Iguana election picks

Iguana election picks
Editors
January 2008

January 29th is the official election day here in Florida, but now with early voting you can vote any day between now and Saturday the 26th from 9am to 5pm at the Tower and Millhopper branch libraries or the Election office downtown at 12 SE 1st St.

Everyone in Florida will have the option to vote yes or no on the property tax initiative being pushed by Gov. Charlie Crist and the Republican gang that run Tallahassee. This gives tax breaks to businesses, those with second, third and fourth homes, and further starves local governments which are trying to provide services that have been abandoned by the state government when Jeb Bush slashed our state budget under his reign. It deserves to go down in flames. No on Amendment 1.

Those registered Dems or Repubs get to pick their horse that they’ll ride to the fall election some nine months from now. For the latter, that’s quite a crew you got there (heh, heh, heh). For the Dems, they’re all better than we’ve had for a while, though not without warts for sure. Dennis Kucinich actually represents more of our political views than the rest of the pack, but of the ‘big 3’ who have a chance to get or sway the nomination, John Edwards is the one with the most serious economic reform platform. Possibly because of this, he does better than Clinton or Obama in polls where he’s matched against possible Republican nominees. Or maybe it's just that he's a southern white male. We're for anything that will push the current frontrunners, Clinton and Obama, to talk more deeply and honestly about economic issues that affect working people. When Gore started to do this, towards the end of his 2000 campaign, he caught up with Bush and, well, won.

Gainesville city residents have at least one commissioner race on their ballot, the at large race for Rick Bryant’s old seat. Thomas Hawkins is the easy pick here.

Additionally there are two district races in the city. In the northwest district 2 we favor Lauren Poe for this, which will be a tough race against a well heeled realtor, Bonnie Mott, whom the Sun endorsed. In the southwest district 3 we are totally behind Jack Donovan.