Former Sarasota House Democrat declared on Thursday that he will run for the Democratic nomination for Congress in Florida's 13th District, where he hopes to knock off Republican Vern Buchanan in November 2012.
Fitzgerald served in the Florida House from 2006-2010, and has worked as a political science professor at New College in Sarasota since 1994.
The race could get ugly – Buchanan will have millions of dollars at his disposal to spend, and the Sarasota County Republican Party immediately sent out a negative press release blasting Fitzgerald for his support of Barack Obama.
But Fitzgerald will have plenty of material to attack his GOP opponent on as well, as Buchanan was recently named by the Committee on Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) as one of the most corrupt members of Congress – the third time the non-partisan D.C. based group has applied that sobriquet to him since being elected to Congress in 2006.
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2011.