Who Won?

Take Back Manatee flips the Manatee BCC, and more good news

The results are in from our August 20th elections, and there is plenty for fans of good local government to celebrate! Many candidates with allegiance to the public interest won in Sarasota and Manatee Counties. Focused, grassroots advocacy made change. Nowhere was that more evident than Manatee County.

Manatee SOE

Scott Farrington, the former Deputy Supervisor of Elections (SOE) (under Manatee’s longtime SOE Mike Bennett) won his race against James Satcher. Satcher was appointed to the Manatee SOE position by Governor DeSantis after Bennett announced his retirement. Bennet recommended Farrington as his replacement, but DeSantis chose James Satcher, someone with zero experience in running public elections.

Satcher was part of a slate of Manatee County Commissioners who took office in 2020. Satcher and the Commissioners seated with him were clients of political consultant Anthony Pedicini, known for brutish political tactics bankrolled by prominent development interests. They quickly started delivering results for their developer backers, culminating in cutting wetlands protections in October 2023. They did this over loud public outcry against their assault against the environment and responsible land use standards. Satcher’s lack of experience in running elections, along with his clear ties to local special interests, generated deep concern regarding his ability to perform with the expertise and objectivity required of a County SOE. Manatee voters chose the objective professional, Scott Farrington.

Manatee BCC

Former Manatee County Commissioner Betsy Benac spearheaded a grassroots effort to unseat the remnants of that 2020 Pedicini Manatee County Commission slate. These citizens formed their own political committee called “Take Back Manatee”. Here’s the thing: they are an actual group of citizens - not a empty election funding device, like so many political committees operating in Florida. With a shoestring budget (the committee has reported about $31,000 in contributions), they supported a slate of public interest candidates. Those candidates - George Kruse, Tal Siddique, Carol Ann Felts and Bob McCann - were running to end the reign of Commissioners who routinely rubberstamped overdevelopment and dismissed public concern over inadequate infrastructure and indiscriminate building approval. They won BIG. Their margins of victory ranged from Tal Siddique’s 61% of the vote vs April Culbreth’s 39%, to Bob McCann attaining 54.08% of the vote against Raymond Turner. These races weren’t close. Kudos to the citizens behind “Take Back Manatee”, and to the candidates with the heart to run against the Pedicini machine slate.

Sarasota BCC

In Sarasota County’s Commission races, the results were mixed. The Pedicini machine candidates were Neil Rainford and Teresa Mast.

Teresa Mast prevailed over Alexandra Coe. Coe got 44.6% of the vote with a slim campaign budget (about $33,821), Mast campaign coffers came to $248,258 and she had her “Friends of Teresa Mast” PAC money ($154,550 at the time of this writing). Mast had $306,808 behind her, and those funds went to many nasty mailers maligning Coe, as well as a fake voter guide via the PAC Make America Great Again (chaired by our local Prince of Dark Money, Eric Robinson). It seems Sarasota will once again have a County Commissioner who is a lobbyist for the building industry. It first happened in 2016 when County Commissioner Christine Robinson became the President of the Argus Foundation.

Former Sarasota Sheriff Tom Knight handily defeated Neil Rainford, getting 61% of the vote to Rainford’s 39%. Both candidates had over $200K in campaign funds, along with namesake political committees. Tom Knight’s political committee raised $196,800 and currently reports about $180,000 in expenditures. Friends of Neil Rainford gathered $149,000 in contributions. Like Friends of Teresa Mast, Rainford’s PAC contributed to the Make America Great Again PAC, which funded the fake voter guide recommending Mast and Rainford. The controversial guide claimed endorsement by the Governor, which DeSantis’ office would not confirm.

Our current Sarasota Sheriff, Kurt Hoffman, took an active role in campaigning for Neil Rainford. Hoffman had been Knight’s Deputy Sheriff. Hoffman was Knight’s protege, and Knight supported Hoffman’s 2020 election. Yet in this race, Hoffman criticized Knight for decisions Knight made while serving as Sheriff, though Hoffman had not criticized these decisions before.

Sheriff Hoffman has an obligation to be an objective arbiter when it comes to local elections. Voters who visited the Venice early voting site complained that Neil Rainford’s supporters were aggressive with them, pushing that controversial voter guide. When a resident is concerned about voter harassment, who do they call? One option: the Sheriff. Having a Sheriff that is taking sides in local elections presents a unique problem. It would have been better for Sheriff Hoffman’s constituents and voter confidence in the fairness of our local elections if Hoffman had refrained from endorsing a local candidate. Taking such an aggressive stance against his former mentor is mystifying. Why didn’t Hoffman speak up before?

Sarasota Tax Collector

Sarasota County Commissioner Mike Moran prevailed against Charles Bear, who is the Director of Tax Operations in the Charlotte County Tax Collector’s office. Like Satcher vs. Farrington, there is a massive difference in professional expertise between Bear and Moran. Bear has worked for years in the field, while Moran has no experience in the Tax Collector’s office. Moran is, however, being sued by Florida’s Tax Collectors in his capacity as the Executive Director of the Florida PACE Funding Agency.

