After way too long, it’s finally time for me to pull up my blog, dust it off and rant. I’m outraged at the Florida primary election results. A virtually unknown billionaire candidate, Rick Scott, using all his own $50 million, has become the Republican Party’s nominee for Florida’s governor. This Johnny-come lately has saturated the media, especially TV ads, with aggressiveness and negativity making the Republican primary the most vicious in history. I’m sure he’s already gathering all the negative publicity he can find against his next opponent, Alex Sink. I hope she’s rich and strong enough to fight him off. But he was not alone using personal wealth to brutalize his opponents. Jeff Greene’s campaign failed because of considerably more personal baggage. Almost all of the candidates from all the parties have used negative ads in their campaigns. Is this now inevitable?
Is this then the future of politics in Florida and the nation – back-stabbing, personal attacks, nastiness, hate mail, litanies of negative allegations, and all financed by personal billions? Isn’t it time for election reform – equality and limits on campaign financing, a return to non-partisan politics and truth? What happened to the concept of campaigning in a positive manner for social and political change?
In Tom Lyons’ column in the Sarasota Herald Tribune, one man stated, “It’s just a matter of who you want to pick your pocket.” It wasn’t just the rain and a mid-term primary election that resulted in a very low voter turnout. Voters are sick of the lack of good honest candidates.
On a closing note, I’m very excited to soon be publishing my first book, tentatively titled Living on a Fault Line – a series of short stories about taking risks. Keep posted for more information.