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Pasco County News | Breaking News

Revising (upwardly) our Victory Night appraisal of Richard Nugent

Posted Aug 25, 2010 by Tom Jackson

Updated Aug 27, 2010 at 02:49 PM

Context and timing being pretty much everything in sports and politics, we are rescinding our assessment about the election night behavior of the freshly minted Republican nominee in Florida’s 5th Congressional District. Comments attributed to Richard Nugent in Wednesday’s edition of Hernando Today denigrating upstart challenger Jason Sager, while accurately quoted, were not uttered during Tuesday evening’s celebration.

Given that, we repeal our characterization of Nugent as having been, at his moment of landslide triumph, anything besides magnanimous and utterly gracious. As Nugent told us Friday, “I had no reason to be negative against Jason” after the election. Everyone involved in the scenario, including the reporter who included Nugent’s scalding criticism, agrees: The remark was part of a document detailing the candidate’s positions submitted to the newspaper at least six weeks ago.

Nugent went on: “I tried to be very magnanimous. I’ve been through this [campaigning] three times before. Going negative [after the votes are in] is not how I am. ... It takes guts to get out there and run for office, and I admire that in anybody.” This, for anyone less than completely clear on the matter, looks remarkably like the extending of an olive branch. Sager and his camp could do far worse than to embrace its significance.

We stand by certain parts of our post. To refresh (and here we quote ourselves):

Rep. Ginny Brown-waite approached Nugent a month or so before April’s qualifying date deadline, confiding a closely held secret: She was ailing, likely too sick to continue through another term, and hoped he would consider running for the District 5 seat. To minimize the headwinds, she said, she would keep her secret until the close of qualifying, eliminating the likelihood of a challenge from an established and ambitious Nature Coast Republican. At least six days before qualifying ended, GBW contacted Nugent to reaffirm her intentions, and to ascertain his.

Nugent’s role in this heinous, cynical chicanery would be to arrive, literally, just minutes before the close of qualifying to file entry papers and a check. The allegedly reluctant candidate explained the arrangement a variety of ways over the course of the primary campaign, and all of them stunk. Not enough, obviously, to disqualify him in the eyes of District 5 GOP voters. Not when the opponent was an upstart with heavy personal baggage, shocking ideas and insufficient resources to defend himself against an establishment machine candidate.

Otherwise, there is little more to be said about the GBW-Nugent skulduggery, except that as the campaign steers toward its November resolution, Florida’s 5th District Republican voters (who slightly outnumber Democrats) have weighed, measured and baked it in the cake. Only if Land O’ Lakes business consultant Jim Piccillo, Nugent’s Democratic rival, is lavishly funded, is he likely to be able to make Nugent’s sneaking in an even remotely interesting issue.

In the meantime, we are happy to amend the record.