Among the top politicos who appeared in Tampa on Saturday night at the annual fundraising dinner for the Hillsborough County Democratic Party was Nan Rich, the Florida Senate Democratic leader and the only major announced gubernatorial candidate for the party's nomination in 2014.
This reporter spent a few minutes in a private room in the Tampa Convention Center where elected officials and prominent party members were mingling before being informed that the media wasn't allowed.
Before booted out, I was able to spend a few minutes talking to Sen. Rich, who during her speech rejected accusations that the state party was, "invisible and irrelevant." Here's most of that Q&A.
Nan Rich: I come from a very Democratic rich area in South Florida. Most of the district is Broward County, some of it is in Dade County, which is where I grew up. Very important to be in a lot of other places, I've been traveling up in the Panhandle, Duval, Bradenton, Orange County, everywhere ...
CL: You have to do that, right? Get yourself known throughout this big state?
NR: Yes, but it's interesting. Because I've served 12 years in the Legislature, I have a lot of networks of people with whom I worked over the years particularly in the children's area, women's issues, GLBT, developmentally disabled. There's just a lot of networks, and I also was the former national president of the National Council of Jewish Women, so we have sections all over the state so I'm going to work on all of those networks.
