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Democrats Look To Retake 5th District Seat

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By CHRISTIAN M. WADE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 1, 2008

SPRING HILL - Six years ago, Florida Democrats lost a coveted seat in Congress after Republican challenger Ginny Brown-Waite narrowly defeated Democratic five-term incumbent Karen Thurman in the race for the 5th Congressional District.

The loss of the district came on the heels of a controversial redrawing of its boundaries that gave the GOP candidate a slight majority in what had been a Democratic area.

With every election, the Spring Hill Republican has widened the margin of that victory.

Nevertheless, a trio of Democrats are competing to unseat the GOP incumbent in the sprawling congressional district, which includes parts of eight Gulf Coast counties.

The Democratic candidates - John Russell, a nurse practitioner from Dade City; H. David "the flag-pole sitter" Werder, a disabled truck driver from Spring Hill and Carol Castagnero, a retired teacher - are counting on an anti-GOP backlash over the war in Iraq and other national issues to win over some of the district's independent voters.

The primary is Aug. 26. Whomever emerges from that contest will go on to challenge Brown-Waite, who faces no challengers from her own party, in the Nov. 4 election.

To date, Castagnero leads the Democratic challengers in campaign funds. As of July 1, the most recent reporting period, Castagnero had more than $12,000 cash-in-hand, from a loan made to her own campaign; Russell, who made a loan of $9,900 to his campaign, had about $2,318 cash-in-hand, and Werder had less than the $5,000 required to file.

By comparison, Brown-Waite has outpaced all three contenders, having raised more than $500,000 and spent about $250,000 of that on expenses, as of last Friday.

John Russell

Russell, 52, came in second in a four-person Democratic primary ahead of the 2004 general election. But in 2006, he won the primary, beating Richard Penberthy, a Pasco County high school teacher who ran an organized and respectably funded campaign.

In the general election, he garnered 40 percent of the vote to Brown-Waite's 60 percent.

Russell, who grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., says his background in health care issues gives him an edge over his competitor in a constituency of elderly veterans and retirees.

His outspoken, often confrontational, form of political activism, including criticizing officials in his own party, has ruffled the feathers of many state and local Democrats.

Last year, he publicly criticized Thurman, now state party chairwoman, after news surfaced that she was receiving $3,500 a month from Al Cardenas, former chairman of the Florida GOP, to help him lobby the new Democratic leadership in Congress.

Last summer, he was thrown out of the Florida Democratic Party's annual convention at Disney World in Orlando after a fracas. He was "banned for life" from the theme park.

This time around, however, he's running a less aggressive campaign.

"It's basically the same message, but with more smiles," Russell said.

H. David Werder

Werder has no campaign manager, hasn't raised a dime in contributions and knows that local party officials and many voters in the sprawling district don't take him seriously.

That has not stopped the 53-year-old from running his fifth race for Congress.

Werder, who ran unsuccessfully for the 5th District seat as a write-in candidate in 1982, 2002, and 2004, and in 2006 as a balloted candidate, is giving it another try this year.

If elected, he would devote half of the $165,200 congressional salary to elderly residents in the 5th District to pay for prescription medicines - his perennial campaign pledge.

Werder moved to Florida from New Jersey in 1978. He gained notoriety in the early 1980s, when he sat atop a flagpole in Clearwater - for 439 days, 11 hours, and six minutes - to protest the price of gasoline, which at the time was 99 cents a gallon.

Besides his struggles to win support, Werder said his campaign has been complicated by a litany of personal problems - from "yet unsolved" burglaries at his Weeki Wachee home to the theft of vehicles from his property. A few months ago, someone stole his campaign vehicle: a 1909 horseless carriage. He thinks it was neighborhood kids.

"I sat in the bushes for weeks with a flashlight and a gun, but didn't catch them," he said.

Like his Democratic opponents, Werder supports reforming the health care industry and Social Security and opposes oil drilling off the coast of Florida and the war in Iraq.

Carol Castagnero

Castagnero is a retired school teacher from Lakeland who has never held public office, despite having previously run for school boards, a state Senate seat and governor.

She won 5.3 percent of the Democratic Party's statewide primary vote - 45,161 votes in all - as a candidate for Florida governor in 2006, finishing third out of five hopefuls.

On her Web site, Castagnero describes her key campaign issues as the education, safety and health needs of children, national health care reform and veterans' concerns.

She did not respond to requests from The Tampa Tribune for an interview.

Reporter Christian M. Wade can be reached at (727) 815-1082 or cwade@tampatrib.com.

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