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The day will come, predicts Bill DeClemente, when the newest pin in the Pasco Republican Party club map will outgrow its current cozy confines. After all, he says, "Everybody wants to bet the horse coming across the finish line. Nobody wants to bet the horse that's still in the gate."
Things have been pretty quiet around the cash registers at the Sunoco station Darryl Dorn has run since 2004. Clients line up to pay for beer or jumbo Icees and whatever they've nuked in the microwave and they don't say beans about the price of a gallon of gas, even though it's $3.59 for regular grade, and this week may be the last until after Labor Day that customers purchasing premium grade are able to fill up for less than $4 a gallon.
Let us stipulate at the outset that Todd Eugene Helms has yet to be found guilty of anything. That said, we'll grant you his situation is sticky.
In a campaign year in which the big event is dominated by a flawed incumbent and challengers hobbled by inconsistency, Mike Fasano — who isn't running for anything (yet) — stands out.
Any doubts about Will Weatherford's destiny as a Very Important Public Official evaporated during the lunch hour Monday. Never mind his ascendancy through the leadership of the Florida House of Representatives; or being named one of a dozen state legislators to watch by Governing magazine; or the big-boy elbows he's lately rubbed with Republicans playing at the national level.
There is much about the tale of Sheila Mann that cannot, or at least will not, be told, the authorities on the matter being unwilling to air family laundry on the public clothesline.
You might expect someone who deals in difficult, complicated and altogether daunting concepts would brandish a name to match, and Teresa Kathryn Grisinger Reilly does not disappoint.
Step by winnowing step, Florida Republicans have spent months adjusting to disappointment. Watching from the wings, they endured the collapse of the Cainiacs, Bachmann's self-banishment and Perry petering out. Would Republicans spoiling for a brawl with President Obama have no champion?
So now, finally (hasn't it seemed like forever?) and officially, it's our turn. Our turn to play the innocents caught in the battlefield crossfire. Keep your heads down, and the TV remote handy. For the rest of January, you're going to need that mute button.
Even alert voters who remember their ninth-grade civics, read multiple editorial pages and routinely attend campaign rallies would have trouble describing the duties of the major parties' elected state committeemen.
Pasco County's hottest political rumor may be less than two months old, but if Kurt Browning does leap into the race for schools superintendent, the ultimate barnburner of a Republican primary will result from a spark struck by incumbent Heather Fiorentino nearly three years ago.
Jackson column
Upon further review, Ray McEachern believes his first error was trusting Jeana Riggins. Hey, once a Peace Corps guy, always a Peace Corps guy.
Call it what you will — armistice, gentlemen's agreement or head feint — the arrangement Will Weatherford and Don Gaetz worked out over the redrawing of district lines appears to have come with an expiration date.
We suspect — because there was no subsequent run on area emergency rooms — everyone was seated Tuesday when news emerged regarding Chris Nocco's plan to seek the office of Pasco sheriff in his own right. I mean, in that moment we were all Capt. Renaults in "Casablanca," uniformly shocked … shocked! to discover the county's interim, appointed and politically wired law enforcement chief would enter the crowded 2012 race.
On the theory that it's never too late to be forward-looking, we herewith present on this fourth day of January, 2012, an assortment of bold, brash and occasionally outrageous predictions for what's left of the year ahead.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is part
Editor's note: This is the fifth in a series on the top stories in Pasco County during 2011 as selected by The Pasco Tribune staff.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the fourth in a series on the top stories in Pasco County during 2011 as selected by The Pasco Tribune staff.
For months, almost since she joined the nursing home housekeeping staff, Jessica Worley counted down the days. Closer now, and closer still. Just ahead, the calendar in her head showed Dec. 20 within a glowing red circle.
Anyone mulling a run for Congress — they know who they are — in the new, Pasco-centric district proposed by the Legislature's reapportionment committees surely is paying particular attention to the activities on Capitol Hill just now.
High school football teams have the state championship game. High school bands have the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Identifying the Holy Grail for high school choirs is rather more problematic.
Regarding the lingering hangover afflicting the 2011 Pasco High Pirates football team, the prognosis is worse than anyone could have imagined.
It remains anybody's guess what F. Scott Fitzgerald — tragic-comic novelist and national cynic — was thinking when he declared, a lifetime and then some ago, "There are no second acts in American lives."
On the theory that there is never a bad time to throw a party for 500 of your closest chums — but that December is a better time than most — you wonder why Pasco Republicans are just now getting around to doing what they're doing Tuesday.
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