For the Florida House of Representatives, CHARLES DEAN, Republican State House District 43
Published October 18, 2004
Former Citrus County Sheriff Charlie Dean strode into the Florida House of Representatives in 2002 convinced that, even as a freshman, he could have an impact and champion projects for District 43. Those good intentions, he says, died at the hands of Speaker Johnny Byrd, who blocked any agenda that was not his own.
Whether Dean's criticism of Byrd is valid or just a convenient excuse for an underwhelming performance, the fact remains that the Inverness Republican can point to few accomplishments during his term. While he earns credit for voting against the telephone rate increase, when asked to name a significant piece of legislation that he sponsored, Dean could only recall a bill that helped resolve a car insurance problem for Florida Highway Patrol troopers.
Dean's Democratic opponent, Mike Jarrett, a loan officer from Dunnellon, rails against the stranglehold that he says lobbyists have on the Legislature, and he uses a Dean bill to buttress his case. Dean had shepherded a clean-air measure through committees and had agreements from the state's major utilities when lobbyists for major supermarket chains killed it. "He let his own bill die without a fight," Jarrett said.
Jarrett voices the frustrations of many voters, but there is no reason to believe that the political newcomer would have fared any better in the bizarre world of Byrd's House. He opposes term limits but offers no solutions for fixing what he identifies as the biggest problem with state government, the lobbyists' influence.
Dean, a former Democrat, has friends on both sides of the aisle and says he already has established a solid working relationship with incoming Speaker Allan Bense. With hopes that he can become, as expected, an effective representative for citizens in Citrus, Hernando and Levy counties, the Times recommends Dean in the House District 43 race.
DAVID RUSSELL JR., Republican, State House District 44
As David Russell Jr. seeks his fourth and final two-year term in the state House, the Republican from Brooksville finds himself in the awkward position of campaigning against a phantom opponent.
Jim Hughes, a 48-year-old veterinarian from central Pasco County, is on the ballot as a Democrat in House District 44, which includes most of Hernando County and parts of Pasco and Sumter counties. Hughes has not attended numerous candidate forums in the district and he did not respond to repeated requests to meet with the Times' editorial board, making it difficult to discern his platform.
However, background checks reveal that Hughes has been convicted of writing bad checks and misdemeanor battery, and his wife has sought several restraining orders against him, alleging domestic violence.
All those are good reasons not to choose Hughes in this matchup; fortunately, voters have more compelling reasons to support Russell, based on his performance and experience.
In 2004, Russell refined a law that requires local governments to consider the availability of water as they amend or update their comprehensive growth management plans. It still isn't as strong as some land preservation groups would like it to be, but it is an improvement over the so-called "local sources first" law passed a few years earlier.
Russell, 49, opposed leader Johnny Byrd and other disconnected members of the Florida House by voting against a bill to raise local telephone rates, and he sponsored a bill that gives school districts the option of buying used textbooks as a way to trim expenses.
Russell also is chairman of the House Transportation Committee and has secured funding for a number of needed road projects in District 44.
If re-elected, Russell will become one of the senior members of the House. With that tenure, we expect he will serve his final term with enthusiasm and independence, and his staff will uphold its commendable record of constituent service. We strongly recommend him in this one-sided race.
TOM ANDERSON, Republican, State House District 45
The race for the Florida House District 45 seat should look familiar. Republican Tom Anderson, now the incumbent, faced off against Democrat Kevin Jensen two years ago, with Anderson prevailing. This year, Jensen stepped down as head of the Pinellas Democratic Party to give it another try.
Jensen's campaign is more issue-oriented this year, but when he says that Anderson hasn't represented the district's interests, he is wrong.
Anderson is a political pragmatist who had the courage to stand up to the bullying tactics of House Speaker Johnnie Byrd. That strength of character was particularly tested in the Legislature's rush to judgment with "Terri's Law," which sought to interfere in the case of Terri Schiavo, who has been in a vegetative state for 14 years. Anderson was the only House Republican to vote against the law that would have weakened the legal sanctity of living wills, and he was right to do so. A unanimous state Supreme Court recently struck down the law as unconstitutional.
Such independence is rare in the Florida House, yet Anderson, 72, also knows how to work through the legislative system. He was able to get 10 of the 12 bills he sponsored passed, and is particularly proud of getting automated defibrillators placed in senior citizen centers throughout the state. Anderson's priorities for education are the right ones. He supports higher pay for teachers and does not favor an expansion of private school vouchers.
