Bill sponsor J.D. Alexander
By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist
Who in the Florida Legislature voted to make water use approval easier to get and take away wetlands permitting from local officials by giving it to a five member statewide board while also eliminating any power from the public by having closed meetings? Why, everyone, that is who.
I will be joining a panel discussing the accomplishments/lack thereof in the 2009 Florida Legislature on Fox 13’s Your Turn show with Kathy Fountain. Phone or e-mail your questions in, yourturn@wtvt.com or call 813-875-8255 or 800-826-4434 (according to the Fox website.)
Here’s a good review from the Tallahassee Democrat of just how the petroleum industry and its lobbyists sprung their 11th-hour surprise to end a 20-year ban on offshore oil drilling on the House of Representatives.
From the Democrat’s Florida Capital News website:
With a little less than an hour’s discussion, and a quick, mostly party-line vote, every conservationist’s worst nightmare was headed for the House floor. The House gave preliminary approval on Friday.
“This is like a Carl Hiaasen novel,” laments Janet Bowman, a lobbyist for the Nature Conservancy.
But unlike the colorful characters who scheme to sell out Florida’s natural wonders in Hiaasen’s works of fiction, the supporters are very real. Their ranks also include some respected names, including Martha Barnett, a former president of the American Bar Association.
Former House Speaker John Thrasher, a lobbyist who is also pushing the measure, smiles broadly and praises Cannon’s master stroke.
“He’s a rising star,” Thrasher said. “We needed to look at this, not just pull it out and have everyone just say no. It’s been amazing to see the pent-up energy for this.”
By Ben Luongo
PoHo contributor
Ben Luongo is a USF political science graduate student. He will be graduating this spring.
Florida universities face serious budget cuts if the proposed House of Representatives budget (here’s a .pdf of its appropriations) for higher education goes through. The budget would cut $500 million in basic budget support and an additional $100 million in salaries.
What does this mean for our Florida Universities?
By State Rep. Rick Kriseman, D-St. Petersburg
PoHo contributor
Kriseman is blogging throughout the Florida Legislature’s 60-day session.
There is certainly no shortage of blogworthy material in Tallahassee these days. The indictment of our former speaker, Rep. Ray Sansom, has been greeted by mostly silence in the Capitol, with even my Democratic colleagues preferring to focus on the business at hand rather than score easy political points. I had thought the strong language contained in the grand jury’s indictment and the damning assessment of our legislative process would temper the culture of secrecy, but that hasn’t been the case. Participation in the budget process has been restricted to just a few Republicans, a late-filed amendment to allow oil drilling in the Gulf just a few miles off our shores was heard with almost no notice given to the amendment’s likely opponents, and a broader energy package is expected to come before the full House without prior committee or council vetting.
There’s more.
By State Rep. Rick Kriseman, D-St. Petersburg
PoHo contributor
Kriseman is guest blogging throughout the Florida Legislature’s 60-day session.
The House Democratic Caucus is imploring Speaker Larry Cretul to consider a renewable energy package. At a time when most states are moving forward with innovative policies, such as feed-in tariff, and are making real progress in adhering to a true renewable portfolio standard, Florida appears to be stuck in neutral. Even in the state senate, where at least some energy policy is being considered, the opportunity to create and invest in renewables is being diminished by a “clean” energy standard which includes nuclear power and coal gasification.
As the Ranking Democrat on the Energy & Utilities Policy Committee, my office worked with the Democratic office to craft a letter to the speaker. In the letter, Democratic Leader Franklin Sands writes that ”after months of committee meetings and four weeks of session, the Florida House of Representatives has no energy package. None. The impression in any thinking Floridian’s mind is that we are ignoring not just initiatives that will directly benefit Florida, but ignoring a worldwide movement, and firmly embracing an obsolete status quo. With no energy policy, we risk losing badly needed federal economic recovery dollars which could spur an explosive growth in green technologies here in Florida.”
We’re just past halftime. It’s not too late for the 4th Floor of the Capitol to see the light. As long as that light is powered by a renewal source of energy.
