As we briefly alluded to last week, there is a lot of activity in Tampa and Hillsborough County over the Democratic Primary for State House District 58 after Representative Mike Scionti stepped down last month to take a job in the Defense Department.
Activist and fundraiser Janet Cruz-Rifkin announced her candidacy immediately after Scionti’s resignation was made public. Immediately she swept up some key endorsements from local heavyweights like Jim Davis, Kathy Castor and Alex Sink.
But in the past few weeks, both Gil Sanchez and Pat Kemp have announced their candidacies as well.
We hope to speak and write about Sanchez soon, but Kemp seems to be drawing a lot of grass roots support for her candidacy.
Currently the head of the Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Committee (which she has taken a temporary break from), Kemp has a host of accomplishments that she says makes her the logical successor to Scionti.
For one thing, she says, unlike Cruz-Rifkin, she currently lives in the district (in Seminole Heights), and says for 25 years she’s worked the neighborhood “in one end to another.”(although the Tampa Tribune is now reporting that Cruz-Rifkin, who now wants to just be known as Janet Cruz, has moved into a home in the district). In an interview she referred to helping start a neighborhood association, being involved in helping save the Hillsborough River, and helping raise funds for a playground project in Al Lopez Park as just some of the activities she’s done as a neighborhood activist.
She’s also been behind the scenes in government, working as an aide to Sara Romeo when Romeo served in Tallahassee, as well as Kathy Castor’s neighborhood liason when Castor was on the Hillsborough County Commission.
“My professional work help me see where the pressure points are to navigate the layers of government,” she says in explaining what she sees as another bow in her quiver.
And she’s ready for a response to an article that this reporter recently wrote about the sometimes futility seemingly in store for Florida House Democrats these days (subtitled, “Why It Sucks Being a Democrat in Tallahassee”).
“I really do believe I can make a difference,” she says, and relates to some legislative victories that she worked on while working for both Romeo and Castor, when both were in the minority party in Tallahassee and Hillsborough, respectively.
And she also cites evidence of people power moving policy in the state Capital, such as when Governor Christ reacted to the call for the expansion of early voting in the weeks leading up to the 2008 Presidential election.
Some supporters of Kemp have questioned the velocity of endorsements that Rifkin-Cruz was able to garner just hours after Scionti declared that he was giving up the seat to move to Washington and work for the Defense Department.
Kemp will only say that the list of top notch endorsers for her opponent as “very unusual,” but says that part of such a speedy election (the primary is on January 26th) actually is beneficial, since it will come down to grass roots support more than who has more money to spend to get out the vote.
This article appears in Dec 30, 2009 – Jan 5, 2010.
