by Joe Courter
The primary voting went down okay in August; turnout was seen as low, but we are happy with outright wins for James Ingle and Desmon Duncan-Walker in City Commission races. For School Board, Leanetta McNealy and Thomas Vu were handily approved by the voters.
Moving on to face off against Republicans in the Nov. 5 general election, of course, at the top of the ballot we get to vote for Kamala Harris for president! Locally on the ballot are Chad Scott for sheriff and Mary Alford for County Commission, joined by other local Democrats who were not challenged in the primaries: Anna Prizzia for County Commission and Kim Barton for election supervisor here in Alachua County. Anna has a well-funded Republican opponent and, with the Tallahassee-mandated district-only voting as opposed to at-large voting, a steeper climb; this is a very important race. Kim Barton, a career elections office worker who has done a fine job, is against a well-funded local Republican Party officer with no elections office experience(!).
Yvens Pierre-Antoine for state attorney presents a progressive challenge to incumbent State Attorney Brian Kramer.
There are regional races that include Democrat for State House Dist. 22 David Arreola, who nosed out Amy Trask in the primary, Tom Wells for US House Dist. 3 versus Kat Cammack, and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell for US Senate … if we could knock out current Senator Rick Scott it would be amazing. Do we shamelessly support Democrats over Republicans? Pretty much, yes, and this time, with what the Republican Party has turned into, for sure yes.
It’s gonna be a long ballot. There are referendums and amendments at the end of the ballot, which are very important, especially the local ones. We will cover these in more detail in the October Iguana, which will print Oct. 9.
But locally we will be trying to regain local control of our Gainesville Regional Utilities public utility company from state intervention and control. We also will try to counter another DeSantis/Republican intervention in local control by restoring “at-large” County Commission voting.
Statewide, there are amendments that would legalize marijuana use by adults, and enshrine the right to abortion to the State Constitution. Those would all be big YES vote recommendations and campaigns worth supporting.