Speculative real estate buying is what got Florida in this current economic mess. We’ve got an unsold inventory of an estimated 300,000 homes. So what is some lawmakers’ answer to this economic crisis? More unfettered, unfocused and unrealistic growth.
Craig Pittman at the St. Petersburg Times reports this morning on a new bill unveiled yesterday that would abolish the state’s growth-guiding agency, the Department of Community Affairs. Its responsibilities would be shifted to the unelected Secretary of State’s Office (which was once held by Katherine Harris).
Under Crist’s pick as secretary, Tom Pelham, the agency has blocked such controversial projects as the mammoth Wiregrass development off Bruce B. Downs Boulevard in Pasco County and a Taylor County development proposed by St. Petersburg surgeon J. Crayton Pruitt.
Pelham’s agency blocked the Wiregrass development – which promised 12,000 homes or apartments, three elementary schools and enough stores to fill two major shopping malls – because Pasco officials failed to nail down road improvements to accommodate all that growth.
And in Taylor County, Pruitt had proposed destroying 58 acres of wetlands adjacent to a state aquatic preserve in order to build 624 condominium units, an 874-unit hotel, 280,000 square feet of commercial space and a golf course. Pelham contended those plans went far beyond the state’s plans for how the coast should be developed and failed to protect the fragile environment.
Read the full story here.
Today is the 2nd day of the 2009 Legislative session.
Here are the highlights from the agendas for each side of the Capitol:
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Florida House of Representatives |
The House of Representatives will hold committee meetings on Wednesday. Here are some of the interesting items on committee agendas:
The Select Committee on Seminole Indian Compact Review will meet in the morning to hear an analysis of the compact Governor Charlie Crist signed with the Seminole Indians, subsequently voided by the Florida Supreme Court, by Eugene Christiansen of Christiansen Capital Advisors. Committee staff will make a presentation on other state compacts.
By State Rep. Rick Kriseman, D-St. Petersburg
PoHo contributor
Kriseman and his Republican colleague, Will Weatherford, will be blogging throughout the Florida Legislature’s 60-day session.
Leadership.
Like most Floridians, that’s what I’m looking for this session – again. It’s encouraging that some House Republicans have finally followed the lead of the Democratic Caucus by exploring the idea of new revenue streams. Florida can’t survive on unpredictable, unsteady sales taxes forever. True leadership requires long term thinking, which has been a rare approach to problem solving up here.
Today, however, is a day for optimism. It is fitting that we convene our session around the same time as spring training in baseball. As with each team in baseball, hope springs eternal. So while the first day of my third session begins with another bleak budget forecast, I am hopeful that leadership will squarely confront our fiscal crisis in a different manner. Maybe they’ll even give Democrats some credit for pushing them in this direction. I did say hope springs eternal, right?
Today is the 1st day of the 2009 Legislative session.
Governor Charlie Crist will give the State of the State Speech at 6 pm. It will be broadcast live on the Florida Channel.
Here is a look at how each side of the Capitol will get started:
Yes, there was something richly ironic about taping our very “new media” political podcast in what used to be Creative Loafing’s morgue, or where we kept all our newspaper print back issues. I should say, keep, because they are all still in there, some bound in red leather collections.
Ahh, the good old days.
But I love this podcast biz. For my first, I invited WMNF’s Mitch Perry and Democratic consultant Ana Cruz to throw around three of the biggest issues of the week: the economic recovery and whether the Florida Legislature will try to reject some stimulus dollars; Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawal in Iraq, which has not pleased some on the far left; and Mayor Pam Iorio’s rail-transit dreams running into a bit of a buzzsaw at the Hillsborough County Commission. Plus, we listen to the sound clip of the week. I’ll give you a hint: it is from a well-known prescription drug abuser.
Listen and enjoy, and we’ll have a new one for you every week.
Download
We’re adding two new voices to this blog for the duration of the 60-day legislative session that begins tomorrow: Democratic House member Rick Kriseman of St. Petersburg and Republican state Rep. Will Weatherford of Wesley Chapel. Both legislators have promise to blog a couple of times a week from Tallahassee.
The two lawmakers will provide insights into the most important legislation of the day and contrast their differing ideologies on the issues the Legislature will wrestle with. If you have questions for them, you can leave them in the comments field. I can’t guarantee they will answer them all, but it costs nothing to try.
