Match made in hell? Trash vs. Florida congressional candidate with a victim complex

There’s only one thing more annoying than shambling through a TSA checkpoint — a congressional candidate with a victim complex.

In what could be described as a match made in hell, James P. Judge gives Tampa Bay voters both.

The future loser of the Republican Primary for Florida’s 14th Congressional District has been placing campaign material on cars parked at Tampa International Airport.

Travelers returning to their cars undoubtedly think the unmarked envelopes under their windshield wipers are parking tickets. Once they open them, they wish they were.

Enclosed is a rote message along the lines of “masks suck, amirite” and a campaign sticker that looks like a piece of stock art you’d buy in the checkout line of Michaels for your kids’ class treasurer campaign.

The men and women of TIA have spared travelers the 30-yard walk to the garbage can.

Like most candidates who rely on a non-glossy A4 run through a bubble jet printer, Judge is “shocked.”

“It was simply a welcome home letter with a few sentences challenging the federal mask and vaccine mandates,” he said. “Today, we were contacted by an airport representative who said they had gone around and picked up the letters and thrown them away.”

In what probably resembled a scene from the first half of Stand and Deliver, a TIA representative explained to Judge that those unwanted pieces of paper are considered litter; airports are allowed to pick up litter and put it in the trash.

TIA made clear that if Judge’s campaign had gone through the proper procedures — which consist of letting the airport know ahead of time — they would have left the envelopes in place for customers to throw away.

That’s a bridge too far, he says. Heads, he believes, need to roll. The First Amendment, he contends, gives him carte blanche.

Revealing he has never experienced the heft of a Supreme Court ruling, he says that TIA has a five-page policy regarding First Amendment rights, which means it is essentially an arm of the Chinese Communist Party.

All this over a pile of paper that will be in the dump on Aug. 24 anyway.