Sharpe to make announcement, may be out of House race

Posted Feb 9, 2012 by William March

Updated Feb 9, 2012 at 06:16 PM

Republican Hillsborough County Commissioner Mark Sharpe will make an announcement Friday about his race for the U.S. House against Democratic incumbent Rep. Kathy Castor, and friends and supporters expect he’ll leave the race.

In recent days, Sharpe has been saying the newly redrawn Tampa-based congressional District 14 is just too tough for a Republican. The district already was heavily Democratic, and appears to have become even more so in the redistricting currently being undertaken by the Legislature.

Previously, Sharpe had said he wouldn’t let a heavily Democratic district stop him from running.

Making his announcement of the race in August, he said, “I’m fully prepared to run, however the mapmakers draw the map.”

Speaking to a gathering of Republicans in December, he said, “I’m hopeful that we’ll have a fair map, but I don’t care if the whole district is in South St. Petersburg,” a heavily Democratic area. “I’m going to beat (Castor).

“I don’t want a safe district. I want to represent everybody, black, white and Hispanic,” he added.

Lately, however, Sharpe has sounded different, calling the newly redrawn district “very challenging.”

“We’re not even talking uphill, it’s straight vertical,” he said last week, speaking of “a likely suspension of our campaign,” at least until the expected court challenge to the new district plan is settled.

Sharpe has said he didn’t want to ask friends and supporters to contribute financially to his campaign if he has no chance of winning.

The district originally was drawn in 1992 as a minority access district with large black and Hispanic populations. The goal of the Republican-dominated legislators who created it was to allow a potential minority candidate to win, but also to make surrounding districts safe for Republicans, by taking out Democrats and packing them into the Tampa district.

Several Sharpe supporters and donors said they’ve heard nothing concrete, but that the talk among Republicans is that Sharpe will leave the race.

“I’ve heard rumblings from a number of sources that he’ll bow out,” said supporter and friend Joe Chillura. “Knowing his meticulous nature, it’s what I’d expect.”

Working the crowd at the State Fair Governor’s Lunch Thursday, Sharpe declined to reveal the substance of his announcement, saying he will “explain everything” in it.

He’ll appear on an 11 a.m.-1 p.m. radio show hosted by local GOP consultant Chris Ingram on News Talk radio, 1470 AM.

 

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Largo Military Museum Gets New Name, Mission

Posted Feb 8, 2012 by Howard Altman

Updated Feb 8, 2012 at 04:55 PM

In an effort to expand its audience, The Armed Forces Military Museum in Largo has changed its name to the Armed Forces History Museum.

“We wanted to broaden the scope,” says Cindy Bosselmann, the museum’s director of marketing and promotional events. “A strictly military museum was not broad enough. We want to attract a variety of different demographics and ages. This will make us a little more viable.”

In addition to the military displays, the museum will now showcase local history and offer a series of rotating exhibits.

The first one, says Bosselmann, will showcase the Red Cross. Next month, the museum will highlight the Girl Scouts, followed by Florida tourism.

There will also be community cases for local organizations to display their goods, and special events to help raise funds.

And of course, Bosselmann says, the tanks and jets and choppers contained in the museum’s 50,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space will remain.

To introduce the changes, the museum will hold a special event Saturday, Feb. 11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Guests will receive $5 off adult and youth admission.  The first 100 paid guests receive a limited edition t-shirt (one per family).  Enjoy cake, cookies and refreshments while supplies last.  Become a member and receive a souvenir coffee mug and member t-shirt. 

The Armed Forces History Museum is located at 2050 34th Way N., Largo. Phone (727) 539-8371 for more information or go online.

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Planned Parenthood: Polls show Catholics, voters favor contraception coverage

Posted Feb 7, 2012 by William March

Updated Feb 7, 2012 at 03:10 PM

Planned Parenthood today went on a public relations offensive over the issue of a federal requirement for health insurance plans to cover contraception, sponsoring one poll and publicizing another that it says show voters, including Catholics, favor the coverage.

A poll done for Planned Parenthood by Public Policy Polling indicates that a majority of voters and of Catholic voters don’t believe Catholic institutions such as hospitals and schools should be exempted.

