Early voting begins today in the House District 58 special election taking place in West Tampa, Seminole Heights, and northwest parts of Hillsborough County. The election is between Democrat Janet Cruz and Republican Hunter Chamberlin, with the winner replacing Democrat Mike Scionti, who stepped down from his seat back in December to take a job with the Obama administration in the Defense Department.
Despite the fact that it's a national holiday, don't expect a stampede of voters – today or even through next Tuesday's general election. Special elections held in February tend not to bring out many voters, and we saw in the primary held at the end of last month that it was only so called "supervoters" who made their ways to the polls.
On Saturday, Janet Cruz awoke to good news when her morning papers came, as both the Tampa Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times endorsed her against Chamberlin (other papers, like La Gaceta and the Florida Sentinel Bulletin, had already done so).
CL caught up with Cruz Saturday night at the Hillsborough Democrats coming out party, (labeled the Kennedy-Graham dinner this year). We asked her if she was concerned that people even knew there was another election coming up in a week.
"That's a big concern," she admitted. "That's why we're spending a lot of time knocking on doors of supervoters and reminding them that there's an election a week from Tuesday, and that early voting is beginning."
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2010.
