The Orlando Sentinel website had a piece on a poll taken about the Republican candidates for Florida's Commissioner of Agriculture.
CROSS POSTED FROM FLAPOLITICS.COM
Polls this far out are silly because no one even knows who you are talking about. They mainly reflect the amount of name recognition someone has or some other artifact of the polling process. In this case the fact that Carey comes in first may be more of a result that he is listed first then anything else.
When Republican voters were asked, "If the election was held today for Florida’s Agriculture Commissioner, and the candidates (I will read them in alphabetical order by last name) were Republicans: State Senator Carey Baker and Congressman Adam Putnam, which one would you vote for?"
Carey Baker 25.7% Adam Putnam 17.3% Someone else 7.1% Undecided 49.9%
What interested me though were the comments about Congressman Adam Putnam, who is giving up his seat to run for this post and is considered my most commentators to be the putative favorite:
To say that Putnam is a farmer or rancher is like saying Andrew Carnegie was a steelworker.
Putnam's great granddaddy was given a bunch of land, and his family has turned that gift into an enormous citrus empire. Adam himself was given stock in that empire, but has never played a role in running the company, much less actually farming the land.
The more important part to watch regarding the Ag Commissioner race is the huge amounts of money Putnam has received and will receive from Big Oil and Big Insurance. Those are entities of which he will have oversight under his consumer services hat. He, of course, will not provide oversight of those multi-billion dollar industries because they have bought his overlook.
With all of that said, I don't believe he can be beat, and I hope he proves me wrong once he's in office. I won't hold my breath.
When you finally start paying attention to Florida politics, you'll realized that Commissioner of Ag and Consumer Services is pretty important. In addition to all the Ag stuff that you'd expect, the Ag Commissioner is responsible for consumer safety, and (more importantly in the age of Obama), firearm regulation.
Putnam is not a farmer. He may have family members who are farmers, and he was in 4-H at one point, but he is certainly not a farmer. I'd like someone to list all the private sector jobs Putnam has had since he graduated college.
Putnam will lose big because he is a big zero. He is a handmaiden to special interests. He sends people to war, but he wont go. Get out Putnam, you can't re-invent yourself now. You are Bush $itch.
I was tempted to use that Bush $itch for a title. It's cute.
My pick on the Democratic side for CoA is long time environmental lobbyist Eric Draper. His website should be up soon.