Anderson's goals for next year, should he be re-elected, are ambitious. He would like to modernize the state government's procurement process, which currently has no central office, to make it more competitive and less wasteful. He would introduce a law that would allow cheaper Canadian prescription drugs to be sold in Florida. And he would seek to expand the defibrillator program to include state parks.
Jensen, 46, an adjunct instructor at St. Petersburg College, talks of more support for education and affordable health care, positions that are not dramatically different from his opponent's. Yet Jensen doesn't make a good case for getting rid of such a principled lawmaker as Anderson, who capably served Dunedin as mayor before moving on to the Legislature.
The Times recommends Anderson in the House District 45 race.
DEE THOMAS, Democrat, State House District 46
The race for the District 46 seat in west Pasco shapes up as old versus new, veteran against neophyte. But the experience belongs to 29-year-old Republican John Legg, a political insider who worked on state Rep. Heather Fiorentino's staff and ran unsuccessfully for a legislative seat two years ago. He is opposed by Democrat Dee Thomas, a 58-year-year-old businesswoman and physical therapist making her first run for office.
Legg is energetic and knowledgeable on education issues after spending the past three years administering and teaching at Pasco's first and largest charter school. He promises to work to change school funding formulas to benefit fast-growing counties such as Pasco. Such a parochial tactic, however, doesn't solve education's financial shortcoming; it just makes it a problem for another district.
Legg also retreated from his own trial balloon to investigate obtaining local school construction dollars from redeveloping neighborhoods. Too bad. It's a worthwhile notion, even if the likely proposal clashes with Legg's lower-taxes pledge. Leaders shouldn't dodge. We've heard enough from calculating politicians trying to have it both ways.
Thomas' expertise is in health care. She started her business only three years after Medicaid came into existence. She introduced physical therapy to the then-county hospital in west Pasco and bicycled to appointments when the gasoline shortage of the 1970s precluded extensive driving.
She also is familiar with education, serving as a clinical instructor in physical therapy for Ohio State University and sitting on the board of the PACE school for troubled girls. She testified before Congress on the benefits of employee stock ownership programs (ESOP), the tool by which she and her partner sold their business to their staff. She also served as the first woman president of the 2,000-member national association representing those businesses.
Thomas advocates making it easier for small businesses to provide health insurance coverage to their employees, and she wants to begin a university-based center for employee ownership modeled after a similar program in Ohio.
T homas' extensive life experiences and private sector background make her the preferable candidate. The Times recommends Dee Thomas for District 46.
KEVIN AMBLER, Republican, State House District 47
Incumbent Kevin Ambler sullied his image on the way to winning a nasty Republican primary, but he still is the best choice for voters in this northwest Hillsborough legislative district.
Ambler, a 43-year-old attorney, has largely supported the Republican agenda during his single House term, but he has occasionally stepped out on the right side of education and some consumer issues. Ambler poorly served his constituents by voting last year for the phone rate hike and by working to limit public access to government records. His close primary victory might make him more accountable in the coming term, if Ambler, as expected, defeats Libertarian Kim Snow, whose commendable support for individual rights is eclipsed by her insensitivity to tax fairness and education and environmental issues.
Ambler's work with civic and homeowners groups gives him an appreciation for what it means to be answerable to a community. He also is aware that government plays a vital role in our everyday lives. The Times recommends him to voters in District 47.
LESLIE WATERS, Republican, State House District 51
Consider this race a commentary on the politics of term limits. Leslie Waters, the Republican incumbent, is seeking her fourth and final term with a record of enduring indifference to the people she represents. Waters, a former insurance executive, has shown allegiance primarily to the insurance industry and to the Republican hierarchy in the House. She was so enamored with House Speaker Johnnie Byrd that she once likened him to "a stern father" and once voted to turn down a $1-million federal grant for heart disease education because "father" insisted on it. She voted for an impoverished education budget last year without even seeing the impact to her home district.
But Waters faces only token opposition this year because the seat will be vacant in 2006. The Democrat is an earnest 23-year-old, Mike Smith, who says that "education is the cornerstone of our society" but has yet to finish junior college. The independent candidate, Matt Sullivan, finished fifth in a five-way primary for School Board two years ago and sounds as though he is still running for the board. He rejects a local property tax increase for schools because "I remember the Alamo and I remember the lottery."
