshole is the defining one of our time. I suspect — from intensive reading of the linked text — it is fundamentally unanswerable, because too often we can only know what we’re told.
After some digging on Billy, though, my vote is NTA. At the absolute very least not at all the kind of asshole I was picturing. A complicated human, very possibly a huge pain to colleagues, but someone who is publicly thinking about the same questions we are here, and coming up with answers I wish I had.
Billy has a Substack too. Wednesday night, just as I was digging into all of this, he published his thoughts about the insurrection, the supermarket’s part in it, Gregory’s role in his own political life, and the role of other Publix heirs — specifically those related to Jules’s sister Carol, who I noted last week donated to Loeffler and Perdue in Georgia — in his recent loss. It’s the third entry in a series called Bound.
In his recent election, Billy was tarred as anti-Trump, a charge he says is largely true, although he tries to work with all kinds of people. He is emphatically anti-rioting violently at the capital (his phrase for it is “lynch mob;” I see no lie). He recognizes his own politics — especially as they’ve been portrayed in Facebook ads — as putting him in the general cross-hairs of people who would seek to overthrow the results of the election.
It’s a long blog. He won my interest by using the word “capital” a lot, and talked about a hope of converting the rich to “a politics that helps develop dynamic community capacity rather than strip-mining it and then using the profits to build monument parks and signature buildings as public consolation.”
He encourages the family to disentangle itself from politics altogether. He also says he happily accepted and appreciates Gregory’s money, thinks of them as “friendly but not friends,” and says that the scion never asked anything of him. He also explains that the money behind the “attack PAC” against him is “a who's who of (mostly inherited or married into) money in Polk County,” especially the Barnetts, the Fancelli’s cousins. Publix gives and Publix takes.
Billy doesn’t disavow the store. And while he displays a clear disgust for the motives of the rioters, he hopes that, well, Mrs. Fancelli didn’t know what she was getting into. (That’s a paraphrase, but the resigned “well,” is direct.)
Elsewhere, the Ledger notes that he’s popular with teachers, a proponent of public schools, and worked to get medical marijuana to those for whom its prescribed. His colleagues on the school board have implied Billy was disruptive. It seems true, although whether or not that disruption was warranted depends on your politics. I would tag him as a progressive.
The charges of racism are thornier to parse, especially from afar: The Ledger’s account of his last day in office said his opponent allowed “unfounded racial accusations against Townsend.” Billy, in his blog, points to his record on racial justice.
Black leaders in Polk County have clashed with Billy, with one former NAACP head calling him “racist” back in 2018. The charge came during a heated discussion about a Black school Principal, Jason Looney, who Billy wanted further investigated over an accusation of sexual harassment, as well seeing Looney’s wife Laquita investigated over a confrontation with a teacher.
This was compounded at the time by clashes with Superintendent of Schools Jacqueline Byrd, who is Black, over a contracted company that provided “online student instruction.” Other members of the community voiced distress that Billy was undermining the Superintendent, and she later cited him as a reason for her early retirement. Neither she nor lone Black school board member Kay Fields commented on his departure. It does seem he’s pissed off several local Black leaders.
At his own last meeting, a (white) fellow committee member credited Billy’s mother for his “sense of self-esteem,” saying, “I appreciate what you’ve done here, and I’m sure you’ll still be active in telling me what I’ve done wrong.”
On Thursday afternoon, I followed him on Twitter, where he’s a big Jason Isbell RTer. I wasn’t sure I was going to write about any of this. Would it mean anything to anyone? That some guy they didn’t know might be different than I’d initially thought based on my snap judgements? But I wanted to tell him what felt like the main thing I needed to tell someone: that I first thought he might have been a troll, but that he’d done a good blog. That his writing made me look harder, which was something I’d been looking for.
He was gracious about it, and directed me to his other work, including two books. He says he’s done with public office, but that he wants “to destroy Jeb Bush’s dehumanizing, hated model of test-centric education and rebuild it around developing humanity.”
