Florida's primary elections are this Tuesday, the 23rd. While early voting is open at the precincts, with photo ID and all the usual precautions, the last few weeks have been filled with enough personal crap that today was the first day I felt well enough to sit down with my sample ballot to look up more info on the candidates for the different offices.
Florida is a closed primary; we can only vote in the party we've registered under, and our sample ballot was surprisingly short. Governor DeSantis is unopposed, as is most of his administration, so there were only five races to look into. One was statewide, the Commissioner of Agriculture as the current Commissioner, Nikki Fried, is running for governor in the Evil Party primaries. The other one was countywide; our county commission seat. The other three elections were judges.
There is nothing like the major issue we had back in 2016, a ballot initiative to help fix the Indian River Lagoon. That initiative (which passed) was a "temporary" sales tax increase of 1/2% to raise $300 million. The plan was supposed to be a 10 year fix, and we're at year six. There's surprisingly little talk about whether the river is getting better or worse, but it's certainly a reasonable question to be asking. Two of the four candidates running for the county commission seat said they wanted answers. Neither of them seem to be doing much in the polls.
The two Stupid Party candidates for the commissioner of agriculture are a guy new to politics with actual farming experience and the former leader of the state senate; he also claims to be a farmer. I believe he's running for Ag Commissioner because he was term-limited out of the Senate. Everybody in the local races is claiming to be local to the county, pro-police, endorsed by the popular sheriffs around the state, or the county and pro-firefighters. The old familiar, "I'm pro second amendment," "I'm pro-life," song is still prominent, and has been joined by, "I support Governor DeSantis." A couple of the candidates proudly waved the "I'm endorsed by Trump" banner.
I've said many times that politics is like cleaning out the cat's litter box. It's a dirty, disgusting job filled with things you'd rather not see or be around, but not doing the job only makes it worse. Eventually that cat box must be cleaned out.
I'm team Kodos all the way.
ReplyDeleteY'all down on the Space Coast at least get to vote for gutless RINOs and some actual right-wingers. Here in the Democratic People's Republic of Alachuacountystan we get to vote leftard or green or actual God-less communists.
ReplyDeleteAs to Fried, she only got elected because she was supposedly soft on marijuana and hard against guns (as Ag Commissioner, she is/was in charge of the state CCW program.) She truly is a useless bag of bones.
Nikki had invested lots in the marijuana business, from what I've heard, so it was typical self-serving politicians. She tried to lean on the CCW program, but I think that largely hasn't worked.
DeleteMiguel from Gun Free Zone, back when he was down in Miami, said she was running for governor on T&A.
Pretty much, but unlike our VP, she can't suck start a bus, from what I hear.
DeleteAs to AgCom, which to choose from, the farmer who is a Christian conservative or the other guy who is a 5th gen farm family and has endorsements from Trump and DeSantis? Either sound good.
DeleteUs Independents only get to vote for judges. Maybe we can get another fine one like "John C. Murphy" from a few years ago. It took the Florida Supreme Court to get rid of him. The local judges and the bar were not all that upset at his actions.
ReplyDelete