For Governor, We Make No Recommendation

While we acknowledge that this year's gubernatorial election is indeed consequential, we cannot in good conscience recommend any of the candidates as being best qualified.

Incumbent Governor Rick Scott has benefited from a recovering national economy (and state budget) and cannot effectively draw lines between his policies and the metrics he has used to claim his successes. Moreover, even using his extremely liberal methods of measurement, it is clear that he has not come close to fulfilling the campaign promises he made in terms of jobs or spending cuts.

At the core of our misgivings toward Governor Scott, however, is a deep lack of trust. The governor has seemed to show nothing less than disdain for our state's Government in the Sunshine laws. He seems to approach the governance of a state in the same way he approached that of a corporation, which is to hide information from those who might police misdeeds. He has manipulated data in his favor, bent and even broken the rules when it suits him, and ignored or marginalized those who disagree.

We were deeply concerned with the governor's gutting of the Department of Community Affairs, fearing that removing a vital backstop in ensuring smart growth and development would render citizens less capable of having input in their communities. The governor lauded this change as an effort to increase local control, yet shortly afterward signed growth management legislation that would handcuff local governments, effectively empowering developers to ignore community input.

Governor Scott has long championed public-private partnerships, but this has too often translated to giving away public dollars to politically connected corporations, and then not holding them accountable for the promised economic impact. His creation of Enterprise Florida and its activities have lacked both accountability and transparency, while reports from non-partisan watchdog groups raise ethical concerns about pay-for-play, a toxic political by-product that has long plagued our state.

We are also concerned that efforts to privatize prisons, public education and various health care enterprises are rooted in the same sort of corporate cronyism that sets the public's money in a trough at which favored corporations line up to feed. We see the issue of “corporatism,” or a system in which large transfers of wealth are accomplished via corporate welfare disguised as free-market competition, as one of the great dangers facing our society. In our opinion, Governor Scott represents the very worst of this faux fiscal conservatism.

The governor's election year flip-flops and unwillingness to put pressure on a state legislature dominated by his party when it comes to issues he says he supports also suggests a lack of leadership qualities. Rebuking $51 billion in federal funds that would have helped millions of poor Floridians gain access to basic health care through Medicaid expansion was nothing short of tragic. The governor used incorrect data to defend his cost claims – an argument that was thoroughly refuted by a host of credible studies.

Governor Scott claimed to reconsider his position, but never made one demonstrable effort to push the legislature to act in concert. As a result, counties like ours are struggling to come up with solutions on how to deal with the increasing rolls of indigents needing health care, while our federal tax dollars are spent elsewhere and new taxes are pondered locally. In too many ways, Governor Scott has simply failed the residents of Manatee County and we cannot recommend him for another term.

We concede that governance from the state's chief executive was better when his predecessor and opponent Charlie Crist was in office. As a Republican, Governor Crist showed more willingness to buck his party than Scott has and had a better record on education and the environment – two issues that remain at the forefront in our state.

However, we have found the former governor's platform painfully thin. His team seems intent to run on little more than the fact that they are not Rick Scott. That may indeed prove enough to win, but is not enough to earn our endorsement. What's more, Mr. Crist seems terribly difficult to pin down. He strikes us as an overly political opportunist, willing to contort himself into any position should he determine that it will best position him with the prevailing political winds. The word that too often comes up when discussing Mr. Crist is “phony.”

While Governor Scott's record of conduct is indeed troubling, Crist's is far from spotless. Despite surviving Jim Greer's RPOF scandal, the ordeal did not paint him in a flattering light to say the least. Accusations of partaking in lavish junkets that later proved to be improperly funded, pay-for-play judicial appointments and other improprieties were too broad and consistent to be ignored.

We were very curious as to Libertarian Adrian Willey's campaign and were pleased to see a third party candidate able to make a splash. We feel that increasing the number of legitimate choices on the ballot is an important step to improving government.

While we feel that having a third-party candidate as governor has the potential to provide a much-needed counterbalance in Tallahassee, we simply do not agree with enough of the Libertarian Party platform to recommend their candidate.

We understand that a sprawling, corrupt and often intrusive government has created a significant receptiveness to Libertarian philosophy, but we do not necessarily believe that the answer to bad government is significantly less of it. We feel that striving for better government should be the goal.

We believe that there are indeed areas in which unnecessary bureaucratic hindrances to economic growth and prosperity can be removed, but in a state that has long suffered at the hands of thoughtless deregulation and unfettered privatization, we are concerned that moving too quickly and in the wrong direction on such matters, i.e. privatizing public education, might be one area that the state's legislature and a Libertarian governor could find consensus.

The Bradenton Times does not endorse a candidate for Governor of Florida in the 2014 election.