Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Voters should reelect Hawkins-Williams
Florida House District 92 is in the heart of Broward, bisecting eight cities and sandwiched between Dixie Highway and Florida’s Turnpike. It’s one of the region’s most diverse districts, cutting through workingclass sections of Fort Lauderdale, Lauderdale Lakes, Oakland Park, North Lauderdale, Margate, Tamarac, Pompano Beach and Deerfield Beach.
District 92’s state representative is Rep. Patricia Hawkins-Williams, 54, of Pompano Beach, director of a child placement agency, who was elected in 2016 after eight years as a Lauderdale Lakes city commissioner. Her opponent is Nancy St. Clair, 33, of Pompano Beach, who is running for this seat as a candidate with no party affiliation. The district is overwhelmingly Democratic, so voters really have only one choice in the Nov. 3 election.
The Sun Sentinel recommends Hawkins-Williams on the basis of her four years of experience and her track record of support for public education, local government home rule, sensible gun regulation and affordable housing. As the ranking Democrat on the House budget subcommittee for K-12 education, Hawkins-Williams advocated for including voluntary pre-kindergarten teachers in a $500 million teacher pay raise program in the 2020 session.
Evaluating St. Clair’s candidacy was challenging. She does not have a history of community service and had to leave a candidate interview early because of a scheduling conflict. In a Sun Sentinel questionnaire, St. Clair said too many people are in prison and she blames Hawkins-Williams for that.
“The incumbent sits idly by as innocent people’s lives are wasting away,” St. Clair wrote. Legislators write the state sentencing laws, but they do not send people to prison. Prosecutors and judges do.
St. Clair said she was inspired by God to run for office, and she described a closed political system in Broward. “When one politician terms out,” she wrote, “they reserve the seat for a friend or colleague, so the seat remains in their circle. They believe that our generation is naïve and will not go out and vote.”
Hawkins-Williams is one of the most conservative House Democrats. She was one of the few Democrats who voted in 2020 for a bill to require parental consent for a minor to undergo an abortion and has been a supporter of expanded school choice, also a Republican priority. The pro-business Florida Chamber of Commerce said Hawkins-Williams supported its agenda 80 percent of the time last session.
St. Clair said she’s firmly opposed to abortion and same sex marriage, both of which are legal in America. “I believe in a biblical view of marriage between a man and a woman,” St. Clair told the
Sun Sentinel. “I have got to stand on my moral beliefs.”
On abortion, St. Clair said: “God gave life and he’s the only one that can take the life.” In our view there are already too many people in the Legislature who try to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us.
Hawkins-Williams encountered controversy in her 2018 race when according to some Democrats, her replies to a Christian group’s newsletter suggested she supported conversion therapy to change the sexual orientation of young LGBTQ people. Asked about that, Hawkins-Williams says now: “If that’s who you are, that’s who you are. That’s how God made you.”
It was not a pleasant experience. She said she was “beat down” by opposing Christian and gay rights groups, and said: “I am willing to work with anyone.”
In a Capitol where term limits cause constant turnover, lawmakers face a steep learning curve as they learn the ropes. In our candidate interview, Hawkins-Williams gave one of the best descriptions we have heard about how a cabal of legislators cobble together a bill with unfamiliar provisions, then give the membership little time to understand it.
“You’re never educated enough to actually say, ‘These are all the things that I’m going to have to be voting on.’ Everything is so unpredictable,” she said. “When they actually put bills together, you can start off with one paragraph, and [it] is great for all the people you serve. By the time it gets on the floor, you have a binder — and all the other things in that one paragraph totally hurts the district you serve.”
The next two years in Tallahassee will be more partisan than usual as lawmakers reapportion the state and redraw the boundaries for legislative and congressional districts to reflect population changes. Hawkins-Williams’ knowledge of the communities in her district will be an asset in that highly-politicized process. For Florida House District 92, the Sun Sentinel recommends Rep. Patricia Hawkins-Williams.