Congratulations to Debbie Cox-Roush, the Chairwoman for the Hillsborough County Republican Party. She and her minions have worked hard for months, and that hard work – and the general anti Democratic party sentiment throughout Florida and the nation, saw the GOP but an old fashioned whoopin' on the D's tonight.
In House District 57, Republican Dana Young, who sent out a mailer in the waning days of the campaign highlighting her Democratic opponent Stacy Frank's opposition to Florida's long time ban to gay adoption (recently overturned by the courts), beat Frank 56% to 44%. Democrats in Tallahassee had been hoping that this seat could be one that they could take back from the Republicans, but that's before the anti Democratic sentiment began to thicken and take hold.
In House District 47, where Democrats tried to make Republican candidate Jamie Grant's personal finances an issue, nobody in the district seemed to care, as he thumped Democrat Michael Steinberg, 59% to 41%.
Rachel Burgin, Shawn Harrison and Will Weatherford were all winners in other House races. The one Democratic winner was in District 58, where Janet Cruz beat independent Joe Render by over 10,000 votes.
In the Hillsborough County Commission races, both former Tampa City Council members who had great hopes of making the BOCC more liberal, John Dingfelder and Linda Saul-Sena, fell short in their races.
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2010.