The Political Whore

Should local governments have spent your tax dollars in campaigns for referenda such as the Penny for Pinellas?

Senate Bill 216 is now law, and its top advocate, St. Petersburg state Sen. Charlie Justice is pretty happy about it. SB 216 bans local governments from spending tax dollars to educate voters about referenda, a process that is both defended by government as a necessary means of explaining tricky civic issues and criticized by those who say it is merely advocacy campaigning with taxpayer money.

I’ve got both sides of the issue on it. First, Justice, who issued this statement upon Gov. Charlie Crist signing the bill:

Read the rest of this entry »

Cristina Silva has a great story over at Bay Buzz about how the St. Petersburg City Council has a letter queued up to go to Gov. Charlie Crist urging a veto of SB 216, a good-government bill by local Sen. Charlie Justice.

Upshot is that city officials want to keep the ability to spend your money to tell you how to vote on city referenda or other issues. They say this bill is overly broad and could result in local elected officials getting arrested, they say. It is on the St. Petersburg City Council agenda for Thursday’s meeting, so if you can go and tell them to stuff it, that might be a good idea.

Download the draft letter in .pdf format after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

And then there is the bad news: The religious right gathered enough signatures to get a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage in Florida on the November ballot. That means nine months of campaigning that is certain to make you want to puke your guts out by the end of the ugliness. As news reports quoted one proponent:

“I’m grateful to God first and our supporters second,” said John Stemberger, an organizer for Florida4Marriage.org. “The bottom line is kids need a mom and dad. Same-sex marriages subject kids to a vast, untested social experiment.”

Of course, it makes no difference that same-sex marriages are already illegal in this state (thanks, unfortunately, to a client of my former political consulting firm). Have been since 1997. What this amendment is really about is a chance to vent anti-gay and intolerant rhetoric and drive right-wing voters to the polls in November, since the Republican Party has very little holding it together this year and religious right voters are without a strong presidential candidate. From the same Times article:

The presence of the proposal has the potential to greatly alter voter turnout in a presidential election year.

Evangelicals and social conservatives now have a much higher motivation to go to the polls.

But the proposal could also spur interest from the opposition, which is vast and diverse. An opposition group, the bipartisan Florida Red & Blue Committee, calls the initiative “dangerous and disingenuous.”

(photo credit: Rudy Kleysteuber/flickr.com)