Tag: Interstate 4

In the closely contested campaign for governor, President Donald Trump and GOP nominee Ron DeSantis have used what has been called racially coded language to slam Democrat Andrew Gillum. Virtually every hot-button cultural issue tearing at the nation — including guns, race and the environment — is unfolding in a deeply personal way here. Trump's visit is just one of two stops planned this week to bolster DeSantis and Gov. Rick Scott's U.S. Senate campaign. Former President Barack Obama will visit Democratic-vote-rich South Florida, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders visited college campuses mid-week, urging students to vote for Democratic nominee Gillum, the Tallahassee mayor who could become the state's first black governor. This election is on pace to significantly surpass the turnout of Florida's past five midterm elections, stretching back two decades. Right after the primary, DeSantis said Florida voters shouldn't "monkey this up" by electing Gillum, a comment Democrats contend was racially charged. The Gillum campaign, meanwhile, cut ties with a Democratic Party vendor and a campaign volunteer caught on video calling Florida a "cracker" state and saying the campaign was taking advantage of "white guilt." The Senate race between Scott and incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson has taken a back seat to the governor's race, but it too has centered largely on name-calling and insults lobbed in tens of millions of dollars' worth of negative television ads. DeSantis also railed at Gillum for saying that Trump should be impeached.

It’s time to re-establish a permanent home for the state appeals court that serves the Tampa Bay region. But with pork chop politics driving the decision on where to locate appeals courts, as they have since these courts were established in the 1950s, sense has taken a back seat in the debate so far. Created as relief for an overburdened Supreme Court, and a force for progress during the desegregation era that followed the seminal Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, Florida’s District Courts of Appeal review decisions from lower tribunals through multi-judge panels. RELATED COVERAGE: Tampa appellate judges long for a home (without bullets) State lawmakers from Polk County want Lakeland to remain the home of the 2nd District Court of Appeal. Even then, though, it was political wrangling at decision time that snatched the headquarters from Orlando. Today, the court operates almost entirely out of leased space at the Stetson Tampa Law Center, near downtown — a satellite campus of the university’s Gulfport-based College of Law. • The population of the 13 counties is centered in the Tampa Bay region, with 41 percent living here and 12 percent in Polk County. Still, state Sen. Kelli Stargel, a Republican whose legislative district includes Lakeland, told Dan Sullivan of the Tampa Bay Times recently: "I haven’t seen a compelling reason why having a courthouse in Tampa meets the needs of the public any more than having a courthouse in Lakeland." Stargel apparently needs to study the report. What a new home for the 2nd District Court of Appeal should look like remains to be seen.