About Kriseman
Rick Kriseman (D-53) was first elected to the Florida House in 2006 after serving six years on the St. Petersburg City Council. His district includes parts of St. Petersburg, Gulfport, Pinellas Park, Kenneth City, and the unincorporated Lealman area. Rick is a deputy policy chief for the House Democrats and serves as the Ranking Democrat on the Energy & Utilities Policy Committee, and as a member of the PreK-12 Policy Committee, the House Policy Council, and the General Government Policy Council.
About Weatherford
State Representative Will Weatherford grew up in Pasco County and is one of nine children, seven boys and two girls. In 2006 Will Weatherford married Courtney Bense of Panama City, Florida. In 2008 their first child arrived, daughter Ella Kate. He attended Land O’ Lakes High School, then furthered his education at Jacksonville University where he played football & received his bachelors degree in Business Administration.
Will was elected in 2006 to the Florida House of Representatives. Representative Weatherford is the Chair of the State & Community Colleges & Workforce Appropriations Committee, Vice Chair of the State & Community Colleges & Workforce Policy Committee, Vice Chair of the Policy Council, and serves on the following committees and councils: Full Appropriations Council on Education & Economic Development, Joint Legislative Budget Commission, Rules & Calendar Council, Select Committee on Seminole Indian Compact Review, and the Select Policy Council on Strategic & Economic Planning. Will is in line to become Speaker of the Florida House in 2012. He will be the first Speaker from Pasco County in over 120 years.
The Florida Legislature’s annual lawmaking session starts Tuesday, with Gov. Charlie Crist’s State of the State Address that evening. The lawmakers have to fill billions of dollars worth of budget deficit, and Crist’s insistence that federal stimulus money will ease the pain is finding disagreement among the hardcore conservatives who control the House and (to a lesser degree) the Senate.
From the Miami Herald:
The stimulus money leaves Republicans in a difficult position. If they spend the money, they would look as if they’re siding with and acting like Democrats. If they refuse the cash, they would have to make deep budget cuts that would be tough to explain to constituents.
Adding to the tension: Lawmakers will likely forego tens of millions in home-town projects that they are accustomed to bringing back to their districts. Also, the House was thrown into disarray over Rep. Ray Sansom’s connections to a home-town college to which he disproportionately steered money, only to win an unadvertised job there. He faces a criminal investigation and his quit both the college job and his post as House speaker.
Lawmakers will take the federal money, if Crist has anything to do with it. He has publicly advocated for the stimulus money in appearances around the state, with President Barack Obama and on national television. Crist is entertaining a run for the U.S. Senate.
By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor
Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.
Tenure is a joke. It keeps bad teachers on the job and makes it difficult, if not impossible, to fire them. The CTA (Classroom Teachers Association) says tenure is necessary to protect teachers from batshit crazy administrators.
Nonsense.
What other job lets you underperform without repercussions, or allows a bad teacher to keep a job indefinitely until he/she either dies or retires?
Who do teachers think they are? Judges?
But when Florida lawmakers are faced with all the problems in Florida schools and then decide to make this a priority, isn’t that yet another negative and nasty sign that Florida teachers are not valued?
From the Palm Beach Post:
The out-of-state hotline earned the head of Visit Florida, which contracted for the call center, the wrath of GOP lawmakers scrutinizing state spending during budget meetings today.
Visit Florida is a private, nonprofit corporation that receives state and private money to promote tourism. The corporation received $35 million from the state last year and has come under the governor’s Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development for the past decade.
“You don’t know how unhappy that makes me that I just found that out. You don’t know how unhappy that makes me,” Senate Transportation and Economic Development Appropriations Committee Chair Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, told Visit Florida President Bud Nocera, his voice rising. “We just gave you millions of dollars. The governor just vetoed cuts in your budget. And you have a call center in Kansas City using our tax dollars.”
It turns out that the 2009 budget cuts engineered by Tallahassee Republicans makes liars out of those same legislators’ words from the 2008 session. In an excellent piece of hold-their-feet-to-the-fire reporting, the Miami Herald’s Marc Caputo writes:
Lawmakers slashed $1.2 billion in spending Wednesday, reduced nearly every state program’s budget — and began breaking their own past promises.
