An unseemly backroom deal may revive a political career | Editorial
In a coordinated move, Congressman Bill Posey announced his retirement on the last day of qualifying for office, with Mike Haridopolos, who served as Florida Senate president more than a decade ago, entering the race just hours afterward. We've seen this antidemocratic move on both sides of the aisle before, and legislation should be passed to stop it.
Mike Haridopolos is a former Florida Senate president who now lobbies the Legislature for U.S. Sugar, the kratom industry and 29 other clients.
His legislative career was noteworthy less for any accomplishments than for taking $152,000 from Brevard Community College to write a book and $75,000 to be a lecturer at UF.
Once again, Haridopolos is the center of attention for all the wrong reasons. He’s having a seat in Congress gifted to him by its retiring occupant.
But democracy may intervene and mess up this cozy backroom deal.
It’s the people’s, not Posey’s
Two other Republicans and two Democrats also filed for the District 8 seat that retiring Rep. Bill Posey wants to bequeath to Haridopolos as if it were an heirloom, not a seat that belongs to the people.
In this deep red district in Brevard County on the Space Coast, Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly 2 to 1, and Haridopolos’ toughest potential rival, state Sen. Debbie Mayfield, did not run because she thought Posey was staying in Congress.
Posey was a declared candidate for a ninth term until the very last day of qualifying. Then he withdrew and Haridopolos filed papers shortly before the noon April 26 deadline; Posey endorsed him. By then, Mayfield, who is term-limited in the Senate, had filed to run for an open seat in the Florida House.
She told Florida Today she was considering running for Posey’s seat in Congress if he decided not to run again. But, she said he had told her he meant to run and had already filed his paperwork.
The Haridopolos endorsement is the political equivalent of a hidden ball trick.
Cozy coordination
Posey referred to “circumstances beyond my control” that required him to quit the race. But he also admitted to coordinating with Haridopolos, who had been his congressional campaign finance chairman.
He said “I have been mentoring him to replace me” and that “during the past week, Mike decided he was ready for Congress.”
The better question is whether District 8’s Republican voters agree he’s ready. His two primary opponents, Joe Babits and John Hearton, appear to be just as right-wing as Haridopolos or Posey, who has a 100% approval rating from the right-wing Heritage Action for America.
The setup Posey engineered should be a campaign issue. Voters can remind Haridopolos (and Posey) that they decide who represents them in Washington, not a couple of political pals.
It’s rare, but not unprecedented, for politicians to treat an office as a legacy. A Michigan congressional seat was in John Dingell Sr.’s family for 90 years. When he died, his son John Dingell Jr. won the seat, which his wife Debbie won after the son retired in poor health. She represents a different Michigan district now. But at least there was no subterfuge involved in those successions.
It’s happened before
In a Florida example reminiscent of this one, U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, effectively handed her congressional seat to a local sheriff, Richard Nugent, who qualified on the last day, just before she announced that she wouldn’t run again in 2010 due to unspecified health problems.
Nugent won easily, but two other credible Republicans likely would have run had they known Brown-Waite would retire. They were Nancy Argenziano, chair of the Public Service Commission at the time, and then-state Sen. Mike Fasano of New Port Richey.
Although the Posey-to-Haridopolos handoff looks unseemly, it’s not impossible to conceive of a law that would thwart such conniving. One way might be to reopen the qualifying period whenever an incumbent decides to drop out or not file.
Although Haridopolos is the only candidate with legislative experience in the 8th congressional district, that résumé commands few bragging rights. His Senate presidency (2011-2012) was undistinguished. His first achievement was to propose a constitutional amendment to undercut Obamacare. It lost at the polls with 51.5% of the vote against it. His brief run for a U.S. Senate seat in 2012 went nowhere.
Haridopolos backed former Gov. Rick Scott’s clumsily conceived plan to privatize more state prisons in 2012, but other Senate Republicans blocked it — an embarrassing defeat for a Senate president by his own party.
The $152,000 contract with the community college, before his Senate presidency, was to write a book about the rise of the Republican Party in Florida. The few critics who saw the only copy panned it as superficial.
Haridopolos later rewrote it with a co-author, Peter Dunbar, who had been a respected member of the Florida House, and it was re-published in 2019 as “The Modern Republican Party in Florida.”
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.