Moran has been under scrutiny for his leadership of the Florida PACE Funding Agency for other reasons as well. Most recently, the agency’s entertainment spending has been criticized has excessive and an irresponsible use of taxpayer funds. Pasco County Tax Collector Mike Fasano recently cancelled an agreement with the Florida Pace Funding Agency over this reported misuse of public funds. In his notice to FPFA, Mike Fasano wrote the termination of the agreement with the FPFA was “for cause.”

“Cause is derived from recent and troubling discoveries obtained through public records requests, that FPFA has utilized public funds at the taxpayers expense for improper and lavish personal use,” Fasano wrote. “Such actions are inappropriate for officials who are (entrusted) with public funds.”

In his role as a County Commissioner, Moran has been leading cuts in funding for community non-profits and early childhood education.

Despite his lack of expertise, controversial entertainment spending and controversial cuts for child services, voters chose Moran for the local GOP nomination for Tax Collector.

Sarasota Hospital Board

The GOP candidates who were squarely in favor of maintaining Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s clinical standards and public status defeated the candidates who defined themselves as the “medical freedom” slate.

The “medical freedom” hospital board candidates criticized Sarasota Memorial’s handling of the COVID pandemic, despite SMH being a top performer in the nation in delivering excellent COVID treatment. Our hospital performed better than most hospitals in the state and nation. SMH’s Quality Committee conducted a rigorous review of COVID protocols and outcomes. Their findings, published in Feburary 2023, reported:

“Over the past three years, Sarasota Memorial's COVID mortality rate was 24% better than expected,according to an independent analysis by Premier Inc. In the analysis of 1,300 hospitals in Premier's database, Sarasota Memorial COVID mortality rates were lower (better) than Premier's national, South Atlantic, Florida and peer hospital benchmarks through each year of the pandemic, including the deadliest Delta phase. If all hospitals in Premier’s analysis had the same observed mortality rate as Sarasota Memorial, an estimated 38,000 deaths could potentially have been avoided.”

Those are great results, and Sarasota voters ensured that our public hospital will continue with a board that respects science and the nation’s public health experts.

Sarasota School Board

If there is one public official who has been the main target of Sarasota’s ruthless, extreme right wing tacticians, clearly that person is Tom Edwards. Mr. Edwards has graciously handled the heat, and has been incredibly productive while doing so.

In his first term as a school board member, Edwards introduced the goal that every student should have a plan when they graduate, and be either enrolled (in college), enlisted (embarking on a military career) or employed. To that end, Edwards has partnered with community leaders and organizations to create career academies for those students who are not college bound.

Tom brought the Sarasota Technical College together with Sarasota Memorial Hospital and the City of North Port to develop a two-year certificate program at a future Health Care Academy. Funding and final plans for the academy are underway.

Edwards worked to create a trades program at Riverview High School. He partnered with the Gulf Coast Builders Exchange to create a program for non-college-bound students to receive hands-on, skill-building learning leading to careers in building trades after graduation. Two more high schools are adding this program to their offerings.

Edwards accomplished this while others on the board were writing the now legally defunct “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Edwards got 56% of the vote, eliminating the need for a runoff between him and the next highest vote-getter, Tom Babicz.

Karen Rose’s controversial board actions caught up with her. Rose took the lead in firing Sarasota’s former Superintendent Brennan Asplen, voted to hire the controversial Vermilion education consultant, and led an effort to gerrymander Sarasota’s school districts. The redistricting permitted Gregory Wood to file to run against Tom Edwards (Wood came in third). Wood had previously filed to run for the Sarasota County Commission.

The negative messaging coming from Rose’s camp was particularly egregious. Sarasota voters got fear-mongering messages against Barker about genital mutilation and sexualizing kindergartners.

Those messages don’t come cheap. Karen Rose contributed $178,325 to her campaign, in addition to contributing $5,531.16 in “In Kind” contributions (the value of goods or services provided for free). It’s a huge amount of money, and that kind of personal donation from a candidates is rare in Sarasota’s local politics. As the final campaign accounting unfolds, it will be interesting to see if Rose is made whole by paying herself back from her campaign account. Right now there aren’t sufficient funds in Rose’s campaign account for her to recover the $183,000 she put into her race. Will we see more contributions so Karen is able to reimburse herself?

Despite the egregious attacks, Liz Barker prevailed over Karen Rose with 51.5% of the vote. Barker promises to be a thoughtful School Board member, who will bring compassion and the eye of a mother of four children (who actually attend Sarasota public schools) and the expertise of a school psychologist. It promises to be a winning combination that will turn down the temperature at school board meetings and train the focus of the board on Sarasota’s children.

Sarasota’s teachers and librarians may be breathing a sigh of relief today. Barker said she decided to run when her daughter came home and reported that her teacher was packing up the classroom library. Real books had become risky in Sarasota, thanks to the political grandstanding of board members like Karen Rose and Moms for Liberty Co-founder Bridget Ziegler. Both claim they never banned books. Technically, that’s true. But they didn’t have to. Their fear-mongering rhetoric was enough to send a chilling message to Sarasota’s teachers, and our teachers got the message. Sarasota has taken a step toward repudiating this disgraceful legacy of dumbing down Sarasota public education. Let’s hope our teachers bring those books back into the classroom.

Sarasota voters saw through a divisive political agenda masquerading as “parental rights”.

Local elections matter. Our community deserves great leaders who will truly serve the public. Yesterday’s elections were a decisive step in the right direction.