Home  News Local News The results are in
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Written by Dr. Garth A. Rose & Sonia Morgan
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Monday, 01 September 2008 |
After grueling campaigning for the August 26 elections, the results are in and while some candidates who were expected to win copped their victory, there were some election upsets and a few surprises along the way.
In the Congressional races, Congressman Alcee Hastings and Ron Klein were easily re-elected. For Florida State Representative Gwendolyn Clarke–Reed also won convincingly in District 92.
Taking a landslide victory, Christopher Smith, in the race for State Senate Representative District 29, walloped his competitors by 71.4 percent of the votes, leaving his closest rival, Earleen Smiley with a mere 15.8 percent.
In what could be conceived as one of the most controversial races of the election, Hazelle Rogers, with a powerful alliance with Alcee Hastings and Commissioner Josephus Eggelletion, was able to wrestle away the District 94 State Representative seat from fellow Jamaican Eric Hammond, who many believed would have taken it home, this being his fourth attempt. This may have been Hammond’s best chance at the seat, especially without an incumbent, but Rogers, with a well-oiled political machinery, won the seat to become the first English-Speaking Caribbean national elected as a Florida State Representative.
Narrowly edging out sitting County Judge Catalina Avalos, Attorney Ian Richards’ win might have been, to many, one of the upsets of the elections. The win makes Richards, a Jamaican national, the second Black judge in a field of over 100 in Broward County. Another sitting judge, for the circuit court, Pedro Dijols was beaten by Bernard Bober.
In the Broward County Commission race for District 7, former Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Carlton Moore gave incumbent John Rodstrom Jr. a run for his money, but Rodstrom prevailed by a slim 3 percent margin, over the fairly popular Moore.
In District 9 where Lauderhill Commissioner Dale Holness, Lauderdale Lakes Commissioner John Billingsley Jr. and the Reverend Allen Jackson fought to unseat incumbent Josephus Eggelletion, Jr., Eggelletion retained the seat by a wide margin. Eggelletion will term out in the next four years, and many are watching to see who will jump and the chance to take his place come 2012.
The race to determine the Democrat candidate to run for Broward Sheriff in November was a tight one. Scott Israel had a razor thin lead over Richard Lemack, while African-American candidate Wiley Thompson ran third out of the five candidates. It will be interesting to see how he stacks up against incumbent, Republican Al Lamberti.
In other Broward races Brenda Snipes easily won the primary for the county’s Supervisor of Elections and Lori Parrish kept her seat as Property Appraiser.
County Commissioners Barbara Jordan, Audrey Edmonson and Dennis Moss were easily re-elected in the Miami-Dade County Commission races. Mayor Carlos Alvarez also kept his seat. In the Hispanic Community, Commissioners Joe Martinez and Natacha Seijas were also reelected.
In Palm Beach County, Kevin Rader held off the challenge from Steve Perman for State Representative in District 78. In the County Commission races, for District 3, Democrat Shelly Vana defeated Carl McCoy and Republican Bob Kanjian defeated Cliff Montross. Arthur Anderson was defeated in his quest to be reelected as Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections by challenger Susan Bucher.
Dismal voter turnout
The most unfortunate aspect of the elections was the abysmal voter turnout. Of registered voters in Broward County only 107,984 or 11.34 percent voted. In Miami-Dade the turnout was higher with 182,512 (15.60 percent) voting from 1,170,135 registered voters and in Palm Beach County the turn out was low with an estimated 17 percent voting out of 367,000 registered.
Despite the low turnout, most of the voters were pleased with the new paper ballot-optical scan voting system. After visiting five polling stations in Broward County, the majority of voters interviewed by the National Weekly said they had no problems with the new system. However, retired engineer Jeremy Boulton who voted in Margate, said that he was concerned that there was only one scanner at the polling station. “This is going to slow up the process in November when a large turnout of voters will be anticipated.” This was an observation made by the National Weekly, because although they were several voting stations where voters went to shade in the respective bubbles of who or what they are voting for, there was only one scanning machine in those polling places visited. A lot more scanners will have to be placed in polling stations in November. Another of the few complaints was that the new process took too long, as it was much quicker with the former touch-screen voting system. However, it is unlikely that voters in November will have ballots with so many races as they did on Tuesday, so the time for casting votes should be much shorter.
The dismal turnout of voters on Tuesday was disappointing to the respective election supervisors as they expected larger turnouts that would present a stronger test of the new voting system. Both Brenda Snipes, the Broward Supervisor of Elections and Arthur Anderson, now the former Beach County Supervisor, said they had expected around a 30 percent turnout.
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