Low turnout put developer-funded candidates at disadvantage.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: August 21, 2024
Host: Mitch Maley is the editor of the Bradenton Times, Manatee County has been home for him for many years, and he is a close observer of local politics. So when he says the sweep by grassroots candidates in yesterday’s election was historic, this is something with weight. I interviewed Maley this morning.
Mitch Maley: What you saw was a historic repudiation of special interests by informed voters. This is something you want. To be honest, I’ve been waiting my whole life to see this and in my 20 plus years as a journalist, I’ve never ever witnessed something so incredible. This is the sort of thing that, you know, after a while you get jaded and you think money’s always going to win, special interests are always going to trump the grassroots candidates … and people would always ask me, “Do you think it could change an election?” I’d always say, “I don’t know what that looks like. I know what it looks like when there’s a lot of energy and it feels like there’s a lot of grassroots support, and then you still end up having 20 point margins in the races with the money that’s in there. I don’t know what it looks like when people get fed up enough.” And when people say, “How are we going to change this?” I’d say, “Well, the only way it’s ever gonna change is the ballot box.” They have to push the community so far, then enough people wake up and say, “What is happening and who’s responsible?” They do a little bit of work and they vote the right way. But I didn’t know that would ever happen, to be very honest. I didn’t know going into this, I still didn’t think it was likely. And I’m really amazed by it. This should be a national story. This is a textbook story of voters taking their community back from special interests. And I’m proud of the community for what they’ve done.
Johannes Werner: Low turnout by low-information voters helped, according to Maley.
MM: Well, this I think was a clear repudiation of that from the voters, and it clearly helped that you had a very informed voting base turning out. Turnout was low, which I think actually benefited the grassroots candidates, and I say that because there was clearly an effort to really paper the low information voters that had recently moved to the county or the more disengaged ones that typically live out east, and it didn’t work. And you could see that in all of the grassroots candidates, they won by similar margins and it was I think a very clear repudiation that we’re not falling for it.
JW: At the core of the grassroots sweep were three races for Manatee County Commission. Incumbent George Kruse cruised to victory by a big margin against developer candidate and former County Commission Chair Kevin Van Ostenbridge, who switched districts. The two other ones surprised Maley.
JW: George Kruse is a known entity, but Carol Ann Felts and Tal Siddique, could you comment on those two candidates who won?
Carol Ann Felts
MM: Carol Ann Felts’ victory is by far the most impressive, because she was in District One, which is very rural. So it’s large geographically, and sparsely populated. So it’s very hard to door knock and to really do that kind of shoe leather campaigning. And she had by far the least amount of financial resources. And also she was going up against someone who was well funded and unknown. Nobody who Steve Matello was, but there also wasn’t the negatives that there were with, let’s say, April Culbreath and Kevin Van Ostenbridge. So she had her work cut out for her. And I think that was the most surprising one, to be honest.
Tal’s race is a little bit different because District Three is very compact. It’s geographically small, densely populated. So you can reach people a little bit easier in a shoe leather campaign. And it’s also probably the most engaged and informed district. And he had raised a significant amount of money for a grassroots candidate, and he was going up someone with a lot of known negatives, in April Culbreath. So while he still had his work cut out for him, given how much money and how bad the dark PAC attack ads were on him, that was probably the less surprising because I’ve always felt that’s the district where grassroots candidates can do best.
Tal Siddique
JW: The supervisor of election race clearly went to Scott Farrington, the candidate with most experience, rather than James Satcher, the man put in place by Gov. Ron DeSantis a few months ago.
MM: That was the one I was really most concerned about because to be honest with you, if you don’t have competency in the supervisor of elections, then your elections themselves are at risk. And James Satcher had proven himself incompetent almost immediately. And throughout the entire process between him getting the appointment from the governor at the behest of developers and the election itself, right up until the days before, there were all kinds of red flags that his people just didn’t know what they were doing. And there was some evidence that they did not have honest intentions. So that was a race that I thought was just vital to the community. And I think he really shot himself in the foot; that he revealed himself to the community as just being incompetent.
And I think that’s an easy thing for people to say, “It’s not partisan, It’s not about ideology, We need somebody that knows what they’re doing.” And you’ve got a guy with 20 some years experience running elections. And then you’ve got this guy who’s just tripping over his own feet right off the bat. I’m very happy that that race turned out the way it did.
JW: Finally, the Manatee County School Board, which had been subject to culture wars, is apparently making a turn back towards pragmatism. Heather Felton, a Democrat leads the race, headed into a runoff Nov. 5 against Mark Stanoch. Charlie Kennedy was close to 50%, but he will re-run on Nov. 5 against Jon Lynch.
You can listen to Mitch Maley’s the Bradenton Times show here on WSLR on Sunday mornings at 9, and read his editorials at thebradentontimes.com.
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