GOP leading in effort to retain Cabinet positions
With at least two Republicans winning Florida Cabinet seats and another in the lead, the GOP maintained control of the powerful state board on Tuesday night.
In the race for attorney general, Republican Ashley Moody won against Democrat Sean Shaw with 52.5 percent of the vote to Shaw’s 45.8 percent.
For chief financial officer, incumbent Republican Jimmy Patronis retained the seat with 52.1 percent of the vote. Democrat Jeremy Ring took 47.9 percent of the vote.
The race for agriculture commissioner, however, was far closer. Republican Matt Caldwell led with 50.3 percent, while Nikki Fried, a Democrat, had 49.7 percent of the vote with a few precincts yet to be counted.
If the two candidates are within half a percentage point of each other, the race must go to an automatic recount.
Here is how broke down: the campaigns officer.
Shaw accused Moody, a former judge and prosecutor from Tampa, of being like current Attorney General Pam Bondi, who he said focuses too much on suing the federal government over issues such as the Affordable Care Act.
Moody supports the state’s controversial Stand Your Ground law, while Shaw wants to see it repealed. She said she would continue to pursue the lawsuit against Obamacare because she believes the law is unconstitutional.
Shaw, a state representative from Tampa, vowed to attack gun violence by setting up a commission to recommend how to change state laws about the sale of assaultstyle weapons, 3D printing of guns and mass shootings.
Moody said she would tackle the state’s deadly opioid epidemic, by studying how local governments, hospitals and social agencies have struggled to cope with it.
The race featured two candidates with vastly different views of the office.
Fried, a lobbyist from Fort Lauderdale, said she would oversee the agriculture industry but also focus more on the department’s other main duty of consumer protection. She also argued that the agency should take over from the Department of Health managing the state’s medical marijuana industry.
She said she would closely scrutinize the department’s system of granting concealed-weapons permits after reports of mismanagement in recent months.
Caldwell, a state lawmaker who lives in North Fort Myers, said he, too, would evaluate the gun permit process, but he vowed to protect Floridians’ Second Amendment rights.
A member of a seventh-generation ranching family, Caldwell promised to beef up research funding to study citrus canker and greening diseases and to help small citrus farmers move into alternative crops.
Patronis of Panama City Beach and challenger Ring of Parkland accused each other of accepting campaign money from criminal or scandalous contributors.
Both candidates said as CFO they would focus on helping Floridians deal with insurance issues. Ring said he wanted to keep insurance costs stable over time, in part to help families rebuild after hurricanes or other natural disasters.
Patronis said he would fight insurance fraud to keep costs down.