In a May 2 news release headlined ”House Republicans Keep their Promise to Floridians,” legislative leaders boasted that the 2008-09 budget didn’t spend savings on day-to-day operations, gave more money to the Florida Highway Patrol and the Agency for Persons with Disabilities and didn’t reduce Childrens Medical Services, Healthy Start or the state crime lab.
But Wednesday’s newly trimmed budget reverses most of those commitments. It spends up to $1.6 billion in savings money, takes back the new FHP and APD money, and cuts the crime lab and services for kids.
The GOP’s answer comes from Rep. Dean Cannon: Nobody can expect us to keep the same commitments made before we knew the depth of the recession.
Speaker Ray Sansom and Rep. Dean Cannon during the budget-cutting special section. (photo by Meredith Hill/House of Representatives)
The karaoke killer? Police say Robert Farley killed his father then returned to a Plant City hotel to dance and sing the night away, caught on hotel video (click here if video doesn’t load on your browser):
Today’s top headlines:
We’re almost $3 billion underwater in the state budget, so state Sen. Nan Rich’s idea today makes a helluva lot of sense: kill $600,000 in funding for an “abstinence-only education and crisis that counsels women about abortion alternatives,” according to TBO.com:
“There is not one peer-reviewed study that says that program works,” said Rich, D-Sunrise, referring particularly to the abstinence component. “It is a dismal failure, and that was the charge from the Senate president: Look for things that don’t work, and let’s take the money and use it in critical-need areas.”
Yeah, especially given recent studies that show the ineffectiveness of chastity pledges and other such head-in-the-sand approaches to sex education.
Will this program be cut? Of course not. It is a pet project of former Gov. Jeb Bush and a fave in the right-wing House of Representatives, who resisted the Senate’s efforts to cut it in 2008. Take a gander at this from the same guy who brought you the anti-gay Amendment 2:
“The services being provided are extremely important,” said John Stemberger, head of the socially conservative Florida Family Policy Council. “One judge of civilization is how we treat the most vulnerable members of society. There’s no more vulnerable a class of citizens than the unborn.”
The year really DID seem to go by fast …
One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.
Headlines after the jump:
As rumors swirl about whether she’ll seek re-election in 2010, our fave headline-grabbing winger Ronda Storms is taking on the menace that is the library book classification system known to anyone who ever went to public school as the Dewey Decimal System. This just in from the Trib:
Storms, R-Valrico, railed against the book-cataloging system during a budget hearing on state library aid, calling the Dewey Decimal System “anachronistic,” costly and just plain frustrating.
The system requires training for both staff and users, she complained. If Barnes & Noble organizes its books more simply, why can’t libraries?
“A lot of little old librarians are going to have a heart attack that I even said that out loud,” Storms said during Wednesday’s hearing. “But it really is ridiculous.”
Of course, the classification system is the official system of the Library of Congress and would be very costly to replace in Florida, state officials caution. That probably won’t stop Storms.
Blago refuses to step down, I refuse to step up, and Obama plays it cool:
Ray Sansom is the incoming speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, a gig that pays $42,000 a 
year, and yesterday it was learned he just got another new job: the Northwest Florida State College hired him as vice president of development and planning. That paycheck? $110,000 annually.
He got that job, in addition to being speaker, cuz (as the Palm Beach Post reported)
Sansom helped push through a bill to give the school its state college desgination this year, according to the Northwest Florida Daily Herald. He attended the school when it was known as Okaloosa-Walton Junior College.
Today we learn that Sansom, a Republican from Destin (near where the GOP legislators are having a posh getaway this week) did even more for his alma mater:
House Speaker Ray Sansom got $200,000 into the current fiscal year budget to help Northwest Florida State College, his new employer, build a “leadership institute.”
In an interview today, Sansom confirmed his involvement in the appropriation, which caused a behind-the-scenes stir with the Rubio administration since it was not discovered until late in the process.
Of course, that had noooooooothing to do with his getting the gig:
But Sansom said his involvement ended there. “None of that has anything to do with me or how I’m paid,” he told The Buzz.
