Winners get to bask in celebration

Happy day after Election Day! I don’t know about you, but I can’t put three sentences of clear thought together today.

A few observations from Tuesday:

— First off, congrats to the countywide winners: Holly Davis, Ken Frink, JJ Grow, and John Cino. In Crystal River, Gabrielle Satchell and Chris Ensing. Inverness, Jacquie Hepfer and Tom Craig. Here are the results.

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— The bad guys really took it on the chin. Davis defeated no-party guru Paul Grogan 76-24, which is the margin we should see when an established incumbent is up against a clueless and disconnected NPA. Grogan getting 24% sounds about correct. 

— All the worry about Davis was for naught. Scoring 76% just two months after a fellow incumbent's primary loss should not be ignored. With the chair position changing in the next few weeks, perhaps Davis can now settle into a comfortable second term away from the constant glare.

— And how about John “Library Guy” Labriola? He campaigned hard, went door to door, and had signs everywhere. But here’s the thing he also had: His message of hate, which turned off most people. The whole Cootertober tirade was nonsensical; voters saw right through his schtick.

While I doubt this will stop Library Guy's relentless attacks in Citrus County, his credibility is zero. After a while, we'll learn to ignore the annoying buzz.

— I admit to having been a little concerned for my friend Jacquie Hepfer, who is three months removed from knee replacement surgery and has an “aw shucks” approach to politicking. I wondered whether Jacquie’s campaigning, while fitting her warm personality to a T, was a little too slow for this fast-paced world. Instead, Jacquie gets her biggest and most impressive re-election win.

— One more thing. I am SO PROUD of my fellow Invernessians. I've mentioned that we’re a little disconnected from the city government here. We’ve been lulled into political sleep. What would happen when a shyster like Library Guy shows up on the doorstep? Would we smile naively and invite him in?

Heck no! Inverness is no one’s patsy.

— Ken Frink pulled it off, and I must say I’m impressed. When Ken announced his School Board plans, it seemed to me and many others that he was just looking for someplace to land to keep his name in the public eye.

From our first Cattle Dog chat, well, let’s just say Ken had a really good idea of how skeptical I was. While I became less skeptical over time, each chat meant me grilling him on the fundamentals of schools. I often told him he knew much less about the schools than he thought, and he might be wise to start learning.

Ken met that challenge. Every time we saw each other, he’d excitedly tell me who from the school district he spoke with that day, what info he picked up, and how it all fit into his campaign.

Hard work paid off. He celebrated Tuesday night with JJ Grow and friends in Crystal River. And with former teacher Ginger Bryant, whose School Board seat he will take.

— How about JJ? State legislators are pretty low on the interest scale in Citrus County politics, but JJ is different. He’s a local, born and raised in Citrus County. He’s a businessman who gives back to his community.

Plus, not sure how to say this, he’s very un-politician-like. I’ve known a lot of legislators over the years and JJ is probably the most ordinary of them all. We’ll see what happens once Tallahassee gets ahold of him, but something tells me Citrus County is in good shape with JJ.

— So, there’s this phenomenon with the ballot about whose name goes first, and whether that helps or not. 

This is amazing: In every race on Tuesday’s ballot EXCEPT ONE, the person whose name came first won the race. I actually had to double-check that. Every race. National on down. 

(Useless trivia: In partisan races, the party that won the most recent governor’s race goes first on the ballot. In nonpartisan races, candidates are listed in alphabetical order.)

There was one outlier. John Cino, who campaigned for the Mosquito Control Board like it was something other than the Mosquito Control Board, defeated incumbent Stephanie Adams by 321 votes.

Congrats to John, though I still can’t get excited about the politics of skeeters. Just kill the darn things.

— Voter turnout was impressive: 82%. Way to go, Citrus County. Talk about a statement. We pay attention around here.

That’s it for today. It’s all good. Have a wonderful Wednesday, friends.

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