![]() Blame today’s extremely dull photo on the Rays playing an afternoon game on TV, which disrupted by writing rhythm, which led to rushing the blog to get it done in time for church, and then the post-church rewrite, and the next thing it’s 11 p.m. and we're staring at a bad photo of campaign signs. We may now begin. Candidate financial reports are due Friday, and every Friday after that leading to the Aug. 20 primary. Most of the reports are in this week ahead of the deadline. The unfortunate timing of Buddy’s demise, followed by a week of kill-me-now flu, meant I missed two of the more recent candidate events. I attend these things not to hear from candidates, but to see the reaction they’re getting from voters.
It’s difficult to gauge a campaign’s effectiveness if I can’t see it in action. Short of political events, the next best tools, for me anyway, are campaign reports. I’ve been reading these things for decades. I’m basically looking for: — Total number of dollars collected. And… — Total number of contributors. These are HUGE. Amount of money, of course, is a big indicator. Difficult to win without collecting a few dimes. I also look at contributions as an idea of where a candidate has support, or even if he has any at all. Some candidates, usually incumbents, rack up dozens of $1,000 contributions from businesses and connected individuals. Others have $20 donations from citizens who attended a campaign hot dog roast. More money affords numerous ways to get the message out. More contributors suggest a wider net of voter support that perhaps doesn’t show up in the bottom line. It was the late Phil Royal who piqued my interest in contributors. Royal, who was headed for an easy election to sheriff in 2016 prior to his untimely death, had an extraordinary number of individual donors. Phil enjoyed broad voter support because that’s the guy he was. Dave Vincent, a friend of Phil’s, is following a similar path in his run for sheriff. While he has less than half the collections of the incumbent, Vincent has a third more in number of donors. That’s why you see Mike Prendergast signs at businesses and Vincent signs in yards. Speaking of Prendergast, his Citrus Law & Order PAC is a complete dud. Remember that he announced a "Leadership is Action" website with great fanfare in April as a means of convincing the public that the County Commission was being cheap with law enforcement. The PAC received a $2,500 check in April from the Lykes Revocable Trust in Tampa and spent $1,256 sponsoring something with the Republican Executive Committee. Other than that, crickets. — Campaign spending. We tend not to look at this as much because it’s not as interesting. A known car dealer donating thousands to a candidate will get our attention. A candidate who spends thousands on advertising, well, not so much. But spending is important. I recall writing about a candidate who really nickel and dimed his personal expenses so that all his campaign donations were wasted on stuff like fuel and meals. Made me wonder what he’d do with a multi-million-dollar budget. We want candidates to spend their money wisely. In general, this is where most of their donations should go:
Some candidates pay for advice. That’s their choice, though if they did a little research first, they’d learn that the best political knowledge in this county comes free of charge. — Fess up time. Can’t believe I wrote an entire blog about Republican precinct committee candidates on the primary ballot and missed one important name. Precinct 109 in Pine Ridge has five candidates for precinct committeeman. One of them is “Kenneth Lee Michael Prendergast Jr.” A friend who lives in that precinct sent me a screenshot of her sample ballot. “Is that the sheriff, or his kid, or what?” she asked. I’m going to take a wild stab that this indeed is the sheriff using a much more formal approach to committeeman than he does his full-time job, where he’s plain-old Michael Prendergast. Maybe there’s a ballot rule we don’t know about. Regardless, it's likely to work. Five candidates with the top four winning. Kenneth Lee would need to finish fifth to lose out completely. That’s it from the World Headquarters. Have a great Thursday, friends. Join the discussion on our Facebook page. Enjoying the blog? Please consider supporting it at Venmo, PayPal, or Patreon. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMike Wright has written about Citrus County government and politics for 36 years. Archives
February 2025
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