Monthly Archives: July 2014
House Race Ratings – July 13th
Only one change in our State House ratings this week which was to move the Orlando area HD-49 represented by Joe Saunders into the “Safe Democrat” column. Everything else remains the same from our ratings released two weeks ago on June 29th. Full ratings below.
Poll: How would you describe Charlie Crist’s Ideology?
Charlie Crist has been described as “all things to all people,” a conservative, a populist, a liberal, an opportunist. Today we are giving TFS readers an opportunity to have a say on how they would describe Governor Crist’s ideology. Vote in the below poll and leave comments in the thread below.
Flashback Friday: When the 1992 Florida Congressional Map was thrown out
The news late yesterday that the 2012 Congressional Districts had been invalidated drew me back to 1996, when we had a similar happening with Congressional Districts. Ironically, the district that caused the problems then as it has now is Corrine Brown’s seat, then numbered the third, now numbered the fifth. Brown’s original district in 1992 […]
Charlie Crist and Florida’s Shrinking Middle Ground
For decades from the 1960s up to the mid 1990s, the political strategy for both parties has been to find a moderate candidates that can appeal both sides of the aisle. This began to fade with Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution in the house in 1994 and the rise of hyper-partisanship, yet the polarization has taken […]
Orlando Area Congressional Districts: What Next for Dan Webster and Alan Grayson?
Late this afternoon, Judge Terry Lewis issued a harsh rejection of Congressional maps that were drawn by the Republican Legislature and declared that districts 5 and 10 were unconstitutional. Effectively, this will redraw the entire Central and North Central Florida congressional map from the Tampa Bay area to Orlando all the way up to Jacksonville […]
Thursday Bookshelf: Robert Wexler’s Fire-Breathing Liberal
Robert Wexler who was my Congressman for almost 13 years joined the ranks of politician authors in 2008. Like most political memoirs the book is largely self-serving and self-promoting. Nonetheless, Fire-Breathing Liberal: How I Learned to Survive (and Thrive) in the Contact Sport of Congress has some interesting nuggets which certainly make it worth reading. Having […]
The Changing Democratic Base from 1994 to 2012
Continuing our recent look at small counties, rural voters and the Democratic vote, I thought it might be instructive to look at a comparison between two Democratic victories. The Democrats last won a Governor’s race in 1994 which was before the current era of Democratic dominance of Presidential elections in the state began (The Democrats […]
Wednesday Open Thread: LG Choices
This week on the open thread we’d love to hear readers suggestions for who should be Charlie Crist’s running mate for Lieutenant Governor. Under the current state law, Governor Crist can wait until just after the primary to make his choice. The old state law which was changed in the mid 1990s dictated that all […]
Ten Dollar Tuesday – Andy Kelly for Volusia County Council
In the 1990s, the Republican party aggressively started in taking over all levels of government elections, from mosquito control all the way up and this has paid off for them in a large way. As we have mentioned numerous times in this blog, the Democrats have to start building from the ground up if they […]
On President Obama and foreign policy: The failure of constant war making
I have seen the allegation bandied about the internet that somehow our website is hawkish and that some of our writers (myself included) are neoconservatives. Interestingly at least speaking for myself I take a far more restrained view of the use of the US military than the current Administration has. President Obama has overextended the […]
The Florida Squeeze 