Last week, we wrote about the incredibly stupid bills that often preoccupied the — and we’re quoting the Gainesville Sun’s editorial page here — “political romper room†that is the Florida Legislature this year. The session (mercifully) ended last week, and here is a follow-up on which bills we wrote about passed and which (for the most part) died a lonely and deserved death:
Passed
HB 1363 Salvia Divinorum is criminalized, and possession or sale becomes a felony with a five-year prison sentence. Only four legislators in the entire Legislature had the guts to vote against this silly and unnecessary addition to our “War on Drugs.†They included two Bay area lawmakers: Rep. Rick Kriseman of St. Peteresburg and Rep. Keith Fitzgerald of Sarasota. Bravo, guys.
Failed
SB 1992 Anti-Truck Nutz provision in a larger transportation bill. It passed 37-2 in the Senate, but House members took out the Nutz in the bill they passed, leaving the ban dead.
SB 744 Sexual Activities Involving Animals. This bill criminalized bestiality, which is not a crime in Florida. The bill, backed by animal rights groups and St. Pete Rep. Bill Heller, failed.
HB 257 Ultrasounds before abortions. By Rep. Trey Traviesa of Tampa. This thinly veiled attempt to stop women from having legal abortions passed the House 70-45 but died in the Senate on a rare 20-20 tie vote.
SB 302 “The Saggy Pants Bill.†Would have forced schools to ban the exposure of your boxers or bloomers. It failed in the House after passing the Senate 28-11.
HB 401/SB 2010 “I Believe,†Christian license plate. Failed despite several attempts to, ahem, resurrect it by Sen. Ronda Storms.
SB 2692 Academic Freedom bill (allows alternative theories to evolution)
Sen. Storms bill passed the Senate but failed after the House adopted an altered version that was unacceptable to her and hard-liners in the Legislature.
HB 73 Immigration. This bill — a wide-ranging crackdown on undocumented workers similar to an Oklahoma law — failed, along with 10 other immigration-related pieces of legislation. That includes SB 1118, which would have banned the use of the term “illegal aliens.â€
SB 1354 Florida Commercial Anti-Pornography Act.
Didn’t even get a hearing in committee.
HB 977 Public Transit Safety. Requiring more frequent bathroom breaks for bus drivers. Went nowhere, unlike the drivers, who need somewhere to go.
SB 386/HB 437 Food Service Restroom Inspections. The “I can’t spare a square†bill by Tampa’s Sen. Victor Crist would require toilet paper and clean restaurant bathrooms. It was flushed down the drain.
SB 2464 Implanted Microchips. Making it a felony to implant microchips in someone without their consent. This sci-fi plot device is safe in Florida; the bill failed.
SB 504/HB 193 (and four others) Cell phone prohibitions. Bills cracking down on under-18s, prohibiting texting while driving and requiring hands-free headsets all failed.
My cover story on the stands today is a mock GOP election strategy memo outlining the many wedge-issue bills in the session this year, plus a sidebar by Alex Pickett on 10 outrageous bills offered by goofballs in both parties.
Read the cover stories here and here.
And here is an update on the various pieces of legislation we wrote about, as of today’s session (most notably, the ultrasounds for abortions bill was killed on a tie Senate vote):
SB 744 Sexual Activities Involving Animals.
Co-sponsor Rep. Bill Heller.
Senate bill stuck in Judiciary committee; in several House committees going nowhere
SB 302 “The Saggy Pants Bill.â€
Democratic Senator Gary Siplin of Orlando
Passed Senate 28-11; in House council with iffy chances
HB 257 “Ultrasounds before abortionsâ€
– Rep. Trey Traviesa of Tampa
Passed House 70-45; died in Senate on 20-20 vote this afternoon
SB 1992 Anti-Truck Nutz bill/Banning gonads on vehicles.
Sen. Carey Baker of Eustis
Passed Senate 37-2; passed House this morning 112-2
HB 371 I Believe, Chrisitan license plate –
On third reading calendar in the House; Senate passed a specialty plate bill without it, with In God We Trust instead (Senate voted down an amendment from Sen. Ronda Storms of Valrico to add it)
SB 2692 Academic Freedom bill (teaching creationism)
Sen. Ronda Storms
Passed House 71-43 with language that tones down the bill’s impact; passed Senate 21-17; must go to a conference committee to iron out differences.
