Below are my recommendations for local Lake County elections (not cities) for:
- Lake County Commissioner - Dist 2 and Dist 4
- Lake County School Board - three openings
- Congressional Dist. 8 (Alan Grayson is the Dem. incumbent)
- Florida State Rep. Dist 25
- Judges - nope - I don't have enough information because it is really hard to find information on Judges, and, they don't really affect most fiscal issues of local government. However, Hodges & Miller are incumbents, and if you don't want incumbents, then go for Lyn & Odette.
I have written various postings on specific candidate recommendations, but now need to summarize them and make recommendations on all the positions up for local voters in Lake County to decide. I have attended most School District Board meetings AND workshops (i.e. for budgets) in the last four years, and I have attended most County Commission meetings in the last 18 months. I ran for a while for Lake County Commissioner, District 4, until I realized I didn't have the funds or "army" of supporters like Leslie Campione. My principle guidelines on selecting a candidate are:
- They aren't naive or inexperienced in intelligently evaluating spending requests from staff. This is important because
a primary duty of officials is to approve budgets and spending, and the staff usually have advanced degrees and long experience to know how to setup spending requests that won't be challenged by naive elected officials. They should be intellectually capable of CHALLENGING staff proposals and not roll over and rubber stamp self serving government requests for spending.
- They should be intelligent enough to define and implement policies that are needed. This is extremely rare, and except for School Board member Larry Metz, most officials are elected based on popularity or fund raising expertise, and rarely question, improve or develop policies. For instance, no one has ever developed a policy locally to specify a formal, analytical approach to evaluate wage increase proposals like business does, nor do they compare them to local business wage practices.
- They have advanced education in order to deal with staff, vendors and attorneys on an equal level.
- They should have more business experience than government experience. No more retired teachers or government workers "who know the system", but do not know how to set standards for more efficient government, and think it is normal to never evaluate merit like business does.
- Committed to lower taxes, regulations and liberty, vs unending regulations to legislate how everyone should act.
- Committed to fiscal transparency, unlike current County Commissioners who only allow public input for a 3-minute period per person at the beginning of meetings, or the Lake County School Board members who allow the CFO to stiff the public by NOT providing budget backround documents to be discussed in budget workshops.
- Committed to performance measurement of operations similar to business. It should be data driven, not emotional, and comparable to performance "metrics" used in business. We have previously written about the poor "workload measurements' used by the County or the complete lack of them in the School Board. Individual managers may have some, but they are not part of monthly fiscal packages to evaluate efficiency of staff when spending taxpayer funds. This is important, because Government is a monopoly and does not have competition to drive efficiency development like business does.
- Able to provide examples of problems and solutions rather than use common platitudes like "fight to reduce taxes" without being able to discuss how to do it in specific terms, and WHAT taxes are excessive and why. I wrote an entire posting on all the unsupported platitudes used by many candidates on their websites. They all sound nice, but only some candidates could define examples of problems, and specific tactics to solve them.
- They are Republicans and follow Republican principles of smaller government, less regulation and preservation of property rights. They also are able to ACT to foster fiscal conservatism, rather than just throw out platitudes about "reducing waste, fraud & abuse" without even knowing examples of each. They are NOT RINOS (Republican in Name Only) like Lake County Commissioners Linda Stewart and Elaine Renick. They are not Democrats who have supported people like Obama or Grayson, causing the dire financial situations we have now in the Country.
NOTE: Except for the Federal Congressional races (Dist 8)and the Florida Representative race (Dist 25) these are Lake County wide races. Even though the winner must live in their district and represents it, ALL Lake County voters can vote for each of the Lake County candidates below ( County & Schools).
I know all these recommended candidates personally. All are Republicans and not RINOs'. I have met them at many Board meetings or at candidate forums and have observed their answers to many forum questions.
