Running in the wrong districts
Maxwell: In Florida, no one really checks to see if candidates live where they claim.
In politics, we often see losing candidates walk away with their tails between their legs.
But in a strange twist last week, one of the winners dropped out of his race.
Bruce Antone — a candidate for Orange County School Board who won a spot in the November runoff after finishing second in last month’s primary — withdrew from the race Friday.
Why? One of his opponents had sued Antone, claiming he didn’t really live in the district.
Antone dropped out in the middle of court proceedings Friday, allowing the thirdplace finisher, Michael Scott, to replace him in the runoff.
Antone’s withdrawal was a
dramatic move — and yet also a ridiculous sequence of events.
Voters should know whether candidates are eligible to run before they cast their votes.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it works in Florida. Instead of anyone actively checking to make sure candidates are legally qualified to run for office, we ask them to sign an oath of honesty that doesn’t cite any penalties for lying.
Yes, Florida’s elections system relies on hoping politicians will tell the truth … a system that works about as well as hoping zombies will go vegan. We can do better. If you have to prove you’re 21 to buy a six-pack of Budweiser, you should have to prove you’re eligible to run for a public office before you do so.
Especially because claims of improper candidacies surface almost every election cycle.
In this case, Scott told lots of people — including the elections supervisor and Orlando Sentinel — that he was convinced Antone didn’t live in the district. But there was little anyone could do about it.
The Sentinel’s editorial board asked Antone about the issue during a videorecorded interview.
“Do you live in district 5 now?” asked ed board chief Mike Lafferty.
Antone responded that he had “an agreement in place to rent a room in the district. So that is going to be my residence.”
Notice that Antone said he had an “agreement in place” to rent a room and said it was “going to be” his residence.
The law says aspiring school board members must live in their districts before they file to run. So Lafferty pushed for clarity. That’s when Antone said he had secured a “threebedroom house.”
So, first a room. Then a house. And Antone spoke as if everything would happen in the future. It all sounded strange. Yet no local election official did anything about it.
Why not?
“We can’t,” responded Orange County Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles.
Osceola Elections Chief Mary Jane Arrington said the same thing: “Our office has no enforcement power in this area.”
Wait, so local election officials aren’t in charge of deciding who’s eligible to run for elections? Yes, they both responded.
That seems … what’s the sophisticated legal word I’m looking for here? … stupid.
Both elections officials said that, instead of empowering them to vet residency qualifications, the state usually relies upon candidates doing what Antone’s challenger did — suing their opponent.
Arrington described the state’s balloting-by-lawsuit approach as both “time consuming and costly.”
Making things even more complicated, Florida has different residency requirements for different offices.
To run for school board, Florida law says you must be a resident of the district “at the time of qualifying.”
But to run for the Legislature or county commission, you don’t have to live in your district until the day you’re elected.
Stranger yet, if you want to run for constitutional offices, such as tax collector or property appraiser, the state’s rules say you don’t have to live in the district — or even the same county — until you are sworn into office.
Several weeks ago, I heard about a Lake
County resident running as a write-in candidate for property appraiser in Orange County, only to have Cowles tell me that Florida law is OK with that … which is nuts.
Arrington suggested residency requirements should be the same for most offices. I agree.
The Legislature should also empower someone — ideally local elections officials — to vet and reject candidates who don’t appear to meet the legal qualifications to run. If a candidate wants to challenge that decision, let state elections officials handle that. Or the courts.
Also, move up the qualifying period, so that election officials have more than a few weeks to vet all this.
Right now, no one is watching the shop, and they wouldn’t have much time to mind it even if they tried.
For the record, Antone, a state legislator, never conceded that he didn’t live in the district.
As the Sentinel’s Leslie Postal reported, Antone’s attorney said he was sure his candidate would have prevailed in court and that Antone only dropped out of the race because he was a “fine public servant” who didn’t want to do anything that might disenfranchise voters. Sure.
Regardless, the end result is that Scott, a coordinator with a mentoring program in Orlando, will now face primary frontrunner Vicki-Elaine Felder, a longtime high school teacher, in November … which is how Scott argued it should’ve been all along.