Democrats will control the House, with help from South Florida.
Republican Charlie Crist Christ won the state, but lost this region. It looks as if state turnout wasn’t all that high, which hurt Davis, as did Christ’s huge financial advantage, which allowed an incessant barrage of TV ads depicting Davis as pro-terrorist. [Update: I hear Crist ran 21,000 commercials — more than any other candidate in the nation.]
Democrat Alex Sink will be the first elected state CFO — and looks to have a great future in state politics.
Nelon beat Harris — without my vote. I didn’t want to vote for a supporter of the torture bill. And they both voted for it. So for the first time in my life, I voted for neither candidate in a contested election.
Ron Klein beat Clay Shaw in the much-watched Boca Raton congressional election. Mahoney narrowly beat “Mark Foley” (Joe Negron) in Palm Beach, but it was close.
Where I live, Democrat Dave Patlak was beaten by incumbent Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen by almost 2:1, pretty much tracking party registration in Florida’s 18th district. The Patlak campaign had a few tens of thousands of dollars; the incumbent had well over a million on hand before the campaign even began.
Broward voted down a mass transit tax by a 2:1 ratio.
But the local news is dominated by the shooting of a UM student, Bryan Pata, a football player with a possible NFL career, in the parking lot of his off-campus apartment building.
It’s “Crist,” not “Christ.”
I think it’s great that Florida has elected its first gay governor. It shows that the gay rights movement has come a long way.