I watched the one and solely Florida gubernatorial debate Monday night time.
I admit that I yelled on the TV set.
No, I wasn’t mad on the two candidates, incumbent Gov. Ron DeSantis and challenger Charlie Crist.
They’re each politicians with years of expertise, and they also each behaved precisely the best way politicians do. If they didn’t just like the query they bought caught with, they shoehorned of their speaking factors about unrelated points or hurled insults at their opponent. Pretty customary stuff.
The individuals I had an issue with had been the Sinclair TV community, its station WPEC-TV, and debate moderator Liz Quirantes.
During the hour-long debate, Quirantes requested about Florida’s reasonably priced housing disaster and property insurance coverage disaster, that are professional points (regardless that DeSantis has largely ignored each till just lately). She requested about abortion, additionally a professional level of competition. And she requested about immigration, one thing DeSantis’ Martha’s Vineyard flights put into the headlines (though it seems the stunt has backfired on him).
But she additionally wasted time. She requested about important race concept (not taught in Florida faculties) and whether or not the Parkland bloodbath shooter getting a life sentence ought to immediate a change within the state’s loss of life penalty legislation. If you’re going to ask about Parkland, it is best to ask about gun management — however she didn’t.
What made me holler on the TV like some wacked-out Howard Beale disciple was that Quirantes didn’t ask a single query about Florida’s many environmental problems.
Not a phrase about climate change, water pollution, or toxic algae blooms.
Nothing about the record number of our manatees dying.
No point out of the multiple sewage spills that adopted Hurricane Ian (or, actually, any onerous rainfall).
Nothing about the “Billionaire’s Boulevard” toll road that has North Florida residents up in arms.
No point out of Big Sugar or the phosphate miners. Nada about solar energy.
And not one phrase about our troubled springs and our rapidly disappearing water supply.
These are all actually essential points for the way forward for our state. In reality, a water provide that’s tainted or dwindling means Florida received’t have a future.
Somehow, none of that was value citing in the course of the debate, carried dwell on the Sinclair TV community. Not a peep about it, regardless that Florida’s surroundings has gone right into a nosedive in recent times.
“Florida is now in a state of perpetual environmental crisis,” Aliki Moncrief, govt director of Florida Conservation Voters, instructed me. “Climate change, blue-green algae, unchecked sprawl, electricity prices, and more are all issues that affect Floridians every single day. The lack of questions on these issues at the debate is an inexcusable missed opportunity from the moderator.”
And Eve Samples of Friends of the Everglades instructed me, “There’s a fish kill in Biscayne Bay, flesh-eating bacteria is plaguing the waters of Southwest Florida after Hurricane Ian spiked pollution levels, and reckless development projects are regularly pitched for flood-prone green spaces across the state. These issues are top of mind for so many Floridians, and it’s baffling that the state’s only gubernatorial debate didn’t address them.”
Gee, I ponder which candidate benefited most from that lack of questioning.
‘Here to deliver your message’
I used to be removed from the one voter who seen the absence of questions about water high quality, poisonous algae blooms, or various power sources and questioned if somebody had carried out that on objective.
“It was clear that the organizers of that debate decided to avoid any environmental questions,” stated Susan Glickman, a longtime clean-energy activist. “Clearly, you could tell the influence of Sinclair.”
Sinclair was once synonymous with dinosaurs.
The Sinclair Oil Co. adopted Dino the Dinosaur as its corporate mascot in 1931. One of Florida’s many pretend dinosaurs is a dino-shaped gas station in Spring Hill that began as a part of the Sinclair chain. Now it’s on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Sinclair Broadcast Corp., based within the Seventies by Julian Sinclair Smith, is a special type of animal. It’s a right-wing media firm within the mildew of Fox News and Newsmax.
Sinclair’s administration doesn’t even hassle to faux to be goal. During the 2016 presidential marketing campaign, the corporate’s chairman, David Smith (son of Julian), met with future Secret-Stealer-in-Chief Donald Trump to inform him, “’We are here to deliver your message.”
Sinclair’s supply vary is giant. The Maryland-based firm owns nearly 200 stations all around the nation. In Florida, it owns a dozen from Pensacola to West Palm Beach.
Sinclair’s Mr. Smith (to not be confused with Brad Pitt’s character within the assassination comedy “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,”) had an attention-grabbing run-in with the legislation some time again — one which speaks volumes about how he runs the corporate.
In 1996, Baltimore police arrested him for hiring a professional to offer him with — oh, let’s consider “erotic pleasure”? — whereas he was driving an organization automobile, a Mercedes. Police stated the girl referred to the Sinclair boss as her “regular date.”
Smith minimize a plea deal. For his sentence, he was to ship a confession on-air and do some group service. However, in keeping with the Law and Crime website, Smith didn’t hassle to learn the televised confession. Instead, he had certainly one of his TV anchors — a lady — do it for him.
As for the group service a part of the sentence, he ordered his community’s news employees work up a sequence of experiences on a group drug program. He, personally, did nothing.
Smith’s ironclad management over broadcast content material explains one thing that occurred in 2018. Dozens of Sinclair station anchors had been required to read the identical script attacking different media firms for placing out pretend news, in impact amplifying Trump’s personal complaints about the fully correct protection he was receiving.
The consequence, one story famous, was “dozens upon dozens of local news anchors looking like hostages in proof-of-life videos.”
One of the anchors who learn that corporate-ordered propaganda: Quirantes, the debate moderator.
Is it any surprise, then, that the Sinclair station broadcasting the debate prevented a topic that the Man Who Would Be the Next Trump would have bother answering?
