Ahhh, election season.
It brings people to town who wouldn't otherwise converse with you unless they're being generously paid to.
And with the presidential primary now a paragraph in Florida's bizarre political history, campaigning for all the other primaries ahead of the Aug. 30 primary — U.S. Senate, Congressional, state legislative seats — is starting to heat up.
There's only one election on which all registered Republicans and Democrats (but no one else, boo!) in Florida will be able to weigh in: The U.S. Senate seat Marco Rubio vacated to run for president (a bid he dropped in the immediate aftermath of the Florida presidential primary).
The Republican candidate roster is already crowded, and could get even more so in the coming months, as there have been some complaints that none among the current collection of contestants possesses the type of name recognition capable of killing it on a statewide ballot.
A recent St. Leo University poll out this week suggests more than 65 percent of the state's GOP voters don't know who their guy is yet.
Presidential dropout Ben Carson, who sorta lives here, has been floated as a possible primary contender, but it seems pretty likely that establishment Republicans may not be so happy with him after that Donald Trump endorsement.
Despite being our Lieutenant Governor (and having had his name on a statewide ballot directly under Governor Rick Scott), Carlos Lopez-Cantera is one of those little-known Republican primary contenders.
The St. Leo poll puts him in third place; Ponte Vedra Congressman Ron DeSantis comes in with 11.1 percent of the vote and Indian Shores Congressman David Jolly gets about 10.1 percent. Lopez-Cantera got a whopping 7.4 percent. (There are about five other Republicans in the primary.)
Again, 65 percent of the (albeit only 198) voters polled have little to no clue who any of these people are at the moment.
"[The three candidates] represent three different areas of the state, but statewide, no one knows about these candidates," Saint Leo political science instructor Frank Orlando said of the three elected officials, according to News Service of Florida.
That's probably why Lopez-Cantera is coming to town Monday at noon (gotta snag the I-4 corridor, after all) to glad-hand with Tampanian movers and shakers at Jackson's Bistro at a gathering of the Tampa Economic Club.
It may actually be the first time he's been to town in any capacity, official, campaigning, beachgoing or otherwise.
(Okay, we kid. He's been here once or twice.)
Perhaps he's coming back around to pick off votes from Jolly, who has strong appeal among Tampa Bay Republicans (and has been applauded for a multifaceted effort to compel his colleagues in Congress to take their jobs a bit more seriously).
Much more exciting at the moment is the Democrats' primary contest for the seat; an action-packed throwdown between Orlando-area Congressman Alan Grayson, Jupiter-based Congressman Patrick Murphy and newcomer Pam Keith.
This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2016.