Author Archives: Ryan Ray
It’s Official: Charlie Announces in St. Pete
Accompanied by local Democratic leaders and an adult contemporary playlist, former Governor Charlie Crist announced this morning in St. Petersburg that he’s running for governor once again. Kathy Castor, Bob Butterworth, Dan Gelber and Rick Kriseman were among the dignitaries that flanked him as he gave a markedly left-leaning speech before a crowd of around […]
Zest of the Day: C.W. Bill Young, 82
Per the Tampa Bay Times, U.S. Rep. Bill Young has died following recent reports that he was seriously ill. Congressman Young, known as a stalwart conservative who braved lonely times decades ago as a Republican in the Florida Senate and who softened his rigid views in later years, was a fixture in Florida politics for more […]
Murphy Defeats Gunter 51-49: What Does it Mean?
The final results are in: Democrat Amanda Murphy has beaten Republican Bill Gunter to replace the inimitable Mike Fasano by a margin of 322 votes despite Gunter’s massive support from the Tallahassee establishment and hard-right financiers the state over. But is this a one-off thrill for Florida Dems owing to exceptional circumstances — the government […]
Throwback Tuesday: The Plot to Steal Florida
No, not Rick Scott’s Supreme Court-abetted reelection scheme — the clandestine coup orchestrated by the Madison administration. In The Plot to Steal Florida: James Madison’s Phony War, military historian and former CIA agent James Burkholder Smith tells the secret – or at least obscure – history of how the Father of the Constitution™ attempted to […]
TFS Senate Scorecard – The Votes Scored
Full ratings can be found here SB 718 (Stargel) and HB 231 (Workman) were a pair of bills that would, essentially, reduce alimony benefits for divorcees. This legislation would have changed family law in Florida to include statutory time limits on how long alimony can be received to – in most cases – half the […]
Throwback Tuesdays: “Bicameral Syndrome”
That’s what the late Senator Fred Karl called it: when insipid vanities like the one above stop anything useful from happening in Tallahassee. In 1972, government in Florida was so different it’s hard to believe it ever existed that way. In this antediluvian age the Governor, a populist reformer, worked with moderate Republicans and rural […]
2013 TFS House Scorecard – The votes scored
The following votes were used to determine the ratings for our House scorecard. We are developing a graphically enhanced publication that will show each legislator and each of the votes cast, but for now we are printing the votes we used to determine the scores. The scores for each House member can be found here. […]
GOP Senator Nancy Detert is a Hero on Education
“Not one parent ever called me to support this.” “If parents and teachers are so in favor of charter conversions, why is the Florida PTA is lobbying so hard to defeat this bill?” This afternoon Sen. Nancy Detert R-28 (Venice), rose to speak these and other courageous utterances in opposition to HB 867/SB 862, referred […]
Zest of the Day: USA Today Founder Al Neuharth, 89
Arguably the most influential person in Florida newspapers, Al Neuharth died this evening in Cocoa Beach, the Atlantic coast city from which he built his Gannett Company, Inc. media empire. Besides USA Today, Gannett also publishes the Tallahassee Democrat, the Ft. Myers News-Press and FSView, the student-run newspaper that — with the conservative Neuharth’s help […]
Red Claude Pepper & Gorgeous George Smathers: a Parable
Once upon a time in Florida, a wealthy well-connected conservative with little grasp of the issues but outsize support from real estate and commercial interests toppled, for the first time in state history, a sitting U.S. Senator — effective legislator, friend of labor and confidante to FDR Claude Pepper — by using a sly combination […]
The Florida Squeeze 