Pinellas Legislative Delegation and Circuit Court Bench Become More Conservative

By Spartacus Thrace

Elections do have consequences, and one palpable consequence of the November 2 election is that the legislative and judicial branches of government in Pinellas County have gotten more conservative, and more Republican.

In the legislative races, all Republican incumbents were returned and two long-serving “moderate” Democrat incumbents, Janet Long and Bill Heller, lost their seats in the House of Representatives to conservative Republican challengers Larry Ahern and Jeff Brandes. The election of Larry Ahern is particularly significant in that he was in a three-way race against a moderate female Democrat with vastly superior financial support for her campaign and a female candidate from the so-called “TEA Party” who some observers believe was a ringer who entered the race with with the sole purpose of drawing votes away from Ahern.

Ballot-Qualified TEA Party Fares Poorly in Florida Midterms

TEA Party Logo

By Le Corbeaunoir

The ballot-qualified TEA Party, also known by its detractors as the “fake” Tea Party, fared poorly in Florida’s November 2, 2010 midterm elections.

The TEA Party has been thought by some observers to be part of a plot involving controversial figures Doug Guetzloe, Fred O’Neal, Congressman Alan Grayson (who lost his re-election bid) and other notorious figures to siphon conservative voters away from Republican candidates, as discussed in an earlier post on this blog.  In the end, the TEA Party candidates garnered relatively few votes and had scant effect on the outcomes of the races they each ran in. Few of the TEA Party candidates did anything more than qualify for the ballot and after the blogoshere exposed the scheme, it may actually have caused votes that would have otherwise gone to the Democrats to be cast as “TEA Party” protest votes, compounding the overall losses suffered by the Democratic Party in this election.

The results of every contest in which a TEA Party candidate ran, are as follows:

SHAM: Who the Hell is TEA Party Candidate Victoria Torres and Why is She Running in My District?

By Angry Wasp

I live in Florida House District 51 in Seminole, Florida, which is part of Pinellas County.  I am a veteran, work a regular job, own the house I and my family live in, pay my taxes, keep my lawn mowed and trimmed, am friendly with my neighbors, and I vote in every election.

Rep. Janet Long (D-Seminole)

The other day, when I was at the computer checking on who was going to be on the ballot in November, I saw that someone named Victoria Torres was running for the House District 51 seat as a TEA Party candidate, along with the Democrat incumbent Janet Long and Republican challenger Larry Ahern.

Larry Ahern, Republican Candidate for Florida House District 51

Victoria Torres?  I never heard of her, but I thought, well, if she’s part of the tea party crowd she’s probably as fed up as I am about the way our government is going.  I decided to check her out, even though I had pretty much already decided to vote for Larry after meeting him at a local candidates’ night in my neighborhood.

I Googled “Victoria Torres” and, boy, did I get a shock.

There were all kinds of articles linking her to a couple of political scam artists in Orlando, but no sign of a campaign website.  Thinking that maybe she had just gotten some bad press lately but might otherwise be OK, I continued to search for her website and any information I could find out about her.  It seemed that the longer I looked the less I found, and things just weren’t making sense.  This made me even more curious about who this lady was, and why she was running in my district.

The Smell In the Room: Controversy Over Florida’s New Ballot-Qualified TEA Party

By Le Corbeaunoir

TEA Party Logo

The creation of the TEA Party as a minor political party in Florida in August 2009, its subsequent qualification of federal and state candidates to be on the November 2010 ballot under the TEA Party name, and other activities of people closely connected to that party have sparked a major political row with implications extending to the 2012 presidential election and beyond. At the heart of the controversy is a fight to the finish between members of the new political party and grassroots Tea Party movement organizers over proprietary ownership and control of the name “Tea Party” and other aspects of the Tea Party “brand” in Florida. The controversy is about power, control, and money, and who gets to define what “Tea Party” means in Florida.

FORMATION OF THE BALLOT-QUALIFIED TEA PARTY

The ballot-qualified “TEA Party” and the “Tea Party movement” are not the same thing. They do not share organizations, leaders, or members, and they are ideologically opposed. The movement is decentralized with power diffused among its many factions. The party is centralized, with power concentrated in the hands of a few. The movement has grown spontaneously across the state over the past year-and-a-half or so, while the party was created by a filing with the Florida Secretary of State in August 2009.

PINELLAS COUNTY 2010: Those Who Would Be Our Legislators

By Le Corbeaunoir

[UPDATED August 21, 2010]

The 2010 campaign season is already well underway and next fall’s state legislative elections in Florida’s Pinellas County are a microcosm of the political trends emerging nationally. One trend is that the more experienced and prepared candidates are tending to avoid head-on contests with incumbents and are instead trying to pick up seats of those who are barred by term limits from seeking re-election.  Overall, the 2010 elections may result in rightward adjustments, but won’t effect anything approaching a revolution in government.  Still, there are no certainties as to outcome at this point. There remains time for new candidates, issues and events to change the course of the elections, but that time is slipping away.