The poll said 56 percent of voters support requiring health plans to cover prescription birth control, with 37 percent opposed. Catholic voters, it said, support the requirement by 53-44 percent.

The respondents were also asked whether they believe “institutions such as Catholic hospitals and universities should be exempted ... because contraception runs counter to Catholic teachings” or whether “women of all faiths who are employed by
Catholic hospitals and universities should have the same rights to contraceptive coverage as other women.”

Responses were 57-39 percent opposed to the exemption among all voters, and 53-45 percent opposed among Catholic voters, said pollster Tom Jensen.

The poll, done Feb. 3-5, covered 1,085 registered voters, for an error margin of 3 points. That included 359 Catholic voters, for an error margin of 5.2 points among that group.

Respondents in the poll also said by a 40-23 percent margin that presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s stance against the coverage requirement would make them less likely to vote for him.

The findings suggest, “He’s playing with fire,” Jensen said. “It doesn’t square with the image as moderate on social issues he’s trying to achieve.”

The poll didn’t mention Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has also staked out a high-profile public position opposing the requirement, filing legislation in the Senate to guarantee the exemption to religious institutions.

Asked about the results, Rubio spokesman Alex Conant responded, “We aren’t interested in the polling on the issue. The senator introduced his legislation because defending religious freedoms is the right thing to do,” and the requirement is “an overreach that violates Constitutional rights.”

Public Policy Polling is a North Carolina-based, Democratic-oriented polling and political consulting firm, which says its published polls are neutral. You can see Jensen’s memo on the findings here.

Planned Parenthood also publicized the findings of a poll done by the Public Religion Research Institute, which also found majorities in favor of the coverage.

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Weatherford denies any attempt to undermine West

Posted Feb 7, 2012 by William March

Updated Feb 7, 2012 at 12:11 PM

House redistricting Chairman Will Weatherford today denied there was any attempt in the state Legislature to undermine U.S. Rep. Allen West, as West contended in a news release last week.

“I’m a huge supporter of Allen West—he has hit conservative icon status very quickly,” said Weatherford, a Wesley Chapel Republican in line to be the next state House speaker. “There’s been no political intent in this map (of congressional districts) whatever.”

Weatherford said under the new Fair Districts constitutional amendments, the legislators legally weren’t allowed to look at the political effects of their district mapping, and didn’t.

The state House’s redistricting proposal rendered West’s current congressional district somewhat more Democratic, and West announced last week he’ll switch districts as result.

West doesn’t live in his current district—he lives in the district of his political areh-enemy, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz—and an office spokeswoman said he and his family are already looking at possible homes and schools in the Treasure Coast area, the heart of the new district where he intends to run in November.

After the district proposal became known, some conservative Republicans speculated on blog postings over the next several days that moderate or “establishment” Republicans in Tallahassee were out to get West, and the charge was picked up by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

In announcing his district switch, West repeated the accusation, but with no details as to the names of the plotters of their motives.

He said he had initially promised to stay in his district, but “a cynical, politicized redistricting process wrought with cronyisms and nefarious in intent, sought to ensure I would not be able to keep that promise.”

West didn’t say who was to blame or why legislative Republicans would want to undercut his political standing. West’s chief of staff, Jonathan Blyth, said in an interview that West’s comment was “based on what he has read and heard about the process going on it Tallahassee.”

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Michelle Obama to tour Florida for healthy eating

Posted Feb 7, 2012 by William March

Updated Feb 7, 2012 at 11:46 AM

First Lady Michelle Obama will make stops in Homewood, Orlando and Longwood Friday and Saturday as part of a tour on the two-year anniversary of her Let’s Move! healthy eating initiative.

The initiative, begun in February 2010, is intended to solve the problem of childhood obesity within a generation.

On Friday, Obama will hold a town hall session at a Homewood YMCA along with health and nutrition experts, then have dinner with an Orlando-area family who have made healthy dietary changes. On Saturday, she’ll speak to a gathering at Longwood’s Northland, A Church Distributed, then participate in an exercise event at the ESPN Wide World of Sports at Disney World.

It’s the second month in a row the First Lady has visited the political battleground state of Florida. She held a healthy eating event for Latinos in Tampa, and hit fundraisers in Sarasota and Palm Beach, shortly before last month’s Republican presidential primary.

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