Alex Sink running for Bill Young's old house seat

[Donerail]

If Sink wins, the general is Lean D. Turnout will be better, plus it's not like Jolly was a flawed opponent. In fact, I think he's done a pretty good job.


The people saying she loses the general without saying why are idiots.

Jolly is a deeply flawed candidate - Sink's entire campaign against him has been based on his lobbying career. The ads have written themselves.

True, but attack ads aren't exactly hard to make. If the November nominee is Kathleen Peters or some other legislator, they'll be attacked on their voting record. If it's Bev Young, they can point out that she is super nuts.

Bill Young Jr. might be a solid pick, but he doesn't seem the like political type.

Yeah, Jolly's not that bad a pick - not who I would've gone with initially, but he's not the worst the Pinellas GOP could've put up. A good baseline for 'Generic R', at least.

Pretty sure Billy Jr.'s going to try to run for State House. Might be wrong on that, but that's what I'm hearing.

[Donerail]

Bill Young II has announced he will run for HD-68, a Dem-held State House district that covers most of St. Petersburg.

That pretty much knocks him out of running against Sink, at least for a while.

If he runs a good campaign he could win. Dwight Dudley, the incumbent in the 68th District, only won by 6 points in 2012.

Obviously anyone who runs a good campaign will win - there's no particular lean to the seat. That said, we won 51-45, and the indie in the race who pulled the 4% dropped out to back us (too late to get his name off the ballot though), so I'm confident in our ability to hold it.

[Donerail]

DCCC filed a monster $570k ad buy against Jolly yesterday

Could be too late - there's recently been a large surge in early votes in favor of the Republicans. I don't know if you can have any kind of monster ad buy with 191 ads running per day already. Living in the media market... well, I've been watching a lot of Netflix recently.

[Donerail]

Good news for Jolly though - Overby's in a bit of trouble. Story tomorrow.

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Good news for Jolly though - Overby's in a bit of trouble. Story tomorrow.

Overby named in racial discrimination lawsuit.

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My call: 48% Sink, 46% Jolly, 6% Overby. Bullish on Overby because of the localism factor.

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Alright, let’s see what’s going on.

Gerrymandering - not really. FL-13 is relatively compact, and has been as it is for the past several cycles. Indeed, it’s less gerrymandered than the old FL-13. Yes, Sink would’ve won if South St. Pete had been in the district, no question - but gerrymandering wasn’t what killed this seat. FL-13 was like this for the past couple cycles because of the Tampa-based VRA district - and Obama still won this district.

This really was a throwaway by the Dems. Jerry mentioned Kriseman - as much as I like the guy (worked his mayoral run), he just got elected to the mayorship. I think he’s a great candidate and I’ll support him for whatever he does, but I’d like to see him in the mayor’s office for as long as possible. There were, however, a lot of better Dem candidates. Someone like Charlie Justice (or Charlie Crist, if he lived here) is who I’d want to see nominated - honestly, I think Justice could’ve won. I know where Charlie Justice lives. He’s got a house, he works at the local college. Where does Alex Sink work? There’s a reason the Jolly signs said “Let’s Win This For Pinellas.” She lives in a condo in Feather Sound that she rents. Overby lives in Clearwater, Jolly’s got a homestead exemption on his condo on the beach - if they lost, they’d keep on living here. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sink went back to Thonotosassa. Sink just wasn’t that good a candidate - someone who actually lived in Pinellas could’ve done it, or just somebody who actually showed up to the debates. Probably the end of her political career. Hope she doesn’t try to return in November.

This wasn’t a loss because of Republican money - they were pretty even in money. Sink’s campaign outraised Jolly, and outside totals were relatively comparable. I can’t count the number of outside group ads in the district, but there wasn’t a noticeable slant to either side. We needed a better candidate. This was a failure on the part of FL Democratic leadership, but that’s not news. We’ve got talent, in people like Murphy, Graham (who - in contrast to the ludicrous claims earlier up - should be funded as much as we can), Nelson, and a lot of the big-city mayors (Buckhorn, Dyer, Iorio, Brown), as well as Crist. Democratic leadership isn’t great, but it never has been - and nominating DWS or Deutch in 2016 won’t fix that. Change begins at the ground level - electing good Dems to the State Legislature and County Commissions, and that’s something the FDP just isn’t focusing on. So yeah, bless Sawx’s post.

