Ronda Storms is making news in a couple of places today.
We'll get to her connection with Tiger Woods, but first, the Eastern Hillsborough legislator now has some competition in her bid for re-election in Senate District 10 this August.
Meet attorney Paul Phillips. In an interview with CL Tuesday afternoon, Phillips stressed that the differences between him and Storms might be more on style than policy disagreements. "I think our approach may be different," he said. "To the extent that when somebody disagrees with your morally, I don't think you necessarily need to be aggressive against that stance."
Although Phillips is an attorney, his background is in finance, which he says is a set of skills that should be in high demand in Tallahassee, what with the continuing economic crises affecting the state.
"I think that with some of the larger issues relating to financing, banking, insurance, things that are all complex issues, some of the answers for our insurance issues, that’s grounded in a financial background, " he says. Acknowledging Storms' previous career as a high school teacher he says, "I wouldn’t pretend to know about everything about education. It’s just different strengths," he says of his own background, before adding that as fellow Republicans, there might not be too much daylight between the two, other than his admonition that, "I might be more into limited government."
When asked his thoughts about the political story of 2009, the Tea Party movement, Phillips says "They're grass roots Republicans who are saying that the top down approach was strangling them." Continuing with the metaphor, he adds "they started gasping for air, then they fought for it," adding that there's no need to start a new Republican or conservative party, but that "the GOP needs to get back to its roots."
He says that though the Republican Party is considered to be the party of big donors and of the grass roots, the latter has been discounted somewhat in recent years, leading to the nascent conservative movement.
Phillips also teaches a class on philosophy and ethics at St. Petersburg College, and he says speaking with his students, he's learned that there's a problem in our education system, in that students get intimidated by science and math in high school, and frequently opt not to pursue majors in college where those skills are needed.
Phillips says he hears kids say, ”'I’m dreading this math class'. That’s not good, because you know the top paying jobs are computer engineers, structural engineers, mathematicians, finance professionals, accounting professionals. What does that say," he asks, "on how we're preparing our kids?" He then wonders how people can complain about foreign students taking over certain jobs here in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Senator Storms was in the news on Tuesday, after reports surfaced that she wants the Department of Children and Families to investigate why somebody felt they needed to go to Tiger Woods home last month, after receiving "reports" of potential child abuse going on.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that Storms wants to know whether someone knowingly filed a false child abuse report against the Woods family.
This article appears in Jan 6-12, 2010.