1. US Congressional District 8 - vote for local Republican favorite, Patricia Sullivan to replace Democrat incumbent Alan Grayson. There are six other Republican candidates, but Sullivan is my recommendation to change "business as normal" in Congress. She is the co-founder of the North Lake Tea Party, and although she does not have business experience, extensive Republican activity or advanced education, I am amazed at her ability to learn and understand fiscal issues. Otherwise, acceptable alternatives are conservative attorney Todd Long, or if you want an establishment Republican with lots of government experience, choose Daniel Webster. Even though I normally recommend professionals or business experienced candidates, I think Congress needs a "Mama Grizzly" like Sullivan to shake things up. Vote for Patricia Sullivan.
2. Florida State Representative District 25 - vote for Larry Metz. The incumbent, Alan Hayes, is termed out and running for another office. I personally know Metz, a litigation attorney, from his activities on the Lake County School Board, and I have attended most of their meetings and workshops for the last four years. Metz is highly skilled in absorbing the facts related to a problem and laying them out with proposed solutions in a logical manner. In one case, the teacher and worker unions were pushing a .25 mill additional tax last year because "the roofs are leaking" and more maintenance dollars were needed. Metz reviewed the facts, found no roofs were leaking and was able to offset the wild, emotional appeals by the unions in order to raise taxes to get more funds for wages. Metz is also one of the few elected officials to develop needed policies. He developed the policy establishing the new School District auditor position, plus the policy for the new Audit Committee. He also developed a policy to control and significanly reduce School District cell phone usage. Metz has been criticized by one blog supported by contractors because 2-4 years ago he approved an increase in School impact fees which went to the County Commission and was partially rejected. In my opinion, Metz was following through with a fiduciary duty to find added income to fund new schools due to population growth, but the builders and contractors and land developers don't like impact fees, because they reduce profits. Metz's opponent, Rick Joyce, is also an attorney, and experienced business person, and is also a good candidate but I believe Metz will better use his local legal skills to effect needed change in State regulations. Vote for Metz.
Note: the Orlando Sentinel has endorsed County Commission incumbents & RINO's Linda Stewart and Elaine Renick, who I oppose. They are also supported again by the Sentinel's Lake County columnist, Lauren Ritchie. They are also supported by many local Democrats who told their members to switch to Republican so they could vote for them. So, I consider Renick and Stewart to be RINO's and closet Democrats. See Below.
3. Lake County Commission, District 4 - vote for Leslie Campione. A vote for any other candidate will split the vote among less active candidates and possibly return incumbent Linda Stewart to office. Campione is intellectually the equal of most County staff members and READS regulatory & budget documents, which most officials do not do. She IS supported by developers and Don Magruder's Right side of the Lake blog, but she is a much better choice than continuing the incumbent Linda Stewart who is a retired teacher and who voted for the expensive comp plan, voted to SUE Niagara in the losing battle, VOTED to approve paying $300,000 to the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission without any stated performance requirements, and who did not provide any leadership in solving county economic problems. If you watch videos of Board meetings, you would see that Stewart rarely asks any questions regarding fiscal issues, indicating she is accepting staff arguments provided in her office, or she does not think it important that the public understand the soundness of her position on an issue.
4. Lake County Commission, District 2 - vote for Sean Parks. A vote for any other candidate will possibly split the Republican vote among less active candidates and return incumbent Elaine Renick to office. Parks is ALSO supported by the developers and land planners, but has the intellectual ability to challenge staff on spending issues. Parks is an engineer and land planner and has a Master's degree, the better able to deal with complex staff proposals. Incumbent Elaine Renick, a retired teacher, is the active supporter of the 350 page Comp Plan that removed some property rights and will increase the staff to implement all the new regulations. Like Stewart, she approved paying $300,000 to the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission without any performance requirements in the contract, and she also has not initiated any programs to solve the economic problems of the county, and only focuses on water issues. A vote for Mark Saunders would also split the vote, and it is my opinion that he would not spend time to READ about issues, but would make crowd pleasing statements on an emotional basis that may not be based on fact. He has published a ten point plan but has not revised it when I and others have pointed out factual inaccuracies. He claims to be a businessman, but has not ever provided any acceptable list of employers, customer references or personally owned company name. Without such verifiable data, we cannot determine that he actually has any business expertise at the level needed on the Board. Just saying you will "fight" to reduce waste, fraud & abuse is not the same as actually being able to define them and develop policies to reduce them. A vote for Paul Williams, a capable marketing expert, would split the Republican vote and help Elaine Renick. He was a Democrat for 10 years and only switched to Republican just before he started his election campaign. Vote for Sean Parks.