-Sent from FL-13

[Donerail]

Why anyone would want to reward these cretins with a vote after they shut down the government and nearly defaulted the country is beyond me, but w/e.

On a national level Republicans are utterly terrible for the economy, but in the district - I went downtown today. One of the buildings I passed was the C.W. Bill Young Marine Science Complex at USF-St. Pete. If I go out to the beaches, they're beaches renourished by federal money brought here by a Republican. If I go to MacDill AFB in Tampa, or the C.W. Bill Young VA Medical Center - that's impacting the regional economy, from a Republican. I can even drink water, from the C.W. Bill Young Reservoir. National Republicans aren't helping the district - but Bill Young did. Young was a good man, who really did help this district - lot of local pro-Young sentiment that at least blunts that kind of attack.

[Donerail]

1.) SJoyce, being from the district, I'm curious about your feelings on the 4.8% for Overby. Who do you think he got those votes from? My hunch would be they were largely people who would otherwise have not voted, or voted Republican, but I read elsewhere that he was drawing votes from both candidates.

I felt he was drawing pretty evenly - some of my Dem friends were concerned about how much he was drawing from them. Overby gave off a polished sort of "libertarian but not that kind of libertarian" appearance, and is pretty moderate. He's certainly not pulling 100% from Jolly. Had he not been in it, Jolly still would've won but it would've been by around the same margin (with slightly reduced turnout).

FL-14 isn't a VRA seat, and it's actually majority white if I am correct. That part of St. Pete does not belong in FL-14, it's not a clean map and it's not VRA required.

No Democrat was winning this seat, turnout fall off didn't allow for it and it was specifically drawn for a Republican to win, despite the fact that Obama won it.

The district is majority-minority. Probably white plurality, but I don't have the exact numbers on it. I live in that part of St. Pete (lived in FL-13 before this year, still go to school there), and you're correct that it doesn't belong in FL-14. But Democrats can win without it.

It was drawn for Bill Young to win. We could've gotten a much better candidate than Sink - better candidate with a better campaign would've won.

[Donerail]

If I were the a Democratic strategist I'd def take this as bad news for D prospects in general-not only in the House but in the Senate.  After all if they had trouble pulling off a victory in the 13th with more money, a better turnout operation and a stronger candidate imagine what it means in places even less friendly to the Democrats.   

A lot of these Senate races will be taking up as much if not more money than FL-13, and will certainly have much stronger candidates than the Dems put forward here.

[Donerail]

That assumes the candidate quality was about equal. If Sink were a superior candidate vis a vis Jolly, as I assumed, then one comes to a different conclusion. It is interesting Sink did so much better with the absentees than she did with the election day voters. That suggests the Dems were far superior on the ground than the Pubs were, which is another possible factor in the mix to consider. It is rather hard to believe that higher scale SES voters tend to vote on election day rather than before, when one's intuition is precisely the opposite, and I think in 2012 Obama did in fact do a bit better with the election day voters than the absentees. Another explanation is that Sink "sank" at the end of the race, and if that if most voters were election day voters, rather than absentees, than the election would have been more of a Jolly blow out.

Most of the red avatars on this site are blaming Sink for being a bad candidate.  I don't understand why.  She had the name ID, having run in a high-profile statewide race and the money to spend on the race.  How could Democrats have done better running a relative nobody with less name recognition and little money to spend on his or her own race?

Notice how it's not in the district?

[Donerail]

It would pretty much take a miracle to win the House this year anyway, so why not save our good candidates for 2016?

So run Sink now and run Justice in 2016? I'm good with that.

[Donerail]

Sink is the only Democrat to win a constitutional office in Florida this century, so I don't see her as a bad candidate. Besides, I read that the DCCC wants her to run again and they don't usually want poor candidates to run again.

She won one election eight years ago.

