A.G. Gancarski
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam plans a swing into the heart of North Florida Tuesday, including a “family-style dinner” in Lake City.
Putnam will be joining “grassroots supporters,” per the campaign, “for a family-style dinner and evening” at Florida Gateway College’s Howard Conference Center.
The event starts at 5:30, with the program starting at 6 p.m..
Putnam is riding high in all polls against potential primary rivals, and — with over $19 million banked as September ended — he had more resources than the rest of the presumptive GOP field combined.
Attendees can expect an increasingly road-tested message, as Putnam has demonstrated in just the last week, speaking at stops as diverse as a grassroots supporters’ “Up and Adam Breakfast” in Orange Park and AP Day in Tallahassee.
Putnam has focused on technical education — an appropriate topic given his venue in Lake City — and attendees Tuesday night can almost certainly expect a riff along these lines.
Workforce development has been a key talking point of Putnam’s, who believes community colleges have a unique role in reversing the “talent flow” out of Florida and “becoming a magnet … diversifying our economy: manufacturing, logistics, and trades.”
The payoff could be “generational in nature,” Putnam has been saying.
“Those future nurses,” Putnam said, “are going to come from a community college … and they need an education that is local and affordable.”
