Alachua Voter Guide

Six months out from the next Gainesville City Commission election, and we already have four candidates for the at-large race. And they have all filed in the past week or so. There are also two names filed for the District 1 contest.

In District 1 we have Yvonne Hinson-Rawls, a sub-committee chair on the Alachua County Democrat Executive Committee, versus Armando Grundy, who most recently served on the county’s Charter Review Commission. This District represents East Gainesville and has been most recently served by Chuck Chestnut, followed by Sherwin Henry. Both men ran unopposed for their second term, and were then term-limited out of office.

In the at-large race, which represents the entire City of Gainesville, we have Darlene Pifalo, a Realtor with a history of serving on state and local boards to promote affordable housing; Donna Lutz, another Realtor I know little about; James Ingle, recent candidate for the District 2 seat on the commission who had union support; and Lauren Poe, who just got voted off the City Commission by Todd Chase.

Gainesville City Commission races are notoriously sleepy affairs with very, very low voter turnout. There will be the predictable but meaningless bellyaching about how these elections should be held in November instead of March, BUT THIS IS JUST HOW IT IS! It is so easy to vote now, we have no excuse.

That said, unless there is an epic revival of citizenship, Hinson-Rawls will defeat Grundy. She is the approved Democrat being run by the machine. Although Grundy is also a Democrat, he has been a Republican and is a bit of a maverick.

The at-large race will be a Pifalo-Poe runoff. Poe is the machine Democrat, Ingle is a populist Democrat, and populists are not reliable voters. That’s why there is no “populist machine”. Lutz will finish last. She is a first timer who will be needing support from Pifalo’s base, and that will not be happening. Poe lost in District 2, but did so respectably. If he keeps it close in that, the most conservative, district, he will take 1, 3 and 4 handily. That will make him the overall winner in April.

All of this could change if you, the voters, start connecting the dots between the people you elect and your cost of living and your lack of opportunity.

When I started this site back in 2004, my intention was to give candidates a place where they could get their message out for free. I had run for County Commission in 2002, and was still smarting from the terrible job the Gainesville Sun had done in covering the election.

I found out that if you were misquoted, no matter how egregiously, they did not feel obligated to print a correction. My campaign had a web site, but back then nobody really went to candidate web sites because so few had them. So only a few people got to read my reaction to the mistake that was sent to 60,000 readers of the Sun.

When I started this site (originally called Freeforallcandidates.com), I thought that people who ran for public office on the small local stage would leap at the opportunity to take control of their information by using this free service. What I discovered was that almost all of them control their information by letting out very little of it.

In the absence of candidate-generated-content, I started going to the forums and doing a little reporting, as well as recording some of the highlights and putting them on the web. This gave people more information than they usually got from the Sun, which was usually pretty scant, and never mentioned anything exciting that actually happened. But at least the voters would periodically write me to express their gratitude that there was one convenient place to find candidate information.

Today, the Gainesville Sun is worse than ever at covering local issues…unless they are cheerleading the city commissioners who are all a part of the local Democrat Machine. Their masthead should identify them as the official propaganda tool of the local party and be done with it. I cannot recall the last time I saw an actual investigative report in the Sun.

Fortunately, there are other channels for local information. There is a local talk show called Talk of the Town on 99.5 FM that has been showcasing the best investigative reporting this area has probably ever heard. Former County Commission candidate Ward Scott has been exposing the Machine politicians on the county commission by going through all their audio files and finding serious violations of Florida’s Sunshine Law and playing them over the air. Talk of the Town has been doing this for months, and there is not a peep about it in the Sun. People are calling in and wanting to know what they can do, and the hosts of the show have been urging listeners to call the State Attorney and complain and to urge him to take action.

What I want to know is: will the Sun finally report this when commissioners are doing the “perp walk” with their lawyers on TV20?

If you would like to hear these audio files yourself, you should listen to the show at noon each weekday. Or, since they do actually talk about other things, you can go to the local Republican Party Website and see “The Ward Scott Fraud Files” and listen to them there.

It is a scandal that our local “professional” journalists do not report on this  story, and that Ward Scott, a private citizen, has to do this himself. And it’s a further scandal that other government officials have to be begged to do something about it!