In this race, regrettably, Waters is the only credible choice.
LIZ McCALLUM, Democrat, State House District 52
In defending his servitude to House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, Frank Farkas told an audience recently that Byrd "didn't commit a crime." Maybe not, but Byrd, widely described as one of the worst legislative leaders in state history, did commit repeated political offenses. And Farkas, a three-term Republican who served on the Byrd leadership team, is having a tough time explaining his role back home.
The images were not pretty: Farkas voting in 2003 for a Byrd bill to increase phone rates and then voting in 2004 for a Byrd bill to revoke the rate increase; Farkas defending his vote for a stingy Byrd education budget by saying he hoped the Senate budget would pass instead; Farkas voting with Byrd to allow campaign fundraising during special sessions held to deal with medical malpractice insurance; Farkas limiting his own committee's debate to two minutes on a Byrd bill granting licensure to anesthesiologist assistants.
Asked why he voted for a hastily drawn Byrd bill that aimed to overturn court decisions about Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, Farkas admitted to "angst" and to something more extraordinary. "We knew the law was unconstitutional," Farkas said. "We knew that." So his oath of office was also subservient to Byrd's political agenda?
Farkas has tried over his tenure in the Legislature to find a moderate voice and has in the past supported criminal justice alternatives and public education causes. But he spent much of his last two years destroying what credibility he had built. In this campaign, for example, a provoucher group issued a mailing on his behalf - though he has claimed publicly to want to hold voucher schools accountable and limit their expansion. As he seeks re-election, then, voters in District 52 should be looking for an alternative.
Liz McCallum, a 35-year-old political activist, has worked to get more women appointed to government jobs in California, Ohio and Florida. She speaks persuasively about the poisonous influence of special interests and notes that lawmakers have drawn their own districts in such a fashion as to insulate most of them from serious political challenge. She promises to make health care and education two of her top priorities and says she will be independent enough to vote her own conscience.
The biggest problem for McCallum is that she is a newcomer. She moved to St. Petersburg in February, opened a campaign bank account a few weeks later, and admits that she chose her new home in part because the district has supported Democrats in the past. To her credit, she has used her campaign to knock on thousands of doors and meet people in her district. She also lived across the bay, in Valrico, for the previous four years and says she understands the issues that Floridians face.
McCallum may not understand the community as well as Farkas, who has lived there for 30 years, but in the past two years, Farkas put Byrd's agenda ahead of the interests of his constituents. We recommend McCallum.
TREY TRAVIESA, Republican, State House District 55
Trey Traviesa was the third-best choice in the six-way Republican primary, but he won, and the district is likely to be stuck with him for the coming term. His only challenger is Neil Cosentino, whose name won't appear on the November ballot because he is running as a write-in candidate. At least Traviesa, a 34-year-old businessman, takes seriously the obligation of offering himself as a candidate. This district covers parts of south Tampa and Brandon. The Times recommends Traviesa.
DEBORAH COPE, Democrat, State House District 57
Deborah Cope is refreshingly well-informed and plain-spoken. "Florida is headed in the wrong direction," she says, clicking off a host of examples: underfunded education, special-interest tax breaks and unenforced growth management laws.
Cope, 43, a computer and business management consultant, moved to Tampa in 1989 after childhood and college in the Northeast. She has a clear view of Florida's budgetary problems. Her call for reviewing tax loopholes is a step toward making the tax burden more fair. She would spend more on preventive health care and child welfare programs, favors halting vouchers to private schools and would work to make developers and communities better manage suburban growth.
Cope's realistic vision and detailed agenda contrast sharply with those of the incumbent, Faye Culp, who held the seat in the 1990s before returning two years ago. Culp is a tireless worker and great at constituent service. But she has small ideas, a poor grasp of policy and a history of waging nasty campaigns that calls her leadership qualities into question. Her support last year of the bill hiking residential telephone rates (and her election-year reversal) shows Culp's weakness in thinking through issues.
Cope can speak beyond a 10-second sound bite to the interests of a broad cross section of Floridians. Her call for government agencies to better cooperate and for a more deliberative approach to lawmaking is the spirit we need in Tallahassee.
We wish she had become more involved in her community before seeking a state legislative seat. But she knows the issues and commits to spending time on legislation that really matters. The Times recommends her in District 57.
