After hacking elections website, Manatee School Board candidate looks to future

David Levin’s background in technology and politics landed him in jail more than five years ago. Now, he hopes to learn from the past and bring his skills to the Manatee County School Board.

In an interview Thursday, Levin said he hopes to keep mask mandates and critical race theory out of local schools, and to bring new technology and financial oversight to the district. They were among his top goals before the election in November 2022.

Another priority, he said, was to overcome a blunder from years past.

Levin, who is currently running unopposed for the School Board’s District 2 seat, made headlines after he breached the Lee County Supervisor of Elections website in 2015, followed by the Division of Elections website in Tallahassee not long after.

The cyber attacks led to three felony charges that were later downgraded to two misdemeanors. He pleaded guilty and served 20 days in jail.

According to an arrest warrant from May 2016, law enforcement learned of the attack after Levin and his associate, Dan Sinclair, publicly talked about the breach.

Sinclair, who at that time was running to become Lee County’s next supervisor of elections, reportedly met Levin at a Young Republicans event. And though Sinclair was unaware of the breach until Levin approached him after the fact, both men worked together to bring attention to the website’s vulnerabilities, police said.

“On January 25, 2016, Sinclair and Levin posted two YouTube videos explaining the SQL injection that was performed on the Lee County Elections Office website,” the warrant states. “Levin explained that an SQL injection attack tricks the system into giving you information that might not otherwise be accessible to the public.”

Levin shared the same information during an interview with a television news station in Fort Myers. And about two weeks after the breach, the warrant continues, Levin also infiltrated the Division of Elections website in Tallahassee.

Levin’s own company, Vanguard Cybersecurity, sent a report on both attacks to the Department of State — a document that soon made its way to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

In an interview with the Bradenton Herald, Levin said he was curious about the integrity of elections, and that he took a Certified Ethical Hacker course around the same time. He used that knowledge to access the Lee County elections website as an administrator.

“I was shocked and a little bit horrified to find it was completely unprotected,” he said Thursday.

On May 4, 2016, police arrested Levin on three felony counts of unauthorized access of any computer, computer system, computer network or electronic device.

But after accepting a plea agreement, the court found Levin guilty of two misdemeanor charges and he served 20 days in jail, along with two years of probation.

“That was probably one of the bigger mistakes I’ve made in my life, the way I went about the whole thing,” Levin said of the hacking incident. “I made it very political and it affected my life for a few years.”

Levin, 36, is now a Bradenton resident and the father of three children, including a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old who attend a public charter school in Manatee County.

Looking forward, he envisions sitting in the District 2 spot on Manatee County’s School Board, a position held by Charlie Kennedy since 2014. As of Friday morning, Kennedy had yet to file for reelection.

District 2 includes more than half a dozen elementary schools: Ballard, Manatee, Palm View, Samoset, Tillman, Johnson, and G.D. Rogers Garden-Bullock.

It also includes Lincoln and Johnson middle schools, along with Southeast High School.

“I’m running for School Board because I have some concerns about what’s going on here and all over the country,” Levin said. “I have three kids, I’m a father and I think that’s an archetype we want on the board.”

Levin talks landscaping and marijuana taxes

Levin’s campaign slogan is “education, not indoctrination.” At the top of his priority list are two hot-button issues that have dominated headlines in Florida over the last several months.

“First, I stand firmly against mask mandates, and even more firmly against critical race theory,” Levin said on his campaign website.

The School Board’s mask mandate is currently set to expire on Oct. 29. Manatee also followed direction from the state and gave parents the ability to opt out, meaning the mandate is voluntary, in effect.

And critical race theory, or CRT, is a decades-old review of racism and its influence on America’s laws and institutions. Education leaders at both the state and local level have said that CRT is not included in Florida’s curriculum.

“I hope by the time this election is coming to a head, those are in the rear-view mirror and we can focus on education and campuses and the kids,” Levin said.

The safety and appearance of local campuses was another concern for Levin. As someone who enjoys running, he often passes local schools and, at times, takes their maintenance into his own hands.

Levin touched on his concerns during a conversation about finances and reduced spending.

“There are some positions that you don’t need,” Levin said during Thursday’s interview. “If you need them, they’re not executing the job. I know we have groundskeepers at Samoset and Ballard but I’ve picked up four or five bags of litter in and around that campus.”

“I’ve also trimmed the hedges, and I mowed the public right-of-way outside of Ballard,” he continued. “There’s things that aren’t getting done and we’re paying people to do them. If you’re getting paid to do the job, do the job, and we won’t have to hire so many other people to pick up the slack.”

On his Facebook page, “David Levin for School Board,” he shared photos of the trimmed hedges, along with a video of himself running down Ninth Avenue West and remarking on a nearby school, calling it a “minimum security prison or jail.”

In the video, he said better landscaping and iron fencing — not the chain link fencing currently in place — would help local schools to become “a place where kids are inspired to learn, not a place where they count the minutes until they get picked up to go home.”

He also envisioned a technology upgrade in schools and district offices, noting on his website that “classrooms, both in person and online, should be outfitted with the best, and that does not mean the most expensive.”

On district finances, Levin said he opposed a one-mill property tax that was first approved by Manatee County voters in March 2018, and that now faces a renewal vote on Nov. 2. He said the School Board should maximize its current budget and not rely on special taxes.

There was one tax, however, that Levin would support.

“This isn’t popular,” he said. “My wife is firmly against this, but marijuana transactions are happening in the hundreds, if not thousands, every day in Manatee County. I don’t think any of that goes to schools and I think it should.”

Who is David Michael Levin?

His education started at the New York Military Academy. It was the same college preparatory school that former president Donald Trump attended in the 1960s, Levin noted.

“Even though there’s a big gap between when I went and when he went, I was lucky enough to have one of the same mentors,” he said. “His name was Col. Dobias and he was an old man by the time I was there.”

“But one thing he did was keep that campus pristine,” Levin continued. “I think every cadet probably recognized that, and I think there’s value there. I think there’s some pride. You can lift your head up a little higher and walk to school that way.”

From there, Levin said he went on to the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. But after attending military schools since the eighth grade, Levin said he quickly burnt out and decided to transfer before graduating from West Point.

Levin said he joined the University at Albany and worked on a bachelor’s degree. Meanwhile, he also served as a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear specialist in the U.S. Army Reserve, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He then earned a master’s in policy at SUNY Empire State College, and while working on that degree, Levin said, he also entered the political arena.

“I started working on political campaigns,” he said. “The first one was for then Silver Star recipient David Bellavia, but he went on to earn a Medal of Honor. . . . That was back in 2012. It was his first congressional campaign.”

More recently, Levin said he earned his Juris Doctor degree from Cooley Law School’s campus in Tampa. He also listed several jobs on his resume:

• CBRN Specialist for the U.S. Army Reserve from 2005-10.
• Specimen accessioner at Labcorp from 2008-10.
• Independent consultant at Political Precision LLC, his own company, from 2012-16.
• Intern at Gulfcoast Legal Services from 2020-21.
• Website, database and lead services for various insurance companies from 2017 to present.

To learn more about Levin and his campaign, visit www.bettermanateeschools.com or facebook.com/BetterManateeSchools.

You can also reach Levin by emailing david@bettermanateeschools.com.

This story was originally published October 8, 2021 at 1:47 PM.