I am excited to post that I am running for Alachua County Commission seat 3 which Paula Delaney currently occupies. This is so important to me that I filed in February but laid low while we tried to get Rob Zeller and Todd Chase elected to the Gainesville City Commission.
I will say that I am not your typical hand picked Alachua County Politician in that I am not part of the local political elite. I am just a regular guy that is willing to step up to redirect our Countys vision and bring fiscal responsibility and common sense principles into our government. I believe that not ever having held a political office is my advantage. I can more relate to the 95% of our citizens that live throughout the county that find it more and more challanging to make ends meet.
I will make Roads and Public Safety the first items addressed with each budget.
I will work with businesses in our county to identify and eliminate those regulations which make it difficult to open new businesses or that keep new businesses out. We need to recognize that Business growth is essential to all aspects of our lives as taxpayers and consumers and is the lifeblood of our communities.
I would also represent all the munincipalities equally in our county and recognize that any money spent belongs to the entire county and not just a small core group.
I am a registered Republican and am on the Alachua County Executive Committee. I am also a member of our local Tea Party which is made up of a very good cross section of all political parties in the county that are concerned with the current direction of the BOCC.
As I know that the BOCC should not make any decisions without the input of our citizens I would welcome your input and ideas on how to make our quality of life truly better by being more efficient with taxpayers money. As individuals we have had to learn to live within our means and our representative government should reflect the same idea. Thank you for taking the time to read this and I would appreciate the support as I move foward with my campaign. For more info you can contact me at 352-356-VOTE or through my website www.voteforwalt.com

Good day friends and readers…. It is now official. I am once again running for Alachua County School Board. I have many concerns about our students education and many related budget issues. Please peruse my new website at www.JodiWood.info to get further information about this candidacy. Jodi

Jan Jordan was instrumental in unionizing Alachua County teachers back in the 70s. Today, she is the Director of Continuing Education at City College, Gainesville, Casselberry, Miami, and Fort Lauderdale. This Saturday, she was just one of several speakers doing an educational presentation about unions and their history for the Gainesville Tea Party at their monthly meeting. Some members left the meeting because they were strongly anti-union and didn’t want to hear anything good about them.

Overall, it was a pretty even-handed event, that dealt with the good and the bad about unions. Ms. Jordan concluded that the rank and file members of the teachers’ union has allowed its leadership to create a counter-productive bureaucratic machine that is more about politics than education.

Enjoy the 14 minute video below, and feel free to comment!

Excerpts from Gainesville City Commission meeting show Craig Lowe admitting that the commissioners didn’t think they needed an opt-out as a safety net.

Newcomer Todd Chase took out incumbent Lauren Poe with almost 55% of the vote in the race for the District 2 seat on the Gainesville City Commission.

The voter turnout for this spring election was a paltry 21.9% in this district that is made up of mostly homeowners.

In District 3, Susan Bottcher won the battle of the newcomers with over 57% of the vote.

The turnout in this District was an abysmal 11.5% and it is mostly populated with students and university staff.

The Alachua County Republicans made an ad with parts of a Susan Bottcher campaign speech, put it on YouTube, and drew fire from the Bottcher Campaign. We had this video embedded on this site, and you can see as of this time it is taken down due to a copyright complaint.

Every candidate knows that whatever they say in public is up for grabs, and is likely to end up as an opposition ad if it serves their opponents’ purpose. The Bottcher campaign still prevailed upon YouTube to take the Republican ad down. But the ad is still available on the Alachua Republican web site at this location.

The Alachua Republicans have responded to this take down with this statement:

“As soon as we put out our “Bottcher Is Wrong” web ad, it was apparent from the phone calls and emails that we received that we had upset some Democrats.  Apparently, being held accountable for her own words bothered her so much that she had a campaign operative file a BOGUS copyright complaint against us with YouTube.

“We made sure that we met all four criteria for “Fair Use” as described by the U.S. Copyright office, and we are confident that the video will be restored by YouTube.  Still, that process can take several days, so, in the meantime, we installed our own video payer on our website.”

Last year’s contested Mayoral election, that ended up in court but was not overturned, may be the impetus for this story coming out of Tallahassee:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – A bill that would overhaul Florida’s elections law has cleared a House subcommittee.

The Government Operations Subcommittee cleared the bill (PCS for HB 1355) on Friday by a party-line vote of nine-to-four.

The bill is sponsored by state Representative Dennis Baxley. The Ocala Republican says the proposed changes include requiring county election supervisors to take direction from the Department of State.

The bill also would prevent a voter from changing his or her address at the polling place. And it would tighten oversight of third-party voter registration groups like the League of Women Voters.

The League and a group representing county elections supervisors oppose the bill. Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho says the changes are unneeded and calls the bill “partisan shenanigans.”

Last year, there were reports that people came from Tampa to vote for Craig Lowe, which led to local plaintiffs demanding to see the “blue sheets”. These are the records of people who came in to vote on election day, claiming to have moved to Gainesville and changing their official residence that day. According to a controversial Florida law, any voter living in Florida can change their address right up until and on election day anywhere else in Florida without having to present evidence other than signing an oath.

Although the law suit failed to overturn the election, evidence was brought to light that there were many residency discrepancies; enough to have possibly affected the election outcome. In court, Alachua County Supervisor of Elections Pam Carpenter said that her office was, “an administrative office, not an enforcement office,” absolving herself of any responsibility to make sure voters are really qualified.