GOP Wins Big In Northwest Florida House District In First Vote Since Rejecting Medicaid Expansion

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GOP wins big in Northwest Florida House district in first vote since rejecting Medicaid expansion Florida Democrats hoping the fight over Medicaid expansion and the sequester would win them support with those who depend on federal funding won’t find much encouragement in Tuesday’s special election for House District 2.

In the first referendum since House Republicans bypassed more than $50 billion in federal aid for health care, Mike Hill, a 55-year-old tea party Republican insurance agent, won 57.9 percent of the vote in a Northwest Florida district that has an economy dominated by hospitals as well as the military -- which is weathering a sequester deal rife with budget cuts forced by congressional Republicans.

Hill’s Democratic opponent, Jeremy Lau, mustered 42.1 percent of the vote in a special election held after Rep. Clay Ford died in March. Lau, a 40-year-old aircraft mechanic for L-3 Com Vertex Aerospace, a military contractor at Pensacola Naval Station, had made Medicaid expansion his No. 1 issue.

“The failure of the Legislature to expand Medicaid has cost our district jobs,” Lau said. “It’s a huge issue here.”

A University of Florida study concluded that expansion of Medicaid would create an average of 1,619 full-time and part-time jobs in Escambia County annually over the next 10 years and help provide coverage for county’s residents, 20 percent of whom don’t have health insurance.

But Lau couldn’t overcome the district’s conservative demographics (Mitt Romney won 59 percent of the vote here in 2012) and Hill’s overwhelming financial advantage. The district, which covers parts of Escambia and Santa Rosa counties, leans so hard right that no Democrat ran in either 2010 or 2012 against Ford. Hill raised $200,000 compared to Lau’s $29,500, getting plenty of help from the GOP, which chipped in $51,000. Democrats could manage only $1,090 for Lau.

Hill also made the Medicaid expansion a key issue, but as a way to spruce up his conservative credentials.

“I’m so proud of Speaker (Will Weatherford) and the House for turning that down,” Hill said. “We can’t afford that in Florida.”

Hill, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, becomes the first black Republican in the Florida House since Jennifer Carroll served there between 2003 and 2010. He’s also the first black legislator from Northwest Florida since Reconstruction.

“I know the historical significance,” Hill said. “But it doesn’t matter to me if I’m the first black this or that. I don’t want to be chosen based on my skin color. I want to be chosen based on my character and my value system.”

 

Hill founded the Northwest Florida Tea Party in 2010. He summarizes his value system succinctly: “Limited government, low taxes, personal freedom and individual responsibility.”

He said he will aim to eliminate the corporate tax rate, reduce the state sales tax and eliminate rules and regulations for business.

“People want jobs, they want business to expand,” Hill said.

He lists his net worth, as of April 1, at $1.1 million, deriving about $424,000 a year from his State Farm Insurance agency. He makes another $8,000 a year sitting on the board of Pride Enterprises, which is a St. Petersburg company that makes state license plates using prison inmates. Hill said he supports the program as a board member, but said that as a legislator, he will evaluate the contract independently of his association with PRIDE. Upon running, however, he did step down from his board position with Integrity Florida, a public watchdog group in Tallahassee.

This is the first elected office held by Hill, who ran and lost in 2010 a senate race against Greg Evers. He recently got a shout-out from MSNBC talking head Joe Scarborough for his support in his congressional campaigns from the early 1990s.

Hill is new to District 2. He moved last week to a Pensacola Beach condo so he could qualify. Florida law requires candidates to live in the district upon getting elected. Hill said he actually lived in Ford’s district, but was drawn out of it when the boundaries were reconfigured last year.

He will have a year more in the Legislature than the next class of rooking lawmakers, giving him a headstart in the race for House Speaker. Other recent “red-shirt” freshmen to become speakers or speaker designates are Marco Rubio, who served as speaker in 2008 and 2009, and Jose Oliva, who is designated to become speaker in 2018.

But Hill wouldn’t say if he will vie for the Speaker job in 2020.

“I don’t know what it means to be Speaker,” Hill said. “I don’t know if it’s something I want.”

In a statement from the Republican Party of Florida, Weatherford welcomed Hill.

"Representative Hill will be a strong voice for limited government and individual liberty," Weatherford stated.

 "His election sends a clear message that Floridians want smaller government, lower taxes, and the freedom to pursue the American Dream," said Rep. Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, in a statement. "Representative Hill will be a strong conservative voice in our caucus."

Crisafulli, who is set to become Speaker in 2014, shares political consultants with Hill: Meteoric Media Strategies, founded by former Gov. Rick Scott spokesmen Brian Hughes and Brian Burgess.

Posted by Michael Van Sickler at 9:40 PM on Tuesday, Jun. 11, 2013 in 2013 FLORIDA LEGISLATURE, Will Weatherford | Permalink

The Miami HeraldCopyright 2013 The Miami Herald. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Comments

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A lot of Hill's money came from the Insurance Industry. You can expect him to continue the attacks on Citizens and the overblown estimates of storm exposure in Floriduh. In other words, you can expect him to continue the inflated premiums and the corporate welfare system Republicans hold near and dear to their hearts and wallets (that's a redundant statement).

Posted by:Anti-Tallahassee |June 12, 2013 at 12:34 AM

Just what Florida needs--another Tea Party Legislator.

Posted by:M.A. Salfinger |June 12, 2013 at 07:26 AM

One more nut for the fruitcake in Tallahassee!!

Posted by:Doug Watson |June 12, 2013 at 10:09 AM

Glad to know that corporate welfare will continue to be the primary mission of the Florida Legislature. West Florida has always been much more a part of Alabama than Florida. No real loss if we just partitioned the state at the Apalachicola River.