BOB HENRIQUEZ, Democrat, State House District 58
Bob Henriquez has shown increasing signs over the years of taking his supporters for granted. His comfort as the incumbent was on full display last year, as the Democrat joined a bipartisan majority to support a phone rate hike clearly not in the interests of his working-class constituents.
That said, Henriquez is a moderate voice who understands his heavily Hispanic district and who has largely worked on the right side of issues in Tallahassee. He is a strong supporter of child welfare programs, public education and civil rights, and he has talked of the need to keep a Florida college education affordable.
Henriquez has a good working relationship with the Hillsborough County delegation, even as he has raised his profile within Florida's Democratic Party. He is a recognized leader. His sense of fairness and reasonable demeanor contribute to what exists of deliberative lawmaking in Tallahassee.
James R. Riis, the Republican opponent, is a high school social studies teacher for the Pasco County school district. He lives in Tampa's Seminole Heights neighborhood. Riis said he is running because he didn't want to see the incumbent go unchallenged in the general election. He believes the state is putting too much emphasis on student testing while ignoring "the real problems of education."
A staunch defender of the free market and civil liberties, Riis said: "I like to think I'm in the Libertarian wing of the Republican Party." He wants to review whether more government services could be provided by private business. His desire to call attention to the problem of noncompetitive elections is commendable, but his candidacy is a weak substitute for Henriquez, for whom politics is more than an academic exercise. The Times recommends Henriquez in District 58.
KAREN PEREZ, Democrat, State House District 60
Karen Perez's background in social work is a good fit for the diverse constituency in this University of South Florida-area district.
Perez, 40, is a former child welfare worker who currently counsels troubled children and their families in both hospital and outpatient settings. Perez is a thoughtful candidate who defies labels. She is guarded about the need to raise taxes, generally supports incentives for business and calls for raising teachers' salaries and making health care more affordable.
Perez has a good perspective on how to improve the management of Florida's child welfare system. She understands the complex job of meeting the demands of dysfunctional families. While she hammers home the need to expand access to health care and to improve the quality of public schools, Perez is light on how she would pay for improved levels of service. Her inability to move beyond generalities shows a lack of preparedness. However, she has the right priorities and experience reaching out, and her concern for working and middle-class families appears genuine.
Her opponent, one-term incumbent Ed Homan, a 61-year old orthopedic surgeon, is low-key and generally praised for keeping up with legislative business.
As a physician, he sees himself as playing a lead role in health care policy, and he believes another term would help him raise Hillsborough's legislative clout. But Homan's record is uninspiring.
His vote, and subsequent flip-flop, on raising residential telephone rates betrayed an insensitivity to consumers apart from his willingness to carry his party's agenda. Homan's one term gives him no real heft. Perez seems more responsive and better attuned to the district's needs. The Times recommends her.
ASHLEY SMITH, Democrat, State House District 62
Voters in east Hillsborough have two strong candidates running to succeed Rep. Johnnie Byrd in the Florida House. Retired educator Ashley Smith has the widest appeal, with his long career in the schools and the community and his common-sense approach to governing.
Smith, 59, is a retired teacher and principal for the Hillsborough County school district. His long service as a recognized leader among school administrators in Florida, active in local business and civic groups, prepares him well to serve effectively in Tallahassee.
His two priorities are to better manage growth and to raise the quality of public education. His plans for reviewing the budget, protecting trust funds, stabilizing the tax base and consolidating the delivery of some social services should appeal to conservatives.
Republican Rich Glorioso won the three-way primary. He is an active campaigner and the only one in the race with experience in elected office, having served from 1998 to 2004 on the Plant City City Commission. Glorioso, 60, a retired Air Force officer, has lived in the area for a decade, but his commission experience and volunteer work give him a good grasp of Hillsborough's problems. He could be a dependable voice on growth management.
But Glorioso seems hesitant to embrace an agenda for a district undergoing phenomenal demographic change. His close allegiance to state party leaders and their agenda also raises concern that District 60 could lose its identity in Tallahassee.
A third candidate, Libertarian James C. Clifford, sees a narrow role for government that would take the state in the wrong direction. Smith's broader view, knowledge of Plant City, Valrico and Brandon, and familiarity with state legislative issues would make him a more effective representative for the district. The Times recommends Smith.
