Victor Crist says he will run for Hillsborough County Commission
February 17, 2009 at 4:00 pm by Wayne GarciaBREAKING NEWS: Victor Crist, a Republican state senator from the USF area and no relation to our governor, tells me this afternoon he has filed paperwork to run for the Hillsborough County Commission, as many 
expected and I wrote about in this blog before. He will seek the District 2 seat being vacated by Ken Hagan, who will run in a countywide seat in 2010 in an attempt to extend his term in office beyond the eight-year term limit. (The term limit applies individually to each district, so a commissioner can serve eight years in one seat and then try to jump to another seat and serve eight years in that seat.)
Technically, he is signing up for the 2012 election, when Hagan’s term ends. But that likely will be converted to an election in 2010, depending on how Hagan proffers his resignation, a requirement of state law since he wants to served in a seat elected countywide.
Here is where it gets tricky, so stay with me, because some politicos out there have raised the idea that Hagan’s seat might go to an appointment and not a special election. Florida has a Resign to Run law that requires public officials to give notice they are stepping down from their elected office if they are seeking a different elected office. From a 1979 Attorney General’s Opinion on the subject:
Florida’s Resign-to-Run Law is said to serve two purposes: To prevent an officeholder from using the power and prestige of one office to seek another and to spare the taxpayer the expense of having to finance a special election when an incumbent officeholder is elected to another office and is, therefore, compelled to resign from the one he or she currently holds. See the preamble to Ch. 70-80, Laws of Florida. It accomplishes these purposes by requiring any person who holds an elective or appointive office and who seeks to be elected to another public office, the term of which overlaps or runs concurrently with the term of the office which he currently holds, to submit an irrevocable letter of prospective resignation prior to qualifying for election, which resignation shall be effective regardless of whether the candidate is elected to such office. Section 99.012(2) and (3), F. S. A copy of the prospective resignation is presented to the Department of State, but otherwise the Division of Elections has no responsibilities or duties imposed by the law itself. See State ex rel. Shevin v. Stone, 279 So.2d 17 (Fla. 1972).
Florida Statutes 99.012 says it will be an election:
(2) No person may qualify as a candidate for more than one public office, whether federal, state, district, county, or municipal, if the terms or any part thereof run concurrently with each other.
(3)(a) No officer may qualify as a candidate for another state, district, county, or municipal public office if the terms or any part thereof run concurrently with each other without resigning from the office he or she presently holds.
(b) The resignation is irrevocable.
(c) The written resignation must be submitted at least 10 days prior to the first day of qualifying for the office he or she intends to seek.
(d) The resignation must be effective no later than the earlier of the following dates:
1. The date the officer would take office, if elected; or
2. The date the officer’s successor is required to take office.
(e)1. An elected district, county, or municipal officer must submit his or her resignation to the officer before whom he or she qualified for the office he or she holds, with a copy to the Governor and the Department of State.
2. An appointed district, county, or municipal officer must submit his or her resignation to the officer or authority which appointed him or her to the office he or she holds, with a copy to the Governor and the Department of State.
3. All other officers must submit their resignations to the Governor with a copy to the Department of State.
(f)1. With regard to an elective office, the resignation creates a vacancy in office to be filled by election. Persons may qualify as candidates for nomination and election as if the public officer’s term were otherwise scheduled to expire.
(Full disclosure: As a political consultant before joining CL, I represented Crist in his 2000 Florida Senate election and did other political work for him subsequently.)
