This afternoon in Lakeland, State Senator Paula Dockery "officially" announces her candidacy for the Republican nomination for Governor. (We put officially in quotation marks since she filed the paperwork to run a week ago).
The event begins at 5:30 p.m.at Munn park.
On Sunday, Dockery's hometown newspaper, The Lakeland Ledger, hailed her entrance into the race with an editorial titled, "Dockery a Convincing Leader".
The editorial hailed what she has become perhaps best known for in the past couple of years, her battle with CSX rail:
During the past two sessions, Dockery has shown just how effective she can be. She led the effort to defeat a move to provide the CSX railroad with millions of dollars in state money, in exchange for use of 61 miles of rail lines in Orange County for a commuter-rail system. The deal-breaker Dockery found was this: The taxpayers would assume full liability for all accidents on the rail line, even if CSX equipment or employees were negligent.
Yesterday Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson was in Tampa, where he urged lawmakers to get a deal finished up with SunRail and CSX in a special session next month, saying it will pave the way to make it easier for the federal government to award monies to Florida for a Tampa to Orlando high speed rail line.
But Dockery says there's no need for that special session, telling the Ledger last week that "There has been no change in the very bad terms that the Florida Department of Transportation and CSX agreed upon many years ago in a back-room deal."
Her steadfast position has been consistent, and is one of the reasons she has garnered enough grass roots support to think she has a fighter's chance in her uphill battle against Bill McCollum. However, it will be interesting to see how that plays out in the coming weeks, with so much of the political establishment desperately hoping for the light rail proposal to come to fruition, and thinking that the only way that might happen is if the state is able to make a deal the SunRail proposal back on track.
CL interviewed Dockery briefly last week for our upcoming story on her getting into the race for Governor. In that interview, she stressed that she is a passionate supporter of all forms of rail (light, commuter, high speed) but that she believes the CSX deal is a loser for the taxpayers in the state.
This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2009.