Race Analysis: BOCC District 6 Republican Primary

The Manatee County Commission District 6 Republican primary will see incumbent Carol Whitmore challenged by Jason Bearden and Carol Felts. There are no other candidates who have qualified for the general election, so the winner of the primary will take the seat. Because of the write-in loophole, however, it will not be an open primary and will only appear on Republican ballots. Because district 6 is one of two at-large seats, it will be contested countywide.

This analysis requires a bit of context for Republican voters who do not follow county politics closely. While six seats on the board are held by Republicans, the four-commissioner faction of Vanessa Baugh, Kevin Van Ostenbridge, George Kruse, and James Satcher has been the prevailing majority on the most contentious votes. Baugh is second only to Whitmore in board seniority, while the latter three were all pushed by developers in 2020 to campaign from the right against opponents they did not believe would be pliable enough when it came to meeting their demands, which have increasingly strayed into non-development issues.

Once they were able to gain a majority, Whitmore and fellow Republican Misty Servia (who is also up for reelection in a closed primary) became severely isolated in terms of board influence. When developers and that majority moved to fire a highly-competent county administrator, Whitmore and Servia were unsuccessful in their appeals to reconsider. But those efforts alone were enough to put a giant target on Whitmore and she’s now facing well-funded opposition from the right herself.

Whitmore is a veteran politician who was first elected to public office as a city commissioner in Holmes Beach in 1991. She became the island city’s mayor in 1998. When Manatee County Commissioner Pat Glass retired in 2006, she endorsed Whitmore for the 2006 race, and she has held the sea since. Whitmore has an enormous amount of experience in crafting public policy, enjoys productive relationships with senior politicians throughout the state, and has been endorsed by the likes of Congressman Vern Buchanan and former Senate President Bill Galvano.

In today’s RPOF, Whitmore could certainly be considered a moderate, but only because the party has moved so far right in the time that she’s been in office. She has a strong record of being a pro-business fiscal conservative and has never voted for a tax increase. However, she has managed to avoid injecting culture war politics into the county commission the way so many of her fellow board members have. She has a good reputation for making herself available to constituents and representing all of their concerns, regardless of political affiliation, a trait that is also becoming increasingly rare.

Whitmore was not brought to power by developers but has nevertheless frustrated sustainable growth advocates, myself included because she quite often votes as though she was, something I’ve chalked up to trying to appease the powerful, at least enough to avoid finding herself in the position she’s currently in. We’re talking about people who don’t take no for an answer, however, so despite all of those votes for comp plan amendments, zoning changes, and density increases, she has been labeled a RINO, and there exists a strong effort to remove her from the board.

Jason Bearden can only be described as a far-right extremist, even by the standards of today’s RPOF. The former marine comes across as a zealot and has campaigned almost exclusively on culture war issues, giving little indication as to where he stands on the issues that are actually important to the majority of county residents. Bearden closed off the primary by having an associate file as a write-in and his entire campaign seems based on the idea that Whitmore isn’t conservative enough while appealing to the party base on hot-button topics that have little or nothing to do with the board. If elected, he would surely be aligned with the current majority, pulling an already extreme faction even further to the right.

Bearden has also criticized Whitmore for sometimes supporting the board’s lone Democrat, Commissioner Reggie Bellamy, despite the latter being a fellow veteran. This is indicative of an increasingly common attitude that suggests elections are a winner-take-all event in which the only goal is to get all of the seats and then serve only constituents who support your ideology. Republican voters outnumber Democratic ones in Manatee County 121,000 to 79,000, with 74,000 additional voters registered to a third party or without party affiliation. That is generally enough of a difference to ensure Republican dominance but still an awful lot of people who will go largely ignored. It is also not the way representative democracy is designed to work.

The third candidate in the race is Carol Felts, one of the most vocal and committed citizen activists in the county. Felts, a native, multi-generation Floridian is a grassroots candidate running on a shoestring budget. She comes to meetings regularly, well-prepared, and eager to give the board an earful whenever it is warranted. Felts’ passion and energy are inspiring, as is the time she’s volunteered in attempting to hold a runaway board accountable. Personally, I would very much like to see a Manatee County Commission with Felts at the dais.

The question that Manatee County Republican voters have to ask is whether Felts, who had raised just under $10,000 as of the most recent reporting period ($5,700 of which she needed to spend on her qualification fee) is capable of winning, in a race where Whitmore has raised more than $125,000 and Bearden has raised over $76,000. I admittedly hate when electability is made an issue and always advocate that citizens vote their conscience and attempt to elect the candidate who best represents their values.

Given how extreme Bearden has shown himself to be, however, there is little question that many voters are going to be considering the electability factor. If you favor Felts, it comes down to whether or not you think giving her your vote would benefit Bearden, while deciding if that risk is mitigated by Whitmore’s lack of success in influencing the board majority over these last two years.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of ourweekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County governmentsince 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Clickherefor his bio. His 2016 short story collection, Casting Shadows, was recently reissued and is availablehere.