The Ever-Changing Fifth

While everyone was focused on the Senate race at Florida's filing deadline, a somewhat crafty retirement trick in Florida's Fifth Congressional District was conducted by Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville. With no warning and with the filing deadline minutes past, Brown-Waite announced her retirement and endorsed Sheriff Rich Nugent to fill her seat. The Cook Political Report reported the news with disdain for the diabolic nature with which Ginny froze out both Republican contenders and Democratic challengers. But I can't help but just chuckle. To understand why, I must take us in a time machine to 2002.

I actually covered Brown-Waite's first run for Congress, so this news was especially interesting to me. Back then, I was head political reporter at The Daily Commercial and started the year watching the curious process of re-apportionment. Florida, it seemed, was due for a couple new Congressional districts, and the Florida Legislature was determined those would go to Republicans. That would happen, but national Republicans wanted more. The late Senate President Jim King said they demanded four more seats for Republicans, the two new ones and two which belonged to sitting Democrats. King said that was impossible, but that maybe they could meet halfway and pick off one Democratic incumbent.

Then-state Sen. Ginny Brown-Waite happened to live in Florida's Fifth, and was put in charge of the redistricting process. The Fifth, at the time, was held by Democrat Karen Thurman, who incidentally had drawn that district herself 10 years prior in the last reapportionment process. Things got a little nasty, some rhetoric was tossed around Tallahassee, but in the end, the district got redrawn to include all of Brown-Waite's Senate district, and Democratic strongholds like Gainesville got shifted into the neighboring Sixth. Skip to November and Brown-Waite narrowly defeats Thurman.

So it is nothing surprising that Ginny made sure the seat is going to a hand-picked replacement. It was always her customized district, after all. And thanks to how she played the game, this seat is out of contention either for Republican challenger Jason Sager or Democrat Jim Piccillo, doomed also-rans butthe only guys who got in this race when Brown-Waite looked like she was planning a re-election campaign.

But this race never was top-tier for 2010. The real action on this seat has to be in 2012, and will likely hinge once again on the reapportionment process.

I am sure the Florida Democratic Party knows this. As it happens, the state party today is chaired by none other than Karen Thurman. I suspect she has an interest in retaking this seat. Honestly, I was surprised in 2004 when she didn't run herself and try to take it back immediately. But with most of the growth in this seat centered around The Villages, the seat is more conservative than when she originally lost it.

Of course, since her election as party chair, we have certainly seen a savvy in Thurman's campaigning ability that wasn't completely evident during her last Congressional run.

Then, she was wishy washy on issues like the War in Iraq, and looked like politics was guiding her votes. Ironically, it is in a purely political capacity that she has appeared the most principled.

Thurman is the first Democratic chair to win a net pickup of seats in the state House and Senate. She also managed to pick off such seemingly safe Republican congressmen in Central Florida as Ric Keller and Tom Feeney. The latter, as it happens, was in one of those new districts drawn the same year Thurman was screwed by the reapportionment process. So what now?

I think Thurman is more interested this year is winning seats in the Legislature. That way, when districts are redrawn in 2012, there will be a fighting chance for the Dems to take back seats like the Fifth. In fact, I expect she may want another shot at that one herself.

So if the Dems ever want to take back the Fifth, the key is probably taking back the state Senate. That will be hard, but probably much easier than beating Brown-Waite's handpicked successor in her own handdrawn district.