The Bradenton Times’ Mitch Maley gives us an analysis of Manatee County’s election results.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: November 9, 2024
Host: In Manatee County, the Trump effect overwhelmed not only Democrats, but independent candidates as well. We talked to Dennis Mitch Maley, editor of the Bradenton Times, about the election results in Manatee.
Johannes Werner: Mitch Maley believes the main story of these elections played out in the rebellious primaries, rather than the general election. In August, the Republican base in Manatee let their anti-development sentiment known, flushing out a set of well-funded officials with MAGA credentials that were elected quite recently.
Mitch Maley
Mitch Maley: The bottom line is, in the primaries, we saw a historic, complete rejection of a status quo and an unbelievable turnaround despite massive financial forces working against that. So, that can never change. And I think the other big lesson is, thank God there was an opportunity to do it in the primary because I don’t think it would have happened in the general election. This general election was definitely all about the presidential race, I believe, and you could kind of see that in the numbers that Trump was able to turn out pretty much held for every Republican candidate. So I think it would have been very difficult to organize any kind of real grassroots movement, let alone one as profoundly successful as that if it would have happened in November.
Not a whole lot of surprises in the local race, other than you could certainly see where the impact of that down river effect of Trump’s voters’ enthusiasm played out.
Manatee County Commission
JW: In the Manatee County Commission, Carol Ann Felts, Tal Siddique, and Robert McCann are newcomers with close connections to the grassroots.
Carol Ann Felts’ win was a true underdog story. But the District 1 race also featured a community-rooted independent – who stood no chance whatsoever in the general election. Jennifer Hamey ended up a distant third in a very partisan environment.
Jennifer Hamey
MM: In District 1, Carol Felts had a really good chance, and not to take anything away from her tremendous underdog story, that she was the least financed candidate, and came out of that primary victorious, and then won. But you also saw that Jennifer Hamey, who was a strong candidate with strong ties to the community ran as an NPA candidate. And I think it proves that you just can’t do that yet, particularly in a general election where there’s just so many voters and so few of them really know anything about any of the races, but are willing to vote straight tickets. So I think that amplified Felts being able to win such a big landslide, Hamey was only able to collect 9% of the vote, and nobody thought that a Democrat in the race, one person who, strong candidate, ran a great race, nobody thought he would get three times the vote of Hamey, but I think that just shows again that it’s based largely on straight ticket voting.
JW: The only county commission incumbent who was re-elected is George Kruse, who had a turnaround of sorts. Originally elected with heavy developer funding, he eventually became the voice of skepticism and occasional “no” votes. This time, he was forced to run a grassroots campaign, both in the primaries and in the general election, where he faced a well-rooted and organized Democrat.
Carol Felts
The school board miracle
Outside the limelight of partisan battles, a small miracle happened on the Manatee County School Board, which has two liberal, if not progressive new members.
MM: We had that Amendment 1 on the ballot, which would have changed school board races into partisan races. And that’s interesting. It failed, of course, but that’s interesting because I believe — I don’t want to speak for certain, but I know both of the candidates are either, they might be registering NPAs, but I know both the candidates at one aren’t Republicans. I think they’re both Democrats, even though it’s a nonpartisan race. Charlie Kennedy and Heather Felton both won handedly, repeating that they had won, that they were in a runoff after getting number one in the respective races in August. But I don’t know that that would have turned out that way. If you had Mark Stanoch, who had more money than Heather Felton, I think you could have had DNRs on there. I think that would have changed it. So I’m very happy that that amendment failed for that reason. I’ve said for a long time I would love to see an amendment to amend the Constitution to require all local offices, city and county and school board to be all nonpartisan.
Heather Felton
JW: Renewing the school tax passed by a landslide 82%. This clear support for public schools was not necessarily granted, given the state’s school privatization policies.
Bradenton mayor
Gene Brown was re-elected by a double-digit margin, despite a challenger with a track record of staging upsets.
MM: That was one where I was very, very surprised, and when you consider what the city’s been up against … you’ve got a mayor who’s overseen the discharge of 500 million gallons of sewage into our local waterways, and he went for the 20 point route? I don’t understand that.
JW: Under the leadership of Brown, the Bradenton City Council decided to — literally — sell city hall in downtown to a luxury condo developer.
Charlie Kennedy
MM: That property, which is in a real key strategic part of downtown, where we have very little green space, where you very well could have done a nice park or something like that on that west side of 301, where you have very, very little green space that should have been a community discussion that really should have been workshop. We should have heard from the public. But no, we’re just going to have a giant high rise of condos that’s going to really change the landscape of downtown. So I thought that was just terrible governance on their part.
The effects of one-party rule
JW: Mitch Maley shared some insights about the effects of the firm one-party rule in Southwest Florida.
MM: I don’t see Democrats making any inroads in anytime soon. The tyranny of the majority, I’ve always called it. And whenever you have one party, the incentive is to go more extreme. You’re not going to win a closed primary against an incumbent unless you’re saying I’m more of whatever the base wants who drives turnout at the primary. And so you end up with this very … it becomes very, very, very liberal or very, very, very conservative. And then it also becomes very corporatist because it’s very easy to buy a uniparty, single party government. Because if you become the big primary funder of Republican politics or in California Democratic politics, you’re going to get favoritism.
JW: Johannes Werner, WSLR News.
For more Mitch Maley insights and hard-hitting independent reporting, go to thebradentontimes.com.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.
