Lawsuit seeks to remove Jamie Grant from 2018 ballot

court

Rep. Jamie Grant’s Republican challenger in the House District 64 primary has filed a lawsuit demanding Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner remove Grant as a candidate, saying he has violated the state’s term limits.

“I believe that Rep. Grant, who was first elected to the Florida House in November 2010, is ineligible to run for reelection in the Florida House in 2018 due to his having served for eight consecutive years,” Terry Power said Wednesday in a news release.

Terry Power
Power

“I believe the courts will agree with me on this important issue.”

Florida voters approved term limits of eight years for members of the Legislature back in 1992; they did not generally become effective till 2000.

Grant was first elected in 2010, and has been re-elected three times to two-year terms. But he did not serve those four terms consecutively. (A separate recounting of that history is here.)

His 2014 GOP primary was postponed when the husband of Republican candidate Miriam Steinberg sued to have write-in candidate Daniel John Matthews removed from the race.

A circuit court ruled that Matthews did not meet the requirements to run and postponed the primary between Grant and Steinberg until November.

Grant

Grant defeated Steinberg easily that fall, but the House voted to invalidate the results because an appellate court found that Matthews was wrongfully withdrawn from the contest.

That meant HD 64 had no representative for several months, until April 2015, when Grant defeated Matthews to finish out the 2014-2016 term.

“To rule against us would have a chilling effect on our term limit laws and open the door to even more shenanigans by career politicians,” Power added.

Grant was on the floor of the House Wednesday, and not immediately available for comment.

The 59-year-old Power is an Oldsmar-based certified financial planner. He has said that if elected, he’ll donate his House salary to charities in the district.

House District 64 covers a northwestern section of Hillsborough and some of eastern Pinellas County.

Mitch Perry

Mitch Perry has been a reporter with Extensive Enterprises since November of 2014. Previously, he served five years as political editor of the alternative newsweekly Creative Loafing. Mitch also was assistant news director with WMNF 88.5 FM in Tampa from 2000-2009, and currently hosts MidPoint, a weekly talk show, on WMNF on Thursday afternoons. He began his reporting career at KPFA radio in Berkeley and is a San Francisco native who has lived in Tampa since 2000. Mitch can be reached at [email protected].



#FlaPol

Florida Politics is a statewide, new media platform covering campaigns, elections, government, policy, and lobbying in Florida. This platform and all of its content are owned by Extensive Enterprises Media.

Publisher: Peter Schorsch @PeterSchorschFL

Contributors & reporters: Phil Ammann, Drew Dixon, Roseanne Dunkelberger, A.G. Gancarski, Anne Geggis, Ryan Nicol, Jacob Ogles, Cole Pepper, Gray Rohrer, Jesse Scheckner, Christine Sexton, Drew Wilson, and Mike Wright.

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @PeterSchorschFL
Phone: (727) 642-3162
Address: 204 37th Avenue North #182
St. Petersburg, Florida 33704




Sign up for Sunburn


Categories