Posted by:Can't take anymore |June 12, 2013 at 01:12 PM

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Reports: Violence stains first Iraq vote since US withdrawal

Iraqis went to the polls Saturday for the first time since the United States withdrew its military forces, but a series of bombings marred the process and highlighted Iraq's fragile transition from occupied country to functioning democracy.

At least four people were injured when a series of mortar rounds struck near a voting station in Latifiya, a town south of Baghdad, Reuters reported.

Other bombs hit near polling stations in at least three other regions, including the northern towns of Tikrit and Samarra, without casualties, according to the news service, which cited local police sources.

Another bomb was detonated near a polling center in Jibala, in the south, the Associated Press reported, and mortars rounds hit a station in Baghdad. 

For the most part, however, the process was moving smoothly, the AP reported, citing United Nations officials monitoring the elections. No deaths had been reported, the news agencies said, which is seen as progress surrounding an election cycle in which no fewer than a dozen candidates were killed leading up to Saturday's vote.

The elections for provincial council seats are the first in Iraq since President Obama pulled U.S. troops from the embattled country in December of 2011, almost a decade after the United States invaded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Saturday's vote is being watched closely as a precursor of next year's national parliamentary elections.

Local terrorist groups, including a wing of al-Qaeda and Sunni rebels, have intensified their attacks this year in hopes of overturning the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

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Koch-Funded Study Finds 2.5°F Warming Of Land Since 1750 Is Manmade, ‘Solar Forcing Does Not Appear To Contribute’

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) has finally published its findings on the cause of recent global warming. This Koch-funded reanalysis of millions of temperature observations from around the world, “A New Estimate of the Average Earth Surface Land Temperature Spanning 1753 to 2011,” concludes:

… solar forcing does not appear to contribute to the observed global warming of the past 250 years; the entire change can be modeled by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic [human-made] proxy.

The decadal land surface temperature from BEST average (black line), “compared to a linear combination of volcanic sulfate emissions (responsible for the short dips) and the natural logarithm of CO2 (responsible for the gradual rise) shown in red. Inclusion of a proxy for solar activity did not significantly improve the fit. The grey area is the 95% confidence interval.”

You may recall that back in July, Richard Muller, BEST’s Founder and Scientific Director, published a NY Times op-ed, “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” which concluded

Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

The finding itself is “dog bites man” (see It’s “Extremely Likely That at Least 74% of Observed Warming Since 1950? Was Manmade; It’s Highly Likely All of It Was).

What makes this “man bites dog” is that Muller has been a skeptic of climate science, and the single biggest funder of this study is the “Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000).” The Kochs are the leading funder of climate disinformation in the world!

Muller further explained:

Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.

In short, a Koch-funded study has found that the IPCC “consensus” underestimated both the rate of surface warming and how much could be attributed to human emissions!

The Koch-finded study also finds, “the rate of warming we observe is broadly consistent with the IPCC estimates of 2-4.5°C warming (for land plus oceans) at doubled CO2.” A summary of BEST’s findings are on their website.

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Since 2011, Three-Quarters Of Deficit Reduction Has Been Via Spending Cuts

Since passage of the deal to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff,” Congressional Republicans have attempted to portray it as the “last word” on taxes going forward. “The tax issue is behind us,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Democrats, meanwhile, have said that any forthcoming budget deal should be composed of equal parts revenue and spending cuts. But even doing that would mean the bulk of deficit reduction will have been achieved through spending cuts, because, as the Center for American Progress’ Michael Linden and Michael Ettlinger show, three-quarters of deficit reduction since 2011 has been due to spending cuts:

Since the start of fiscal year 2011, President Barack Obama has signed into law approximately $2.4 trillion of deficit reduction for the years 2013 through 2022. Nearly three-quarters of that deficit reduction is in the form of spending cuts, while the remaining one-quarter comes from revenue increases. As a result of that deficit reduction, the projected rise in debt levels from today through 2022 has decreased by nearly 10 full percentage points of gross domestic product. In fact, under today’s policies, debt levels in 2022—as a share of GDP—will be only slightly higher than they are expected to be by the end of next year.

Here’s a timeline of accumulating deficit reduction, with spending cuts in red and revenue increases in blue:

When McConnell tried to claim on ABC’s This Week that revenue was off the table, anchor George Stephanopoulos wasn’t having it. And the numbers show he was exactly right.

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Since September, America Has Lost One Government Job For Every Five Private Sector Jobs Created

The public sector lost another 13,000 jobs in December, bringing the post-recession job loss total for federal, state, and local governments to more than 600,000. Those job losses — many of which have hit teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public safety officials — have had a devastating impact on the economic recovery. If public sector job creation had kept its pre-recession pace, the unemployment rate would be a full point lower.

Government job losses began to slow earlier this year, but in the last three months, the public sector has shed another 89,000 jobs. And as Demos’ David Callahan noted in a blog post today, that means the public sector has lost one job for every five private sector jobs created in that time:

But here’s a statistic that jumped out at me: 89,000 public sector workers lost their jobs in October, November, and December—with most of those losses, 66,000, occurring in October.

Large-scale layoffs of government workers continue across the United States. Such layoffs undermine local economies and stymie the recovery. For every five workers who were hired in the past three months, one was laid off by government.

Government job losses have come as a result of crunched budgets at the state and local levels, where a vast majority of the losses have occurred. They’ve been exacerbated by spending cuts at the federal level. Efforts to alleviate those losses through stimulus measures like the American Jobs Act, which would have provided aid to states and localities to rehire teachers and public safety officials, were repeatedly blocked by the GOP.

That has terrible consequences for the overall economic recovery. Fewer government workers means fewer workers overall, which means that less money is being spent throughout the economy. A study from the Economic Policy Institute, in fact, found that the shrinking public sector has cost the overall economy at least 750,000 private sector jobs.

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