Man Bites Dog In Florida GOP
By Alan Pell Crawford
Florida lawmakers are tearing each other to pieces over the new congressional maps proposed by their Republican-majority legislature. That’s peculiar, since the most immediate and visible casualty of redistricting is likely to be another Republican.
The potential victim is freshman Rep. Allen West, an outspoken Tea Party favorite whose district represents West Palm Beach. (West is also one of only two African-American Republicans in the U.S. House. The other is Tim Scott of South Carolina.)
The new map removes Republican-heavy Palm Beach Gardens from West’s district and grafts it on to a neighboring one represented by another member of the Party of Lincoln, Tom Rooney, a two-termer. It adds to West’s constituency two patches of land whose inhabitants historically elect Democrats.
West, the Huffington Post reports, “is apparently expendable to the new plan’s architects.” In their defense, they insist they are simply doing the best they can to abide by a November 2010 amendment to Florida’s constitution that prohibits them from protecting incumbents or considering party membership, period.
Unfortunately, leaders of the Broward County Republican Party have sent an open letter to the state legislature’s redistricting committee complaining that they failed to do precisely what they are forbidden by law to do: protect West just because he won last time out.
Henry Kelly, the chairman of the Fort Walton Tea Party, is understandably steamed. To argue, as Republican leaders did, that mapmakers should have broken the law to protect West is “begging for a lawsuit,” Kelly says. “Further, you just handed every group who will sue an example of Republican manipulating the process to protect incumbents.”
Enough already. Congressional districts should not be carved up to help incumbents at the expense of challengers, nor should the primary process be manipulated with the same end in view. Voter turnout in primaries—about one in five registered voters in Florida show up for them—is already so abysmally low that a small percentage of the population (and only those registered as Republicans or Democrats) decides who the nominees will be. This further skews the system to favor political professionals and hard-core activists, to the disadvantage of most citizens.
Disenfranchised Independents
The Florida Times-Union, reporting on the low turnout for the 2010 primaries, notes that one way to boost voter participation, and break the stranglehold the parties now exercise over it, is to allow open primaries. The current system effectively disenfranchises millions of voters who don’t want to register with either party but still want some voice in deciding who they will have to choose between in general elections. As more and more Americans declare their independence of both parties, calls to end closed primaries—quite rightly—can be expected to increase in number and in volume.
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Before deidicng the fate of T-SPLOST voters should know what the current State four percent sales tax rate would be minus the hundred plus exemptions. No one seems to know what the “revenue neutral” rate would be if all retail sales were subject to the State sales tax. Point being: I would be more inclined to vote for T-SPLOST if the four percent rate was first reduced. Maybe this could be simple as returning to equitable taxing of sales as we had when the sales tax was first added to our tax system–circa 1950.