The St. Petersburg Times:
Polk supervisor of elections Lori Edwards tells us she’s decided to run for Adam Putnam’s congressional seat. “I think I have what it takes,” said the Democratic former legislator, citing pressing needs for veterans, agriculture and local government.
She so far faces Republican former state Rep. Dennis Ross in the district that George Bush won overwhelmingly in 04 and John McCain narrowly won in 08.
“The voters here really are quite independent and I’m pretty independent,” said Edwards, who has a track record of winning in GOP-leaning Polk county.
Without knowing too much about Lori Edwards (a skeleton description of her current job is available here), she seems like a pretty good recruiting score for this reddish district. According to our Prez-by-CD number-crunching project, McCain won the portions of Polk County in the 12th CD by a 53-47 margin last year — and this is the vast bulk of the district’s vote. With a history of getting re-elected in Polk since 2000, Edwards could have a fighting chance in a general election.
While Obama almost tied McCain in this CD (being edged out by only a 49-50 margin last year), Bush won the district by 16 and 10-point margins in 2004 and 2000, respectively. There are also a decent number of conservative Democrats around these parts: as of last October, Democrats held a 193K-165K voter registration advantage over Republicans here.
But seems like a decent get.
But still, it’s call it leans R for now.
Anyone know why she is a former state legislator and not a current one? Did she lose an election recently?
This is my district. It’s a tough nut to crack, but I’d love to see it go blue.
To SSP’s already wide breadth of knowledge.
Looks like Lori Edwards served as the 65th District’s representative in the FL state house from 1993 – 2000
http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/fefdl…
Wikipedia says FL state representatives limited to 4 2-year terms or 8 years in total.
She was then elected in Nov. 2000 (sounds like we could have used her a bit before this year but ok) as Polk County’s Supervisor of Elections.
http://www.polkelections.com/c…
So no lost elections lately as far as I can see.
this is a winnable race. If she runs a good race (i.e not like Christine Jennings), raises a few millions, gets lots of DCCC help and the political climate is as good for Democrats as it was in 06 and 08 then it’s a tossup. A lot depends on what kind of Republican they run.
She’s from the Auburndale area, where she represented the Florida House, a pretty good base for the district. I like what she’s done to sign up Spanish poll workers and register Hispanics to vote. I definitely think she can win.