Later, thinking about my seething contempt for Julie(/a), I kept coming back to part of Bound where Billy talks about inherited wealth. He said that kind of money “does not mean I envy them as people, particularly those who have inherited extreme wealth they did not earn… embodying capital means people see you as existence itself. That’s a very distorting, undignified, and dehumanizing way to live, for the supplicant and the capital alike.”
This was the empathy I haven’t even able to grasp for; the reminder that for all the Fancellis’ money and all the abjectly evil ways they use it — buying vaccine monopolies and throwing a pre-game for a bunch of people who seriously looked into killing Mike Pence — they are still grotesquely subject to it. Just like, not in the same way as you or I or Billy.
They could still make such different choices, he notes.
So, I asked him about the racism allegations, too, although frankly I don’t think it’s for Billy or for me, a white lady, to be the final word on that, if one exists. He explained that in the Looney case, he feels good about standing up for the women with less power; he’s proud that he was able to save the career of an administrator who had been fired. He quoted Nikole Hannah-Jones in his essay and again to me, when she said, “True integration, true equality, requires a surrendering of advantage, and when it comes to our own children, that can feel almost unnatural.”
I asked if there was anything he wanted to say that he hadn’t said in his very thorough post (still longer than this one, just saying). Billy said earlier in the day he’d had a Facebook conversation about what he’d written on his Substack, and they asked if he really still supported Publix. (The question on everyone’s minds returns: is Publix bad?)
Billy wanted to tell me what he’d told them: “I don't think support is the right verb. I love my community. Publix is vital to my community. I have critiques of my community and Publix in the same way I have critiques of myself or my kids. We can all be better. I want us all to be better. Does that help?"
Update: This newsletter has been edited since the emailed version to clarify that Billy Townsend lost his re-election bid; he did not step down.
This week’s heiress headlines, JJF-only edition:
“Jan. 6 Rally Funded by Top Trump Donor, Helped by Alex Jones, Organizers Say,” Wall Street Journal
“Report: Publix heiress gave ‘lion’s share’ of money for Jan. 6 Trump rally,” News 4 JAX
“Top Trump donor -- and Alex Jones -- behind funding for Capitol rally that turned into a riot: WSJ,” Raw Story
“Publix says heiress’s Trump donations don’t reflect its values. Boycotts suggested anyway,” Bradenton Herald
“Julie Jenkins Fancelli: Trump Capitol Rally Jan 6th Funded By Publix Super Markets Heiress,” Oakland News Now
“Report: Publix heiress funded Trump rally that preceded Capitol riot,” WESH
“Heiress to Publix Founder Donated to Trump Rally Before Riot,” NBC 6 South Florida
“PUBLIX HEIRESS FUNDS CAPITOL INSURRECTION DONATED $300,000 TO ALEX JONES THE NUT JOB,” Deerfield News
“InfoWars' Alex Jones helped jumpstart January 6 rally organization efforts,” WENY News
“New poll reveals balancing act for DeSantis, Legislature — Publix heiress helped pay for Jan. 6 rally — Florida man Carl Hiassen retiring from Miami Herald,” Politico: Florida Playbook
“Publix tries to distance from heiress who reportedly donated to pre-riot rally,” Fox 13 Tampa Bay
“Publix heiress funded rally before the Capitol riot,” CNN
“Publix Super Market Heiress Spent $300000 on Jan. 6 'Stop the Steal' Rally: WSJ,” Daily Beast
“Publix Heiress Gave About $2.5M to Republican Groups Last Year,” Bay News 9
“WSJ: Jan. 6 Rally Funded In Large Part By Heiress To Publix Supermarkets Chain,” CBS Miami
“Publix Distancing Itself From Heiress Who Reportedly Funded Trump Rally At Capitol,” WGCU
“Did Publix Heiress Donate $300K To Fund the Capitol Riot?,” Snopes
“Publix can do what it pleases — but without my money anymore | Letters,” Tampa Bay Times
“Publix, with its partisan pay-to-play moves, has more than a seditious heiress to atone for | Opinion,” Miami Herald