Category Florida Legislature
TFS Pod 10: Pinellas County Legislative Seats
On this week’s pod we take a close look at six key legislative races in Pinellas County. The most competitive area over the last twenty years in State House races sees potentially five seats in play this cycle. Also we look at Senate District 22 currently held by Jeff Brandes. This seat is the most […]
Thursday Bookshelf: Florida Politics at the end of the Jim Crow Era
If you want to gain any sort of understanding of how Florida shifted from rural deep south state in the 1920s and 1930s towards urban toward enlightened mega-state in the 1970s two must read classic books about southern politics are required. First is V.O. Key Jr’s classic Southern Politics: In State and Nation, written back in 1949 […]
Rise and Fall of the Lieutenant Governor in Florida
The last few weeks of political discourse in Florida, I must say have amused me. First we had many a Democratic activist making an issue about the failure of Governor Rick Scott picking a Lieutenant Governor after 10 months of the post being vacant. That was followed up by the Governor picking someone for the […]
TFS Pod: North Florida Election 2014 Preview
On today’s TFS Pod we begin our journey around the state looking at races in North Florida. Starting in Pensacola, Kartik Krishnaiyer and Ryan Ray discuss the trends that turned the area that was solidly Democratic at the legislative level prior to 1992 into a GOP bastion. We track the decline of the Democrats in […]
Florida GOP tax breaks do not always add up
Yesterday, the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald ran an earth shattering investigation into Governor Rick Scott’s failure to bring more jobs to the state of Florida. As we’ve noted regularly on this site, the type of middle-wage and high-wage professional jobs that Florida needs have tended to not transpire under the leadership of our […]
Zest of the Day: Sen. Jeff Brandes draws a challenger
Per the Times’ Buzz blog, Jeff Brandes now has a Democratic opponent for re-election in the Pinellas-based 22nd Senate district in the person of Judithanne Scourfield McLauchlan, a professor of political science at USF-St Pete. Last week, we Squeezers discussed this seat as an ideal place from which to challenge the RPOF’s grip on the Senate. Brandes comes […]
Throwback Tuesday: Charlie Crist, tobacco money, children’s health and the Lawton Chiles Endowment
With the state in a hopeless budget situation thanks to Republican economic policies and a global recession in late 2008 Governor Charlie Crist proposed raiding the Lawton Chiles Endowment which was running a surplus. Mark Caputo and Steve Bousquet had the report at the time about the situation and a potential Chiles family lawsuit: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/12/06/57247/ex-gov-chiles-family-threatens.html […]
The Crist Files: The Man Behind The Curtain: How Alleged War Profiteer Harry Sargeant’s Blood Money Has Been Bank Rolling Charlie Crist and The RPOF
In politics, much like organized crime, the way to find out the truth is to follow the money. In crime, the money brings us to the big fish or the kingpin. In politics, the money brings us to the influencers or a pol’s inner circle- those that have the most direct access to our elected […]
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 […]
Democrats confident about special election victory in Pasco
Special elections are momentum fueled turnout wars. They also often prove to be harbingers of political trends for the upcoming election cycles. The 1993 and 1994 special election victories for the Republicans in multiple congressional races indicated the national mood was swinging and the GOP was going to have a banner year. The same thing […]
The Florida Squeeze 