Random thoughts in the aftermath of Tuesday's primary elections and as we await a smack down from Hurricane Frances:
Voter turnout, once again, was pitiful, dragging in at about 29 percent. While in line with past primaries, the low turnout comes despite Elections Office efforts to make voting easier. With early voting, absentee ballots and simple-to-use optical scanning sheets, there is no excuse not to vote.
About 25,000 people out of 125,000 Citrus residents (88,101 of whom are registered voters) set the field for the Nov. 2 general election when the turnout will be greater because of the presidential race but the local choices will be fewer. As always, if you didn't vote, you don't get to gripe about the officeholders.
Those who did bother to vote sent some messages to the candidates, especially to the incumbents in the County Commission races.
Roger Batchelor drew a strong field of challengers in his own party's primary, interesting enough considering that he is a two-time winner, and he lost to political newcomer Dennis Damato. Batchelor may regret waiting so long to announce his candidacy, which gave his opponents a head start on campaigning.
Josh Wooten won handily over Zoe McLendon, but not in the landslide that some observers predicted. The anti-incumbent voice might explain why McLendon, who campaigned nowhere near as much as Wooten and who raised only a fraction of Wooten's campaign account, still pulled in more than 4,000 votes. She even beat Wooten in a handful of precincts, mostly in Lecanto and Homosassa Springs, but lost decisively in southeast Citrus and elsewhere.
While on the incumbent angle, don't forget that another current County Commissioner's term was up this year. Unlike Batchelor and Wooten, two of the perceived three-vote controlling bloc on the board, Vicki Phillips drew no opposition. Draw your own conclusions.
Was the Suncoast Parkway extension a litmus test for commission candidates? The voters sent a definite maybe. Joyce Valentino, a parkway opponent, beat Paul Pilny, who supports the highway. But Damato, a parkway backer, won while McLendon, who is against it, lost. The issue may play a bigger role in November when both commission races feature candidates with opposing views. (Democrat Jimmy Carr, who faces Damato, opposes the parkway. Wooten is pro parkway.)
More than any single issue, voters seem to be focusing on what could be called quality-of-life topics, from paying for growth through impact fees (instead of higher property taxes) and improving water quality, to the Halls River condo project and even the Crystal River annexation proposal. This is a critical juncture in Citrus County's development and voters are paying close attention to the candidates' visions of the county's future. Damato's campaign seems to have captured that feeling the best by making growth management a theme while adding a dollop of aesthetics to his recipe. More than any other candidate, Damato articulated a clear idea of what Citrus could look like in the next 10-20 years.
Personalities meant a lot in the Jimmy Carr-Mike Gudis-Lenny Kaplan commission race. Carr is a nice guy who is at least conversant on the issues while Gudis is the more experienced politician but clearly has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Kaplan, another nice guy, just couldn't match his opponents in name recognition and campaign contributions.
The Valentino-Wooten race will present some problems for the big-money donors. Valentino is hardly the darling of the deep-pocket members of the GOP establishment, drawing more of her support from the county's network of community groups. Wooten, meanwhile, had little trouble amassing a huge pile of donations against a relatively unknown primary challenger. But with Batchelor's loss spelling the end of the (real or perceived) three-vote bloc on the commission, who will the powerful building and development lobbies support?
Finally, of the four commission candidates heading to the November election, only one - Wooten - can say that at least half of the eligible voters in his race chose him. In every other contest, more people voted against the eventual winner than voted for the person. Granted, they were all multicandidate races. Still, none can claim to have a stranglehold on the voters' affections.
A theme that may emerge in the School Board runoff between Bill Murray and Cindy Cino could be availability. Murray can claim to be a full-time board member, as he will have to take a leave from his teaching job to serve, while Cino has given no indication that she would quit her job as a nurse if elected. In fact, part of her platform involves helping working mothers balance the demands of their jobs with the needs of their children.
Cino's reputation as a high-volume critic of the school district no doubt won her support among dissatisfied voters, but Felicia Kelly Smith was equally strident, particularly on current issues such as the Renaissance Center site and the Homosassa Elementary School construction scandal, and she wound up fifth out of seven candidates.
Linda Powers came close to winning her School Board race outright, nearly doubling the votes of her two opponents, but she will face Bruce Bellamy in a November runoff. Bellamy may have pulled off the biggest surprise Tuesday moving into a runoff without having done a substantial amount of campaigning. Dollar for dollar, he also got the biggest bang for his campaign contributions, getting 6,000 votes after raising only $1,525. Powers, by contrast, collected more than $26,000 and claimed 11,199 votes.
Bellamy's biggest coup was earning the teachers union endorsement, a victory that he made certain that everyone knew at campaign forums. The endorsement was also unusual in that Bellamy beat out two teachers for the backing of the teachers union.
Lastly, the results in the County Judge race show that Citrus voters like the normalcy that Mark Yerman has brought to the bench. This is not to say that Bo Samargya would not have been a fine judge, but people here remember what the County Court used to be like before Yerman got on the bench. They chose not to fix something that is not broken. Overwhelmingly.
