The triumphant mainstream Republicans will face another challenge from Democrats in November.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: August 21, 2024
Host: Is it the end of General Flynn’s “Medical Freedom” movement? In the Republican primaries yesterday, mainstream candidates trounced the medical mavericks. The winners will face Democratic challengers in the general elections, and if you believe the chair of Sarasota County Democrats, that will prove an interesting matchup, too. We have the details.
Johannes Werner: Over the last couple of years, medical activists upset with pandemic lockdowns, vaccines, and mask mandates have made Sarasota Memorial Hospital the object of their wrath. Organized by Michael Flynn, a national security advisor under Donald Trump who was convicted of lying to investigators, the activists fielded four candidates in the last elections; three of them got elected to the nine-member board.
This time around, the Medical Freedom group fielded four candidates again. If only two of them had won, the hospital would have been the first hospital in the nation controlled by vaccine and mask skeptics.
Mary Flynn O’Neill
But mainstream Republicans this time pushed back, providing support to incumbents, and fielding candidates committed to the medical consensus.
The outcome of the Republican primaries yesterday was one-sided. The medical consensus candidates beat the rebels by 2-to-1 margins.
Sharon Wetzler DePeters beat Tamzin Rosenwasser 67-32 percent; Kevin Cooper beat Stephen Guffanti 66-34 percent; Pam Beitlich beat Mary Flynn O’Neill – Michael Flynn’s sister – 62-38 percent; and Sarah Lodge beat Tanya Parus 70-30 percent.
Does that mean the general elections will be a slugfest for the Republican mainstream candidates when they face off against Democrats? Not, if you believe Dan Kuether, chair of the Sarasota Democratic Party. He says that – Medical Freedom candidates or not – hospital privatization should be a concern for voters.
Dan Kuether: At first glance, it seems that people were really focused on keeping these medical freedom candidates out. What is going to be happening though, is a lot of education to the general public that privatization of Sarasota Memorial has not been strictly an extremist viewpoint. Rick Scott, won handedly his primary last night, and he is the one that first brought this idea of privatizing Sarasota Memorial 10 years ago; and then Ron DeSantis has kind of continued that narrative and is currently actively privatizing a public hospital up in Bay County, Florida; and to say more, is that Kevin Cooper was just appointed to a board by Ron DeSantis. And there’s a good chance that if Rick’s going to be successful in November, that he is going to become the new Senate Majority leader.
Dale Anderson
So what we have here is actually that several Republican candidates who are very tied to the Republican infrastructure, who have taken appointments by some of these Republican leaders and when push comes to shove and that they do try to privatize Sarasota Memorial, I think that you will see them get in line, whether they are part of the Mike Flynn MAGA medical freedom group or not. But history has told us is that the Republicans statewide would like to see privatization of public hospitals in order to line their pockets with more dough. And when push comes to shove, the Sarasota Republicans will fall in line and make that happen for them.
JW: The Democrats, by the way, found a replacement for John Lutz, the hospital board candidate who passed away in July. The Supervisor of Elections, according to Kuether, accepted Dale Anderson as a stand-in. Anderson is a retired physician who also happens to be a board member of WSLR and Fogartyville.
Reporting from Sarasota for WSLR News, this is Johannes Werner.
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