Good morning, fellow Floridians.
Ready for another four more years of Rick Scott as Governor?
Well, ready or not, it is the reality in the Sunshine State — as is the same GOP cabinet of Pam Bondi as AG, Adam Putnam as Agriculture Commissioner, and Jeff Atwater as CFO.
And for the first time since 2011-2012, there will be a GOP supermajority of Republicans in the state House of Representatives. The last time that was the case — four years ago — the Legislature passed some of the most conservative legislation in decades.
That is the landscape in Tallahassee today. And all done without any mention of the Tea Party.
Yes, this alleged "Purple" state is looking very red indeed this morning.
There's lots to analyze, and we'll do that in our piece for tomorrow's paper that may be up later today on our blog. But the biggest story to tell is simply this: Rick Scott beat Charlie Crist, 48.2 percent to Crist's 46.96, which if that holds up at the end of all the votes cast, will be a slightly larger advantage for Scott than his 2010 victory over Alex Sink. That's despite all the extra work that Crist and company had done with the electorate to improve from what Sink did four years ago. It does seem like they did that with the black vote, which simply must mean that the GOP also worked harder than Scott did with their "ground game" this time around.
Amendment 2 "lost" with 57 percent of the vote, while Greenlight Pinellas got trounced. Again, more on those votes later. In Pinellas County Democrats are celebrating Pat Gerard's victory over Ed Hooper, making the Pinellas County Commission a Democratic Party-dominated board for the first time in decades.
In Hillsborough County's closest race, Al Higginbotham defeated Pat Kemp by less than 1 percentage point. Not so close was Sally Harris's stunner over Michelle Shimberg in the Hillsborough County School Board District 2 race; April Griffin and Melissa Snively are also winners in the school board races in Hillsborough.
In the SD22 seat that straddles both Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, Jeff Brandes easily defeated Democrat Judithanne McLauchlan.
Republicans won two of the three most intense Tampa Bay House races: Shawn Harrison knocked out Mark Danish in Hillsborough County's HD60, Chris Sprowls beat out Carl Zimmermann in HD65, but Democrat Dwight Dudley did beat Bill Young in HD68.
Ed Narain officially is now a House Democrat representing Ybor City, Seminole Heights and other parts of urban Tampa.
And among those who predicted incorrectly that Charlie Crist would win was Senator Bill Nelson, who wailed against big money in politics earlier in the evening.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2014.