[Donerail]

Sink is the only Democrat to win a constitutional office in Florida this century, so I don't see her as a bad candidate. Besides, I read that the DCCC wants her to run again and they don't usually want poor candidates to run again.

She won one election eight years ago.

Still, it's a stretch to keep calling her a horrible candidate. She over performed greatly in poor turnout conditions, I don't think any other candidate would have done as well in FL-13 as Sink, nor as well for Governor in 2010.

She overperformed? When the polls are predicting you'll win, and you'll lose, that's not called overperforming. That's underperforming. Any of the other candidates who grew up in FL-13 or have actually lived in FL-13 or owned a house in FL-13 or held a job in FL-13 would've done just as well if not better.

[Donerail]

I doubt any Democrat wins this seat in 2014, with an incumbent in place, it would be hard to do. Plus, it's drawn for a Republican, it doesn't matter if Obama won it, it's not a Democratic seat.

We've been over this before and I question why I continue to try, but this seat was drawn for a Republican (Bill Young). It wasn't drawn for any Republican. It's a winnable seat by any measure.

[Donerail]

I doubt any Democrat wins this seat in 2014, with an incumbent in place, it would be hard to do. Plus, it's drawn for a Republican, it doesn't matter if Obama won it, it's not a Democratic seat.

We've been over this before and I question why I continue to try, but this seat was drawn for a Republican (Bill Young). It wasn't drawn for any Republican. It's a winnable seat by any measure.

You don't need to repeat yourself, I saw what you posted before. It's certainly is a seat that is winnable for a Republican other than Bill Young, which is why it is held by a Republican right now.

I still don't see how you can take the fact a seat is held by a Republican right now and has been won by a Republican in the past and use that to say it's a Republican seat. By that logic CA-31's a Republican seat.

[Donerail]

I doubt any Democrat wins this seat in 2014, with an incumbent in place, it would be hard to do. Plus, it's drawn for a Republican, it doesn't matter if Obama won it, it's not a Democratic seat.

We've been over this before and I question why I continue to try, but this seat was drawn for a Republican (Bill Young). It wasn't drawn for any Republican. It's a winnable seat by any measure.

You don't need to repeat yourself, I saw what you posted before. It's certainly is a seat that is winnable for a Republican other than Bill Young, which is why it is held by a Republican right now.

I still don't see how you can take the fact a seat is held by a Republican right now and has been won by a Republican in the past and use that to say it's a Republican seat. By that logic CA-31's a Republican seat.

CA-31 went Republican because no Democrat was present in the general election, that's not that case with FL-13. FL-13 is R+2, CA-31 is D+6, that's a big difference. Democrats can win R+2 seats, but not with ease.

It's R+1. Same as FL-26, less than FL-18. This is a very winnable seat, as was demonstrated by FL Dems winning seats with similar numbers last cycle.

[Donerail]

Sykes to decide within next few days.

Personally, I'd be happiest if one of the County Commish Dems like Charlie Justice or Ken Welch got in.

[Donerail]

Ehrlich is in.

Deep breaths, Democrats. We've got redemption on our hands.

Justice or Ken Welch (Walch?) would be far better.

I've heard that Justice was a lazy campaigner when he ran against Bill Young, but he otherwise seems pretty good.

It's Welch.

Justice was a lazy campaigner when he ran against Bill Young because he was running against Bill Young. Conventional wisdom held that Young was probably going to retire that year - that's why Justice, at the time a fairly young State Senator, was willing to gamble on running against him. Young ended up deciding to run and was unbeatable.

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Rev. Sykes is in. He's the President of the St. Pete NAACP and the pastor of Bethel Community Baptist (the most influential African-American church in the city). Military background too.

[Donerail]

Rev. Sykes is in. He's the President of the St. Pete NAACP and the pastor of Bethel Community Baptist (the most influential African-American church in the city). Military background too.

Does he have any notable policy positions besides those mentioned in the article?

I know that he's been active in the gun control push around here, and he's also been an advocate of Rubio's voucher plan, which could prove problematic in a primary against Ehrlich. Other than that he's a pretty solid D.

However, I doubt Ehrlich runs for the seat. She seems happy at Fox.