A slate of Pinellas County Republicans challenging incumbent Democrats in local and statewide offices this fall made the case for their candidacies this past Wednesday night in a rare, in-person meeting held by the St. Petersburg Republican Club.

Two Democrats on the Pinellas County Commission - Janet Long and Charlie Justice – are both running for their third terms on board. And recent polling indicates that both could be vulnerable.

Long is being challenged by former state GOP Rep. Larry Ahern in the countywide District 1 race. He described Long to the Republicans who filled the St. Petersburg Community Church as being the “lynchpin that holds it all together” on the board.

“This is our moment. This is our chance. With the right amount of messaging and money, we can do it,” Ahern said. A St. Pete Polls survey conducted last month has Long with a 2.6 percentage point lead over Ahern.

Justice is facing opposition from businesswoman Tammy Vasquez, a self-avowed lifelong card-carrying Republican who says she never would have contemplated running for office if her dog grooming business hadn’t been shut down because of COVID-19 regulations earlier this year. She said that led to her have the free time to watch the commission meetings on Zoom, which in turn fired her up and compelled her to challenge Justice for his county commission seat.

Touting her endorsement from the Sun Coast Police Benevolent Association, Vasquez let the crowd know where she stands on the idea of taking away or reallocating financial resources from law enforcement.

“I will do everything in my power to make sure that they are never defunded!” she announced to rousing cheers.

Meanwhile, there are two Pinellas County Democrats in the Florida House running for reelection this fall facing GOP opposition.

The House District 69 race is expected to be extremely competitive. Conventional wisdom says that the Democratic-leaning House District 68 race (which encompasses St. Petersburg and Pinellas Park) shouldn’t be, but don’t tell that to Matt Tito, who filed to run against Democratic incumbent Ben Diamond just before the qualifying period ended in June. 

Tito served eight years in the Marine Corps, and he’s made it clear that while the Tallahassee GOP establishment thinks it may be too much of a reach for him to defeat Diamond in the Democratic-leaning district, he’ll do everything in his power to prove them wrong.

Tito says that since entering the contest, he’s already knocked on over 10,000 doors, walking 10-12 miles a day. He says his strategy is to engage only with Democrats and independents, trying to win them over personally. 

In the House District 69 (which includes Gulfport, Madeira Beach, Pinellas Park, South Pasadena, St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island and parts of St. Petersburg), former St. Pete Beach Commissioner and businesswoman Linda Chaney says she supported Democrat Jennifer Webb in her race for the seat two years ago, but now says she regrets that decision.

“She sounded like she cared about us,” Chaney told the audience about Webb. “She sounded like she cared about the environment. And everything she said sounded like what I wanted for my district. And then I watched. And over the last two years not only did she not do what she said, she pretty much did the opposite of what she said.”

When asked later what specifically Webb had done in office to turn her off, Chaney said “she didn’t even show up to vote for the budget” at the end of the 2019 legislative session. Chaney also said she disagreed with Webb for a vote not to support raising teacher pay, and for opposing legislation that would stop life-insurance companies from using DNA to set rates and potentially deny insurance coverage. 

Spectrum Bay News 9 called Webb on Friday to get her response.

On missing the vote on the budget on the last day of the 2019 session, Webb was not on the floor for the actual vote, as she had left Tallahassee to attend her grandfather’s funeral. She ended up casting a “yes” vote after the roll call. She said she actually was encouraged by House Speaker Jose Oliva and her colleagues to leave earlier in the week to be with her grandmother, but stayed until “I could work with a bi-partisan group of women to kill a predatory lending bill that was amended onto another bill.  As soon as we killed this bad piece of legislation, I immediately left town for my grandmother's to prepare for my grandfather's funeral.”

Webb did oppose a bill that would protect Floridians’ generic privacy from life insurance companies in 2019 (that bill passed the House but was never heard in the Senate). However, she did support what she said was a better version of that DNA privacy legislation this year that was sponsored by Palm Harbor Republican Chris Sprowls (that bill passed 117-1 in the House in 2020 and has been signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis). 

And regarding teacher pay, Webb did vote along with her Democratic House colleagues during the last week of the 2020 session to oppose an amendment for a teacher pay raise bill. That amendment would have required school districts to submit their plans to distribute the funding for teacher raises to the Department of Education for approval. She says those in the end the Democratic floor maneuverings ultimately worked, because it “expanded the teachers who would receive the pay increase and kept the Commissioner of Education out of bargaining agreements between county school districts and their teacher unions. I'm incredibly proud of our advocacy for our teachers and education professionals.” 

House District 69 is split almost exactly between Republicans and Democrats at nearly 36 percent, with another 27 percent of the electorate listed as NPA (non-party-affiliated).

There haven’t been too many political gatherings in 2020 due to the coronavirus, making Wednesday night’s event somewhat unusual. While everyone’s temperature was taken at the door and facemasks were required, the jam-packed crowd sat in chairs with little distance between them.