Wonderful news -- St. Johns County will now have two (2) members of Congress.Democracy and Fair Districts won in our Florida Supreme Court December 2, 2015.
That's why loco local "developers," their hick hacks and other extremists are extremely unhappy today, starting with Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, who was hoping MARKY MINER might be his tea boy in Congress.
Owning or renting a Congressperson can be helpful, especially when your political machine covers up a shooting or dumps a landfill in a lake, or other misdeeds of the St. Johns County political machine SHOAR inherited from the likes of the late Sheriffs, NEIL PERRY and LAWRENCE O. DAVIS, a known criminal associate of the Ku Klux Klan whose activities led Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to call St. Augustine "the most lawless city in America" by June 11, 1964 letter to Rabbi Israel Dressner, leading to the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history on June 18, 1964.
Why is Congress important to a local political machine?
Congressmen have been known to try to halt FBI and other federal investigations.
Remember the Keating Five?
Well, Sheriff DAVID BERNARD SHOAR's hopes of having MARKY MINER go to Congress have just been dashed by the Florida Supreme Court, by 5-2 decision.
Repeat: Wonderful news -- St. Johns County will now have two (2) members of Congress.
This doubles our influence.
This doubles our chances to enact environmental protection in the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore Act.
Some 52% of St. Johns County voters are registered Republicans; the rest are "others" or Democrats.
Oddly, controlling local Republicans argued against reducing the number of state legislators from our county, saying it would reduce "clout."
Now they say that doubling the number of Congresscritters from our County will "reduce clout."
Huh?
Are these duplicitous Republicans capable of critical thinking?
Do these Xtrevilist-extremists think we wouldn't remember their 2011 opposition to reducing the size of our state legislative delegation?
Apparently.
Do these tawdry developer-driven Republicans think we're stupid dopes?
Reckon so?
Do these terminally misguided right-wing Republicans suffer from "acalculia," an inability to perform mathematical functions?
Yup.
Two Congresspeople is a "good thing," no matter what baby talking SJC REC Chair Dr. WILLIAM KORACH, Ph.D. would have your believe.
Two Congresspeople increases the likelihood of having bipartisan representation, as the southern 1/3 of St. Johns County will now be part of the district that includes Volusia and Flagler Counties.
Bipartisanship is a "good thing."
Ending unconstitutional Republican gerrymandering is a "good thing."
Though Florida has far more Democrats than Republicans, our state legislative delegation is 17 Republicans and 10 Democrats.
Statewide, there are some 4,164,488 Republicans, 4,559,155 Democrats and 3,247,030 "Others."
Ending one-party misrule is a "good thing."
Ending oligarchy and dictatorship under Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's corrupt machine is a "good thing."
Absent a federal court ruling to the contrary, the Florida Supreme Court's decision ends rebarbative Democratic U.S. Representative Corinne Brown's 23-year deal with Republicans -- a 300 mile long Congressional District cabining African-American voters, extending from Jacksonville to Orlando, resulting in the shady Congresswoman having a sinecure while making for several lily-white Republican districts.
What's not to like?
Louche local Republicans who are members of the developer-driven Sheriff DAVID SHOAR regime are angry.
Why?
Their mendacious minion, MARKY MINER probably won't go to Congress in 2017.
Tough toenails.
Only two local Republicans are quoted in Stuart Korfhage's page one article -- the only people quoted ar4e rebarbative Republican Election Supervisor VICKY OAKES and Republican Chair William Korach.
What a biased story.
What a waste of space.
Not one election law expert is quoted.
Why?
Not one law professor is quoted.
Why?
Not one Democrat is quoted.
Why?
Not one Independent is quoted.
Why?
Not one average citizen is quoted.
Why?
How biased.
How shallow.
How callow.
How insipid.
How grotesque.
Since 2013, our County has been misrepresented by Rep. RONALD DION DeSANTIS (R-Ponte Vedra), former Yale baseball team captain, Harvard law graduate, former corporate law firm associate, who has done exactly zero for our district, preferring to make snide, snippy remarks at Tea Party meetings, attacking Harvard "liberals," including our President, Barack Obama. DeSANTIS is now running for the U.S. Senate, with no record of constituent service or doing anything for our district.
In the immortal words of Bud Varnadore, my late Oak Ridge National Laboratory whistleblower client, "We've got nowhere to go but up."
Thanks are due to the Florida Supreme Court for deciding this case on the merits, and to St. Augustine's own Wayne Hogan, who helped get the two Fair Districts Amendments adopted by the voters in 2010.
The article below is yet another misguided maladroit uninformed attempt at political journalism.
Another hick hack embarrassment to Our Town.
Sheriff SHOAR and his puppets are crying in their champagne today.
So glad that the local political machine is mewling today!
SJCREC Chair WILLIAM KORACH with Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT during happier days for local GOP
Charter school advocate and Tea Party partisan SJCREC Chair WILLIAM KORACH speaks to extremists downstate
Causus belli: MEPublicans deal with Democratic Rep. Corinne Brown resulted in most gerrymandered district in USA.
New congressional districts slice through St. Johns County
Posted: December 2, 2015 - 10:35pm | Updated: December 3, 2015 - 7:15am
By STUART KORFHAGE
stuart.korfhage@staugustine.com
Assuming they withstand any further challenges, the new congressional districts approved by the Florida Supreme Court Wednesday leave St. Johns County represented by two different districts.
The recent decision on redistricting is the latest move in what has been about a four-year process to fix what the state supreme court called unconstitutional districting maps that favored the Republican Party and incumbents.
Obviously, there is some opposition to a decision that could change the demographics in a certain district, strengthening or weakening certain sitting congressmen or candidates.
However, the main point of contention locally is that St. Johns County is no longer contained entirely in District 6, which is currently represented by Republican Ron DeSantis.
In the new map approved by the court, approximately two thirds of the county will be in District 4, which includes part of Duval County and Nassau County. It is served by Rep. Ander Crenshaw, a Republican.
The southern portion of the county will be in District 6, which covers all of Flagler County and much of Volusia County.
William Korach, chairman of the Republican Party of St. Johns County, said splitting the county is probably not in the best interests of local residents.
“We (sic) don’t think it’s a good thing,” (sic) Korach said. “That just reduces (sic) our (sic) voice (sic) in Washington. We (sic) had a strong voice with Ron DeSantis. Whoever gets it now will just be spread more thin.
“When your district is cut, you lose your voice.”
Korach said local party members pushed for a district that kept the county intact, but they did not get their wish.
It’s unclear whether the new district lines will stop the stranglehold the Republicans have on local politics.
While St. Johns County has more than twice as many registered Republicans as Democrats, Flagler and Volusia counties have nearly equal numbers (121,867 Democrats to 113,403 Republicans in Volusia; 24,342 Democrats to 27,384 Republicans in Flagler).
St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections Vicky Oakes said it’s too early to tell exactly how many local voters will be changing districts for the 2016 elections. She said any federal lawsuits could stop the redistricting process again.
According to the Times-Union, U.S. Rep. Corinne Brown, whose district would be shifted from a north-south alignment to one that stretches from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, has already promised to resume a federal lawsuit against the proposal. She said the map violates federal law.
“Subject to challenges in federal court, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” Oakes said.
There can’t be too much waiting if the new districts are going to be used for the upcoming elections. Candidates need to know what constituents they will be representing. They need to know what district they’ll be eligible to run for.
Voters need time to figure out what candidates to pay attention to, and elections supervisors need time to prepare accurate ballots.
“We’ll do what we have to do to make the elections roll out,” Oakes said.
The primary election for 2016 is Aug. 30. The general election is Nov. 8.
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