does it matter who is running?
Janet Zink’s latest is about the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections (SOE) race. It sounds like she walked through downtown Tampa and asked random citizens about the incumbent and his challenger. The gist is that people don’t really know that Phyllis Busansky is running for SOE, and Janet got three quotes saying just that.
But that is Busansky’s problem. Based on the quotes from those three people, our problem as a republic is much, much deeper.
Thankfully, one of the three people that Janet Zink quotes has some sort of an idea of what is going on around him.
Riverview resident Richard Stimer, 61, is a registered Republican who says he’ll be voting against Johnson because of what he’s read about him in the news.
The other two guys have no clue whatsoever (emphasis is all mine).
Brett Lafferty:
“I got something (from Johnson’s office) just the other day,” said Valrico resident Brett Lafferty, 46, during an interview in downtown Tampa. “But I don’t know who’s running against him.”
Meanwhile, Lafferty says he has no sense of whether Johnson has done a good job in office.
Kevin Riffey:
Kevin Riffey, 37, is a Republican who lives in South Tampa. He says he knows little about any local races, but knows Johnson’s name because of elections information he gets in the mail.
Busansky, though, is not familiar to him.
“Never heard of her. Never heard the name,” he remarked. “She’s got about a month. She better get on it.”
Furthermore, I sent an email to Janet, asking how many people she spoke to, and how many of those knew more than Johnson’s name. Here is her response:
I talked to about a dozen people … very few even knew he was up for re-election. I don’t sense people are paying much attention to local elections…
I guess people are too busy to read the newspaper or concern themselves with local politics. And by saying “She better get on it,” Kevin Riffey blames the candidate for his lack of knowledge.
Hey Kevin, if an ad for Busansky or Johnson comes on your TV would you even take notice? Do you plan to vote? Hell - before Janet asked you, did you even know that the SOE was an electable office?
We can’t get anyone to even pay attention to who is running, and we wonder why there is no one worth voting for?
And what kind of person does it take to want a job that few people care enough about it to have an opinion about who is doing it?
Tags: apathy, election '08, voters, voting
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October 15th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Tommy, good analysis of Janet’s research, I agree. I am not surprised though considering over 90,000 county residents (even those with children) didn’t care enough to vote for school board seats in August, yet will feel they have a right to complain about the school system.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Tommy, good analysis of Janet’s research, I agree. I am not surprised though considering over 900,000 county residents (even those with children) didn’t care enough to vote for school board seats in August, yet will feel they have a right to complain about the school system.
October 15th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
[...] it continues to work (or just drive people away), so candidates continue to employ them. But there is a better [...]
October 15th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I would be willing to bet if you had asked these folks about one of our local sports teams you would have had a hard time shutting them up. The electorate is ignorant and uninformed because it chooses to be that way. Don’t expect it to change. We get the government we deserve. BTW Vinny,people who complain about this stuff don’t feel they have to know anything about the subject. Much easier when you’re ignorant…
October 16th, 2008 at 7:09 am
[...] In case you did not know, Hillsborough County’s race for Supervisor of Elections (SOE) is between Democrat Phyllis Busansky and incumbent Republican Buddy Johnson. [...]
October 16th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Does anyone want to get on the case of the timing of these elections? Not the November election date, I mean civic and municiple and primary election dates.
We had TWO primary elections this year. TWO. How many municiple elections? Same thing with off-year elections, there are MULTIPLE. Oh, people will crow about cities having a right to time their elections when and where they want them — but with the apathy it’s inspiring because they are peppered all over the year??
Tampa’s city elections are in March, right? usually? And the general election is always in November. What about St. Pete? Mayor vote is always off-month. State Primary was pushed back and seems to be a catch-22 malicious act: people either don’t want to be distracted in late august with elections or are so tired of the damned things by this point they just tune it out.
The system is broken but it feels worse with disconnected in the provincialism of the area (and the state).
November 6th, 2008 at 11:53 am
[...] I mentioned before, I’m not sure voters know what the hell they are doing. And that’s REALLY freakin’ [...]