Lieutenant governor paying visit to Zephyrhills
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By Michael Hinman mhinman@lakerlutznews.com
The Conservative Club of East Pasco is welcoming a very high-profile guest to its Sept. 22 meeting in Zephyrhills. Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera is the scheduled speaker for the group when it meets next week at the Zephyrhills Woman’s Club, at 38549 Fifth Ave. “We’re excited to have the lieutenant governor coming, but I’m still really trying to get Rick Scott to visit, too,” said Nils Lenz, the Conservative Club’s secretary. Lopez-Cantera is running on the Republican gubernatorial ticket with Scott in November against Democrat and former Republican governor Charlie Crist. The 40-year-old Lopez-Cantera assumed the duties of lieutenant governor last February following the resignation of Jennifer Carroll. That means a lot of people may not know much about Lopez-Cantera, especially since the state’s second top spot usually gets overlooked by many in the public. Yet, this remains the highest-profile guest the local Conservative Club has had in its 10-year history. Next Monday’s meeting is free and open to the public — as long as those who attend are respectful to the Conservative Club’s views. “Usually we get 30 to 40 people in a regular meeting,” Lenz said.“But we expect to have a lot more than that for this visit. It’s big for the community.” Since last December, the Scott campaign has raised $7.7 million seeking re-election, compared to a little more than $7 million from Crist. Polls have had both candidates neck-and-neck. Significant advertising — primarily by outside groups — has cast a very negative shadow on both campaigns. Scott has worked to tie Crist to the economic problems that hit both the state and
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Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera
the county during Crist’s terms, as well as his association with fallen state GOP leader Jim Greer. Crist, on the other hand, has highlighted the legal trouble Scott’s former company, Columbia/HCA, suffered through in the 1990s, which resulted in a settlement with the federal government costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Crist, whose previous lieutenant governor was former lawmaker Jeff Kottkamp, has picked Annette Taddeo, chair of the Women’s Enterprise National Council’s Leadership Forum. Before becoming the lieutenant governor, Lopez-Cantera spent eight years in the Florida House, and later became property appraiser for Miami-Dade County. He was born in Madrid, Spain, but moved to Miami soon after he was born. The Conservative Club meeting is set to start at 6:30 p.m. For more information on the meeting, or the Conservative Club itself, call Nils Lenz at (813) 782-9491, or email nilslenz@gmail.com.
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Economy still plagues Floridians, but politics in way, new poll says The Laker/Lutz News Staff Report
The biggest issue facing Floridians today is the economy.And the biggest obstacle to fixing that is government partisanship. Those were the primary findings of this year’s Sunshine State Survey, a collaboration between the University of South Florida and the A.C. Nielsen Co. It’s based on 1,875 telephone interviews conducted between July 30 and Aug. 15, compiling a random sample of adults 18 and older, who reside in Florida. Formerly known as the Leadership Florida survey, these are the first results released since USF and Land O’ Lakes native Susan MacManus took over the process earlier this year. Of those surveyed, 30 percent said the biggest issue facing Florida right now is everything involved in the economy, including jobs and unemployment. Well behind it, at 12 percent, was public schools and education, with crime and immigration tied at 5 percent. However, while the concern about the economy may seem high, it’s down significantly from the 44 percent it scored during the 2012 Leadership Florida survey, which
pollsters says reflects the state’s gradual economic recovery from the Great Recession. But how should lawmakers address those issues? The first thing might be for politicians to stop fighting based on which political party they belong to. The poll shows that 28 percent feel the battle between Democrats and Republicans represents the biggest stumbling block to achieving Florida’s goals. The divide between elected officials and their constituents was cited by 17 percent of those surveyed, while the divide between rich and poor was the main issue for 16 percent. The survey showed that 45 percent of those polled believe politics is creating the largest roadblock to progress in the state, more than race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, or even citizenship status. A telephone sample of 120,000 listings was randomly drawn from, and did not include known businesses, cell phones, or numbers listed on the Do Not Call registry. It has a sampling error of plus-2.2 percentage points. For more information on the survey, and other results, visit SunshineStateSurvey.org.
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September 17, 2014
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