Mitch Perry
Tallahassee –
WWGGD?
Okay, nobody is saying that, but let me pose the question that Florida Democrat will begin talking about more frequently as the year progresses – What Will Gwen Graham Do?
The North Florida Congresswoman told reporters at a news conference in Tallahassee yesterday that she still has not decided if she’ll run for re-election to her 2nd Congressional District seat.
As most know, Graham’s district essentially was erased during redistricting, and as it stands now, if she were to run later this summer she’d be battling fellow Democrat Corrine Brown, which she says she will not do. Brown is pursuing a lawsuit to reverse the creation of her new district.
It seems like Graham is postponing the inevitable, which is that despite all the hard work and promise that she presents as a congresswoman, it doesn’t seem in the cards that she’ll be able to continue in Washington.
That doesn’t mean at all that her political future is doomed. Once the redistricting lines were announced last summer, speculation immediately began that she would pursue a run for the Democratic nomination for governor.
And why not?
Although 2018 is a lifetime away, the race will slowly begin after this year’s general election, and Graham is as well set up as any Democrat to run for the position in, well, since I’ve been covering politics here in Florida for the past 16 years. Nothing is a sure thing, and Bob Buckhorn cannot easily be dismissed.
But if you had to lay odds right now, Graham looks as formidable as anyone the GOP might nominate.
In other news..
A House Committee in the Legislature passed a measure that will attempt to give Rick Scott and the FDLE the ability to ferret out and perhaps reject Syrian refugees, of whom some 10,000 are slated to be relocated in the U.S.
Tampa state Senator Arthenia Joyner is departing the Legislature after 16 long years. She believes that the low pay that state lawmakers make (less than $30,000) makes it impossible for working class people attempt to run for office, and thus she wanted lawmakers to raise the pay to $50,000 annually. Those lawmakers – most of whom are running for re-election this November, said thanks, but no thanks.
In that meeting, a Florida man who appeared to be the only member of the public to weigh in one way or another on the Joyner proposal, but it didn’t end well.
The Legislature may meet again in January in 2018, which one Democrat says would be bad because it’s not warm enough.
And the City of Tampa helped to get nearly 14,000 people signed to the Affordable Care Act over the past few months, impressive, but not enough to win a visit by Barack Obama.
