by Joe Courter
Our little Blue Dot county ran strong in the last election, with Mary Alford and Anna Prizzia both winning, and the local ballot initiatives all doing well, too. It goes to show we have a certain community vibrancy that has built up over the decades, and we should be proud of that.
The Sheriff’s race was extremely close, and required a mandatory recount as it was within .5%, but it came out fine. I personally underestimated our blue wave and the turn out for Chad Scott, and we no doubt alienated some folks with giving partial support to No Party candidate Pam Koons, which contributed to that race being so close, but she kept showing up and sharing a positive, needed message, and deserved some credit for doing so.
And Kudos to election supervisor Kim Barton who was handily re-elected, and ran a good election for the County, validated by the smooth recount process the Sheriff’s race required.
Speaking of alienating, through an oversight on our part, David Arreola’s race for House District 22 was left off of the “Take to the Ballot Box” list. I would hope voters in that district would have gone Blue. As soon as we were made aware of the error we added it to the online Iguana, but apologies to his campaign. They were pretty pissed and I can’t blame them. It was 100% unintentional. He still ran well in Alachua County but the outlying area was too dominant.
Same was true for the other Democrats running in districts partly outside Alachua County, Tom Wells for Congress Dist 3, YvensPierre-Antoine for State Attorney, and Sylvain Dore for State Senator. Thanks for giving it a try against the (gerrymandered) odds.