HB 73 – Immigration
Wide-ranging crackdown on undocumented workers similar to Oklahoma bill
Rep. Don Brown of DeFuniak Springs
Going nowhere in committee
SB 1354 Florida Commercial Anti-Pornography Act.
Sen. Siplin
Going nowhere in committee
SB 1118 Illegal Aliens.
Senator Frederica Wilson of Miami
Prohibiting the term “illegal alien†from appearing in state documents,
Going nowhere in committee
SB 340 Salvia Divinorum ban.
Sen. Paula Dockery of Lakeland
Passed, 109-4 in House; 39-0 in Senate
possession or sale of salvia a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
HB 977 Public Transit Safety/bathroom breaks for drivers
Rep. Geraldine Thompson
Going nowhere in the House
SB 386 “I can’t spare a square†bill
Food Service Restroom Inspections/
requires toilet paper in clean restaurant bathrooms
Sen. Victor Crist
Stuck on second reading calendar in Senate and passage is unlikely
SB 2464 Implanted Microchips.
Central Florida Senator Bill Posey
Making it a felony to implant microchips in someone without their consent.
Dead, went nowhere in committee
Cell phone prohibitions
HB 175 – on first reading calendar
HB 357– on first reading calendar
SB 1266 – going nowhere in committee
SB 1314 – going nowhere in committee
My old buddy Ron Cunningham must be behind this great editorial in the Gainesville Sun:
What’s wrong with Tallahassee? Is there no adult supervision in the political romper room called the Florida Legislature?
Read the entire piece here.
Earlier this week I spoke to Tampa Bay state legislators about the start of the 60-day lawmaking session and their view of the work ahead, and I got two very different viewpoints to the question of the impact of the as-high-as $ 4 billion shortfall we face:
“It’s a bad year to be an incumbent. Florida people are still mad…. You’re an incumbent, and they’re ready for change. The economy being what it is doesn’t help that. It’s horrible year to run as an incumbent. You’re there, and times are bad, so you’re guilty.†— Rep. Ed Hooper, R-Clearwater
“I don’t think that is going to overshadow all the good things about Florida. Look outside right now in this state; the sun is shining. It is a beautiful day. We are not at war on our own home ground. We should be very thankful that we should have what we have.†— Rep. Faye Culp, R-South Tampa
A rent-subsidized apartment complex in Belmont Heights, part of the East Tampa CRA, which would be impacted by Sen. Ronda Storms’ new legislation. (photo courtesy of tampagov.net)
The Times reports today that Sen. Ronda Storms has filed a bill that would make it tougher for cities across Florida to revitalize their decaying urban neighborhoods:
Storms, a Republican from Brandon, has proposed limiting to 15 years the life of special taxing districts intended to boost economic development in blighted areas. She also wants any district already in place for 15 years dissolved in 2009.
Such districts, called community redevelopment areas, redirect property taxes raised in their borders toward improving infrastructure and the economy in the area. They typically remain in place 20 to 30 years.
“It takes some time to build up resources that can be used to cure some of the more significant blight conditions in a community,” said Mark Huey, Tampa’s manager of economic development.
The motivation, ostensibly, is to get those property taxes now locked up in CRAs returned to county governments. It is part of Storms’ and her allies’ longtime power struggle against the city of Tampa. It is SB 1528, for those keeping score.
In the past year, Hillsborough County leaders have locked horns with the city over several issues, from Jim Norman’s insistence that county paramedics have a shot at extra-hours jobs at Raymond James Stadium to the possibility of consolidating some city-county services. That last idea, a pretty good one, was scuttled by Iorio because of the county’s anti-gay stance, which (and now we come full circle) was initiated by then-County Commissioner Ronda Storms.
