Voting for Hope and Change

Last Tuesday, I went to vote in the Florida Primary.


As a proud NPAer (that’s No Party Affiliation), I had a very short ballot. A few circuit court judges and a few school board members. But I had one race I wasn’t expecting to vote on, being that it was a Dem state representative primary on my NPA ballot.


Here’s how it got there. My district is the hood, the ghetto. Predominately African American and poor. I was probably the only Republican in the district until I repented. Clearly, the Dems are running unopposed , and when that happens the primary becomes open for all like a general election. My problem is that I knew very little about these two schmoes.


As I was walking to my polling place, a nine-year-old girl gave me a brochure for one of the candidates, the challenger Warren Hope Dawson. It featured a picture of him with the Obamessiah, which may have helped him with most voters here but not me.


Then I looked at the back, which listed the many shortcomings of the incumbent, Betty Reed. Here are some of them:


She failed to speak truth to power in Tallahassee. Did I tell you that my district is predominately African American? Maybe if Mr Dawson would invest in a new calendar he would know that it’s not 1968 anymore.


She was confused and voted for Republican sponsored vouchers, which take money away from the public schools in District 59. So this woman votes to give poor black kids a chance to get out of inner-city public schools and that is a bad thing? Mr Dawson is letting the voters know that, if elected, he will be the teachers union’s prison girlfriend. Speaking of schools, it appears that the writer of this flyer didn’t do so well there. The flyer describes Betty Reed as a “christian” which in my native language is capitalized. Also “Republican-sponsored” (saying ‘Republican’ in my district is like showing Dracula the cross) is an adjective modifying the word “vouchers” and should be hyphenated.


Her current campaign is largely financed by organizations and persons from outside of District 59 - many of whom are from outside the state of Florida. And Mr Dawson, so will your next campaign if you should get to Tallahassee and hook up to the gravy train.


Well, it appears that not even a photo of the Obamessiah and a promise to speak truth to power was enough. Betty Reed cleaned his clock.