A.G. Gancarski
The Florida Democrats are fielding candidates in every legislative district, and at least one candidate has fundraising strong enough to tout on the first day of June.
Joshua Hicks, running in House District 11, dazzled with receipts from his first few weeks as a candidate, raising almost $18,000.
“I’m incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support our campaign has received in a few short weeks. We are building a strong, grassroots campaign that will have the resources needed to deliver our ‘People First’ message to voters throughout our First Coast community. I’m running to represent everyone, not just part of District 11, and it’s clear voters are hungry for a change in leadership in Tallahassee,” Hicks, a newcomer to the district but not to politics, said Monday.
District 11 is a historically conservative redoubt in Northeast Florida, encompassing deep-red Nassau County and traditionally Republican beach communities in Duval.
It has been an easy hold for the Republican Party, at least until now, with GOP voters comprising nearly 72,000 of the 135,000+ registered voters.
Incumbent Rep. Cord Byrd, faced his toughest battle thus far in the 2016 GOP primary, defeating candidates who had more fundraising and establishment support.
Since going to Tallahassee, he has burnished his right-wing bona fides, backing legislation banning sanctuary cities and a version of an E-Verify program, two movement conservative priorities.
Byrd holds a strong fundraising advantage over Hicks, one of the advantages of incumbency and of a Republican hammerlock on the legislative process at all levels. He has over $28,000 in his “1845” political committee and nearly $47,000 of hard money at his disposal.
The two candidates present a contrast in both style and substance.
Byrd, an occasional guest on Fox News, organized a “flotilla” of boaters supportive of the White House that scored an attaboy Tweet from President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, Hicks recently spoke in favor of a piece of LGBT-rights legislation in Jacksonville, something Byrd is unlikely to do.
2 comments
J Patrick
June 1, 2020 at 12:42 pm
Opposing sanctuary cities and supporting E-Verify are not “right-wing” positions when a majority of Floridians agree with incumbent Cord Byrd.
Denny
June 1, 2020 at 6:16 pm
I think this pandemic has proven we either need to legalize everyone who is here or send them home. Undocumented workers do not receive unemployment. They just worked through a pandemic and if they got sick they got sick. They were afraid to get tested because they are not in the country legally. They went to work and got exploited by employers that needed the cheap exploitable labor. They got sick and keep passing on a contagious virus. They buy gas where you buy gas. They shop in the grocery stores where you shop. Some of the kids okay with your kids. And they also will keep passing a contagious virus around that could kill you. But all in the name of cheap exploitable labor. So I hope we either legalize all the undocumented workers that are presently here or pass a law that requires all employers to use E Verify and they will all go home on their own because only US Citizens will be eligible to work. Pick one .
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