All of this is the result of the fact that city leaders lorded over the unincorporated county and county commission for years until suburban sprawl in the ’80s and ’90s saw so much population growth that the county ended up with three times as many residents as the city. In the power struggle that ensued (and continues today), fiscal and social conservatives came to dominate county politics, which Tampa’s political structure remained more ethnic and more progressive. I wrote about the phenomenon in 2006, and not much has changed since then:
It is about control. It is about who will run Hillsborough. It is about growth and increasing the raw numbers of voters.
It is all about power.
Few of Tampa’s urban power brokers realize the depth of dislike out in the ‘burbs and beyond for their brand of politics. For decades, Tampa and its downtown set called the shots for the entire county. Tampa’s mayor sat atop that heap.
But starting in the 1990s, a group of political activists in eastern and southern Hillsborough worked to change that mix. They knew that the Tampa political base had something they didn’t: access to money, and lots of it. Developers and captains of industry played their politics and elected officials who hewed to a pro-downtown line. Tampa, with its working-class ethnic population, also skewed more Democrat.
So, armed with computers that constantly ran voter statistics, fueled by money from a handful of key supporters to pay for intensive polling that showed how and why certain candidates won races, and aided by a national swing to the right in 1994, these activists were ready to level the playing field. They brought together a working coalition to support conservative suburban candidates: anti-impact fee advocate Ralph Hughes, fiscal conservative Sam Rashid and anti-abortion financier Lorena Jaeb, to name a few.
They tapped into a basic reality: Most suburbanites live outside the city of Tampa because they want to. They don’t like the city, with its urban ways, its ethnic flavors, its rundown sections and its too-exclusive, too-expensive neighborhoods.
They also realized much better than their city counterparts how to use grassroots support, mainly along social conservative lines.
And so slowly and surely — to paraphrase H.G. Wells — they drew their plans against Tampa.
The state is in a recession. His property tax reform plan is a drop in the bucket — at best. Big Insurance still has its way with our state. The budget is headed for multibillion-dollar deficits. The honeymoon is over with Democrats, who launched an attack this week against him for spending relatively little time on the job, opting instead to barnstorm with Republican presidential nominee John McCain as his name is floated on possible VP nominee lists. Republicans are losing patience as well, with some legislators pushing for radical tax cutting and elevating the divisive fight over teaching evolution. He even upset the GOP faithful by saying he would not attend a Broward County charitable event he told organizers he would attend so he could hang out with McCain at the senator’s AZ home.
So it ought to be one helluva State of the State Address tonight by Gov. Charlie Crist as he tries to put a positive spin on the pile of dung that Florida finds itself in this year.
As he takes the podium, the first sustained attack against him by the Florida Democratic Party is no doubt ringing in his ears:
What if you elected a Governor and he never showed up to work?
That’s the question the people of Florida are asking these days after seeing their Governor constantly at John McCain’s side – in Virginia, New Jersey, Arizona, and other places – while there’s been little movement from the state’s government to deal with the Republican Recession facing Florida.
Incredibly, in the first month and a half of this year, Governor Charlie Crist took more days off than he actually worked – only a 48.3% attendance record during 30 potential work days.
The Florida Democratic Party even launched a new website to drive home the point. It says Crist has been out of the office more than he has been in it so far in 2008.
Crist’s press secretary responded in a Miami Herald blog:
Crist’s spokeswoman, Erin Isaac, did not dispute the numbers but said that the governor has been with McCain outside of Florida only when they traveled together on Feb. 4 and 5. Their schedules overlapped during two consecutive weekends in Washington, where Crist was attending meetings with members of Congress and other Republican governors.
“Gov. Crist has campaigned with Sen. McCain just two days outside of our state,” Isaac said. “There is no doubt Gov. Crist has been focused on Florida.”
It is a smart preemptive move that has nothing to do with Crist’s performance as governor and everything to do with the fight to win Florida in the November presidential election. If Crist remains as popular as he is now, the Republican nominee takes Florida easily. So it is strategically necessary to knock Crist down a few notches in the public’s eye.
Of course, this doesn’t make the legislative session that starts today any easier, politicizing a process already saturated with partisanship.
Crist’s State of the State is set for 6 p.m., a time later than normal so the Gov can garner a larger viewing audience. Given the state of the state, he might want to reschedule it again – for midnight, perhaps.
