Incumbent Paula Dockery faces political newcomer and Democrat Carol Castagnero, who wants to eliminate the statewide assessment test.
By JENNIFER LIBERTO
Published October 18, 2004
The race to represent the eastern half of Hernando County in the state Senate has lacked much in the way of fireworks or pizazz.
When the two Lakeland candidates running in District 15 appear at forums, they tend to steer the discussion toward their own platforms, which do not overlap much.
Incumbent Paula Dockery, a Republican who ran unopposed for the vacant Senate seat in 2002, likes to talk about integrity in government and her work on behalf of environmental legislation, among a plethora of other issues. She also rarely leaves a campaign stop without throwing in a quick plug for high-speed rail.
Challenger and political newcomer Carol Castagnero, a Democrat, talks mostly about the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Specifically, she wants to eliminate the statewide test that's intended to rate how well public school children are learning their lessons.
Dockery and Castagnero took different paths to politics. Dockery gravitated toward politics after working on campaigns in the 1990s; Castagnero jumped right in as a retiree, feeling moved by her ideology against the FCAT.
Dockery, 43, was born in Queens, N.Y., but her family moved to South Florida when she was 6 years old. She grew up in Coral Springs in Broward County. She earned a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in mass communications from the University of Florida.
In 1986, in her mid 20s, she moved to Polk County with her first husband, who got a job in the Lakeland office of then-U.S. Sen. Lawton Chiles, a Democrat. In 1989, Dockery married well-connected millionaire C.C. "Doc" Dockery, who has several family businesses in the agriculture and insurance industries.
Paula Dockery worked as an underwriter at State Farm Insurance and squeezed in work on several political campaigns. With some financial help from her husband, she launched her own campaign in 1996 for state representative, a far messier affair than anything she has faced since - complete with a defamation lawsuit her husband filed and lost against her opponent. She served three terms in the House.
By contrast, Castagnero had not been involved in a political campaign before her failed run for Polk County School Board in 2002.
Castagnero, 65, was born in Hermine, Pa., a coal mining town. She grew up in the Pittsburgh area. She worked her way through Clarion State University in Clarion, Pa., where she got a bachelor's degree in education. She worked as a schoolteacher and married Paul Castagnero in 1962. They moved to Lakeland in 1988. She has a daughter and four grandchildren.
Now retired, Castagnero decided to run for a state political seat this year because she feels Florida education is stumbling and that the FCAT is being overemphasized.
"FCAT is destroying our schools," Castagnero says. "This isn't good, what it does to our children and teachers."
Castagnero has also weathered a few bumps during her foray into state politics.
She is not on good terms with the Polk County supervisor of elections. Castagnero and elections officials offer different versions of how the feud began, but it started with Castagnero's efforts to submit her petitions when she qualified for the Senate race.
Castagnero maintains the office has treated her unfairly; the elections office accuses Castagnero of rude behavior.
Although Castagnero says she was never banned from the Lakeland elections office, their fighting grew bad enough that a Lake Wales attorney wrote Castagnero a certified letter about Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards' new policy regarding Castagnero.
"It is best both for her office and for you, that all your future dealings with each other be conducted in writing and at a distance," attorney Robert Young wrote in the March 16 letter.
Both candidates are relatively unknown in Hernando County.
The eastern half of the county had gotten used to Brooksville politicians representing their interests, until the district was split in half through census redistricting and Dockery won the right to represent most of the county east of Mariner Boulevard.
When Dockery first clinched the seat, she had talked about setting up a permanent one-person office in Hernando County. But the endeavor proved too costly, she said. Instead, she holds office hours at the county courthouse, when a room is available.
Until Castagnero launched her campaign, she had not spent much time in Hernando County.
Castagnero denies she is a one-issue candidate, even though her campaign has concentrated almost exclusively on the FCAT.
Since she also volunteers her time working as an advocate for the rights of the elderly, parents and children, Castagnero has included some of those issues in her platform. For example, she feels the Legislature should make it more difficult for children to put elderly parents in nursing homes.
Castagnero's platform also includes some vague, expansive issues such as affordable health care, but she offers no ideas how to tackle the problem.
By contrast, Dockery's platform is quite detailed.
She supports local control, with school boards and county commissions assuming the largest responsibility for education, growth, and water management and the environment.
Local control doesn't necessarily extend to state testing in schools, however. Dockery supports the FCAT.
Part of Dockery's platform focuses on strengthening security and homeland defense. She has been chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Home Defense, Public Security and Ports, which entailed lobbying the federal government for money.
Dockery gained notoriety this year in Tallahassee when she spearheaded the Republican initiative that changed KidCare, the health insurance program for low-income children. Problems with KidCare were politically controversial, since 100,000 children filled waiting lists to get into the program. Dockery's bill increased program funding by $25-million to allow more children into the program, but it also wiped out all waiting lists.
Dockery's platform includes integrity in government for budgets, and she is against raiding trust funds to balance the budget.
She also opposes the Legislature's efforts to make it more difficult for citizens to amend the Constitution, an issue during the last session. Dockery's husband largely financed the ballot initiative in 2000 that put a high-speed rail project into the Constitution.
Castagnero says she is a strong believer in integrity in government, though it is not part of her platform. She has refused to accept campaign contributions from special interests.
"I just don't want to be obligated to anyone if I have to make decisions at some time," Castagnero said.
In terms of campaign funding, Castagnero has collected $2,450, all from herself.
Dockery has collected $163,899.15, with significant contributions from agricultural interests. She is also planning to run for Senate president in 2008 or 2010 and has set up a special committee to help achieve that goal. That committee has raised $146,660.36.