5. Lake County School Board, District 1 - vote for Jim Miller. Miller has only one opponent, who is not well financed or known outside Groveland. Miller has attended a number of school board meetings, has been heavily involved in local issues. Even though this is a non-partisan position, he is a Republican, and his opponent is a long time government employee supported by Democrats. The incumbent is not running, so both candidates are new candidates. As always, I rarely would support any candidate who has mostly government employment experience. Vote for Jim Miller.
6. Lake County School Board, District 3 - vote for Tod Howard. Howard is a chiropractor and his wife runs a business, and he is focused on fixing problems in the School District. He was an independent, but switched to Republican this year. We have been able to discuss budget issues and he understands them. His leading opponent, Republican JoAnn Jones, is a long time school teacher, but she favored Amendment 4 and did not support merit pay for teachers, indicating a liberal bent. She was recently reported in the Orlando Sentinel as not paying property taxes on many investment properties or her personal home. (Note: Recently, her husband paid almost $200,000 in back taxes after news reports appeared.) It is my opinion that NO long term government employee should be elected to office, since they will perpetuate the status quo, and not have the business expertise to evaluate staff spending decisions. Vote for Howard.
7. Lake County School Board, District 5 - vote to re-elect incumbent Kyleen Fischer. Her only other incumbent in this non-partisan race is supported by Democrats and does not, in my opinion, have the ability to challenge staff in spending decisions. Fischer DOES support the teacher's unions, but is the better choice of the two candidates. However, with her experience on the Board, I wish she would initiate more budget, transparency, policy and procedure changes to help replace the vacuum that will be left by departing Larry Metz.
Other Elections that Affect Lake County, but I don't have enough information on them:
Florida Governor - Local establishment Republicans favor politically experienced McCollum, but if you want non-political candidates, it is hospital billionaire Rick Scott. However, he is the guy that ran a Hospital company that was fined over a billion dollars because they filed false medicaid claims. Many Tea Party folks like McCallister, but he doesn't have much visibility outside those groups. The winner in the primaries will face Democrat Alex Sink in the general election.
Florida Attorney General - Republican establishment types like current Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, who is known as the guy that ran up all those airplane trips paid by Florida taxpayers. Those who want someone with prosecution experience favor Hillsborough County assistant state attorney Pam Bondi.
US Senate - Everyone likes Marco Rubio.
US House:
- Dist 8 - Patricia Sullivan, as mentioned above.
- Dist 3 - NOT Democrat incumbent Corrine Brown who supports Obama policies and fiscal waste.
- Dist. 5 - Jason Sager is favored by Tea party members. This position was vacated by retiring Ginny Brown Waite who waited until after the filing deadline to announce her retirement and then recommended Rich Nugent. If you want the establishment candidate with political experience, then it is Rich Nugent. If you favor a non-establishment , non-political candidate, then it is Sager.
- Dist. 6 - Longtime incumbent Cliff Stearns is the Republican incumbent and liked by many people. He has good "ratings" from many conservative and fiscally conservative groups.
- Dist 24 - NOT incumbent Democrat Susanne Kosmas - some people like Republican Craig Miller. I have not followed that race.
Other candidate positions, such as the District positions, may not be on the August 24 ballot, but will be on the General Election ballot for November 2. I will evaluate them in October.
Vance Jochim
Chief Fiscal Ranger