Why didn’t Pam Bondi answer questions today about 2008 Amendment 1 campaign? Because she didn’t bother to vote in that election
At this afternoon’s Tiger Bay debate between the GOP aspirants for Attorney General, candidate Pam Bondi was asked directly by political consultant Dave Zachem about how she voted in January 2008 on the much-discussed Amendment 1 ballot initiative (which doubled the homestead exemption for almost all Florida homeowners).
This initiative was championed by Governor Charlie Crist, who promised property taxes would “drop like a rock.” With all of the money spent in support of Amendment 1, you would have had to been living under a rock to not know what the issue was all about.
Yet, Bondi seemed to have no clue today what Zachem was asking about (video forthcoming), although her opponents Holly Benson and Jeff Kottkamp provided detailed, lucid responses to the same question. Bondi’s response to Zachem’s question left many in attendance at today’s debate wondering how a candidate for statewide office could have such little familiarity with such an important issue.
But now I know why Bondi was confused about Amendment 1.
According to my research, Bondi failed to vote on this issue in 2008, missing Florida’s presidential primary in January 2008. Here is a screen shot of her voter file:
Notice Bondi failed to vote in the 2008 GOP primary either. Not voting in two out of the last three elections certainly is not the standard one would expect from a candidate for statewide office.
Developing…
Update: The Buzz confirms:
At today’s Suncoast Tiger Bay forum, Republican AG candidate Pam Bondi had difficulty answering a question about whether or not she voted for Amendment 1, the tax relief package offered by Republicans and Crist in 2008.
After asking what Amendment 1 was, she quickly turned the discussion to property insurance.
Turns out, she was having trouble how she voted because she didn’t vote, Hillsborough County voting records show.
[...] the debate, St. Petersblog 2.0 blogger Peter Schorsch reported that Bondi did not vote in either the 2008 Florida Presidential primary or the GOP Primary [...]
Nice work, Peter!
[...] the question, but while we were talking I began to ask myself: Has Pam Bondi recovered yet from her poor performance at Suncoast Tiger Bay and the subsequent media coverage about her spotty voting [...]
A TALKING-HEAD DOESN’T QUALIFY YOU AS ATTORNEY GENERAL MATERIAL. Maybe you fail to vote once, an emergency comes up, on and on, but here Bondi seems to not be involved in issues that we were all voting on. Americans live thru the television, but if we don’t elect the right people, we will watch our state go down the drain and not even realize it.
[...] couldn’t recall how she voted on the 2008 property tax amendment, known as Amendment One. Another blog later revealed why…she didn’t vote in that election, which was also the 2008 [...]
With 284,769 corporations being dissolved, and the families who run these businesses being ruined by government action, the Tea Party should grow in numbers as a result.
The Tea Party can say “the state will turn on its subjects to perpetuate itself. What we need is less government, less regulation, less taxation. More power to the people, like the forefathers would have wanted!”
Gone are the days of a benevolent sovreign willing to help its subjects.
We are now in an enviroment where even governments are struggling to survive or at least maintain the status quo.
What we need now is a politician to take up the mantra of All American Late Registrants, to get endorsed by the newly-formed Dissolved Florida Corporations Association and run for attorney general.
Maybe the vacuous Tea Party candidate Pam Bondi can get up in front of the Association’s annual meeting (joke) and pander to its potential voters.
Pam Bondi can say as attorney general I will help ceate jobs and rule one of creating jobsis creating corporations, not destroying them. So, as your attorney general, I will not be scarred, I have fought murders, I will fight Washington (Tallahassee) to reinstate your corporations. That is just un-American! (And the crowd will cheer, yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah)
The problem with American is that we are just getting stupider and stupider.
Suck on that for a minute!
I gotta believe that they will know they need to think even more on this.