Guest AuthorIn case you have been on another planet and haven’t heard, David Jolly beat Alex Sink for the District 13 congressional seat.
Jolly is preparing to go to Washington and Sink is cancelling her Feather Sound lease and returning to her mansion on the shores of Lake Thonotosassa to let the gardener and housekeeper back in and resume a normal life.
And, local television stations are scrambling to fill the advertising holes left by the conclusion of the campaigns. After all, they were clear winners in this race as well.
It was a convincing win for Jolly, for his party and for the conscience of America. If a libertarian candidate had not taken 5 percent of the vote, Jolly’s win would have been a trounce.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are licking their wounds and trying to decide who gets to mix the Kool-Aid.
They are trying every spin to disguise the reality. But, they can’t hide the fact that they lost with a perfect candidate in a district that’s friendly to Democrats.
You see, this was more than just another race to fill a vacant congressional seat on the shores of Tampa Bay. It was a national referendum on the status quo in Washington.
It was about more than Obamacare. It was a vote on Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed and President Barack Obama and they lost big time.
Both Jolly and Sink are decent and honorable people with no skeletons in their respective closets. Though the trashy commercials on both sides tried the “dirt digger” routine, it didn’t stick because there was none to be had.
This race wasn’t about the candidates. It was about national issues. It was about whom do voters trust most with the future of America: Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and President Obama or the less taxes, less government, more freedom alternative.
More than $13 million was spent on the campaign, $9 million of it from special interest groups. Jolly raised $1 million and Sink more than twice that amount. That should have been more than enough for each to run respectable campaigns.
But this race wasn’t about Pinellas County. It was about Washington, the folks who run Washington and those who would like to run Washington. They are the people who poured the money in.
The race was significant because it was more than just one seat out of 435 in the House. District 13 was once a clearly Republican seat, but through migration and reapportionment, it has become increasingly Democratic.
Obama won it twice and Sink won it twice when she ran for CFO and governor. It also is a microcosm of Florida, a state Obama carried in both his elections and a state Sink carried once and almost twice.
Florida is no longer a rural Southern state. It is truly a melting pot of America. People are migrating to Florida faster than an Adobe update notice hits your computer screen, and they are coming from all over America and the world. Fewer than one in three Florida residents were born in the state.
Politically, Florida is a microcosm of America and as Florida goes politically, so goes the nation. That’s why the national eyes were on District 13.
As the Tampa Tribune editorialized when I was the first Republican since Reconstruction to be elected to the Florida House of Representatives, “it is a harbinger of things to come.”
People are tired of deficit budgets, bigger government, less freedom, more taxes and misleading statements in Washington.
In District 13, they said so with their vote and they will continue to do so. There is light at the end of the tunnel and the wattage will be turned up in November.
Perhaps the new political mindset of America is best summed up by America’s newest member of Congress:
“We must never sacrifice our Creator’s sacred gift of liberty to us at the alter of Big Government. We must never compromise our constitutional principles, and our constitutional rights to the whims of politics. We cannot let that happen, and we must never concede our freedom to those who dare to take it from us.” — David Jolly
Well said, Congressman. Have a great ride.
That’s My Opinion and I am sticking to it.
John Grant is a political columnist who served 21 years in the Florida Legislature and now practices estate planning law in Tampa. He can be reached at [email protected] Column courtesy of Context Florida.
