Congress has been on summer break for a long time, but when they finally return to Washington next week, Vern Buchanan has quite a to-do list of the people’s business. Among which, the Sarasota Republican will offer amendments to a government funding bill which bans horse slaughter, combats red tide and protects endangered species.
Sarasota-area Congressman Vern Buchanan is contacting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with a request: Keep intact vital protections for Florida panthers, the official state animal.
It has been said that money is the lifeblood of politics. If so, many members of the Florida congressional delegation are very healthy, while others are on life support.
Congress is just into the second week of a five-week summer August break, but that doesn’t mean lawmakers are staying idle when it comes to working on gaining support for legislation they’re sponsoring. Take Sarasota’s Vern Buchanan, whose office announced Thursday that his bill that would ban the killing of horses for human consumption picked up its 150th co-sponsor in New York Republican Dan Donovan.
Members of Florida’s congressional delegation vulnerable because of their balanced districts each raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in the second quarter of 2017, new reports show. The latest campaign finance reports posted this week, covering money raised and spent in April, May and June, shows that Republican U.S. Reps. Brian Mast of Palm City and Carlos Curbelo of Miami had the biggest hauls in the second quarter, while Democrats Charlie Crist of St. Petersburg and Stephanie Murphy of Winter…
Randy Cooper likes to think of himself as a pragmatist. The 60-year-old Democrat is one of three candidates running to succeed Republican Jim Boyd in Florida House District 71, which encompasses much of Manatee County and a bit of North Sarasota County. He says his political philosophy could be labeled “practical and pragmatic,” and says the main impetus compelling him to run for office is his belief that the Legislature is not listening to the voters. “If public schools aren’t doing…
Vern Buchanan is seizing on heavy media coverage of a New York City police officer’s execution Wednesday, calling for the U.S. Senate to pass legislation making the murder or attempted murder of a police officer an “aggravating” factor in death penalty determinations. New York City Police Officer Miosotis Familia was sitting in the back of a marked van writing in her memo book when she was shot and killed with no warning by a gunman at around 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday.…