I contacted the station and the moderator, asking them to elucidate why no environmental points got here up. Station spokeswoman Jessica Bellucci stated that “the environment was one of the topics we planned to cover. Unfortunately, time constraints prevented us from reaching this category.”
In different phrases, it was the boring visitor scheduled for the tip of the speak present after which casually bumped: “Apologies to the environment, we ran out of time.”
I requested if Sinclair executives had exerted any management over the query choice or timing. She selected to not reply that.
Call the hearth division!
News tales about the debate famous that the candidates “traded barbs.” That outdated cliché at all times makes me image the candidates swapping Barbie dolls. Who will wind up with the Pink Splendor Barbie, and who will get caught with Pooper Scooper Barbie?
Despite the moderator’s — oh, let’s be variety and say “neglect” — one of many candidates did carry up the surroundings a few occasions.
When the candidates had been clashing about the excessive prices of all the pieces in Florida nowadays, DeSantis stated, “Why are fuel and natural gas prices up? The Biden-Crist energy policies.”
This is such a blatantly false assertion that I anticipated a squad of firefighters to hustle onto the stage with a hose and spray the governor’s pants earlier than the entire place burned down.
As Politifact identified, world financial forces such because the conflict on Ukraine are in charge for the rise in gasoline costs. It’s not the Biden administration’s efforts to steer the nation away from climate-damaging fossil fuels.
Heck, the oil firms aren’t hurting from these insurance policies. They’re booking record profits.
DeSantis normally blames President Biden for all the pieces he doesn’t like. It’s nearly a reflex, the identical means my normally candy, church-going grandma used to mechanically blame “those dirty hippies” for all of the issues she disliked about the Sixties.
But on this case, DeSantis has one other purpose. He has repeatedly defended the fossil gasoline business as if it had been one thing treasured, just like the final slice of Key lime pie — or a future contributor to a sure presidential marketing campaign.
He’s spending thousands and thousands on constructions like pipes and pumps to fight rising sea ranges that threaten waterfront property across the Florida coast. But he refuses to elevate a finger on something that entails reducing again on greenhouse gasoline emissions, as a result of it would hurt the oil business.
Last yr, when a reporter requested him about that, the governor talked about America’s want for “affordable energy” trumping all different issues. And as for local weather change?
“What I’ve found is, people when they start talking about things like global warming, they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things that they would want to do anyways,” he snapped. “We are not doing any left-wing stuff.”
He by no means specified what he meant by “left-wing stuff.” Boy, that debate would have been the right alternative to ask him. Alas, nobody did.
Hardly any in any respect
In the debate’s closing moments, DeSantis tossed in a single final reference to the surroundings. He talked about one thing he claims as successful and others don’t.
“We’ve accomplished an awful lot over these four years,” he instructed the TV viewers. “We made historic restoration for our Everglades … because water is the foundation of not just our economy, but our way of life.”
Bear in thoughts that the politician bragging about all of the progress his administration has made on Everglades restoration is identical politician who voted in favor of putting a new road through the Glades.
That highway, the Kendall Parkway, is anticipated to save lots of South Florida commuters six complete minutes! Isn’t that value ripping up an American organic treasure?
It is, in keeping with our governor, who apparently by no means met a freeway he didn’t like — together with the controversial Northern Turnpike Extension.
But what actually bought my consideration was the final a part of DeSantis’ brag, the one about water being the muse of our lives. He’s speaking the speak however not strolling the stroll.
It jogged my memory of the halcyon days of 2018, the primary time DeSantis ran for governor. Back then, he promised to do one thing to wash up the poisonous algae blooms that had been stinking up Florida’s waterways. He pledged to nominate a bunch of scientists to inform him management them.
That promise was one motive some people voted for him.
When he squeaked out a victory after a compulsory recount, DeSantis made good on that promise. He appointed a bunch of scientists, they usually studied the algae bloom downside and got here up with a sequence of suggestions.
But that’s the place it ended. Nothing got here of these suggestions.
“Hey governor,” the moderator might have stated, “how much of your hand-picked experts’ recommendations have you pushed the Legislature to adopt as law?” If he instructed the reality, DeSantis must admit, “Hardly any at all.”
Gil Smart, govt director of the Vote Water environmental marketing campaign, stated he’s not shocked that the moderator didn’t carry that up, regardless of its apparent significance.
“Hot-button cultural issues have stolen the spotlight,” he instructed me. “People seem less interested in the issue of clean water, and candidates aren’t spending a lot of time talking about it.”
With that Biscayne Bay fishkill and indicators there could possibly be another red tide algae bloom beginning off the Southwest Florida coast, Smart stated, “It’ll be front and center again soon enough.”
But which may be after this election is over.
A second shot at Bambi
I blame Crist to some extent for this failure. The man is aware of use a shoehorn however failed to make use of it to tout his personal environmental file.
He repeatedly hammered DeSantis on abortion throughout his time speaking about unrelated points. And he produced the debate’s one actually memorable second by going off-topic to ask DeSantis if he meant to serve a full four-year time period or stop after two years to run for president.
DeSantis’ response, described as “deer-in-the-headlights,” prompted one well-liked suggestion that he be without end nicknamed “Bambi.”
But simply as soon as, Crist ought to have stated, “I’m glad you asked that, Liz, but first I want to know why Ron DeSantis is so in love with developers and gives them everything they ask for.”
Or he might have stated, “I’d love to talk about that, but first I want to mention that I love manatees, and I was so sad to see that more than 1,000 of them died because Ron DeSantis broke his promise to clean up water pollution and stop toxic algae blooms.”
Or how about, “Hey, that’s a great question — it reminds me of my State of the State speech back in 2007 when I described climate change as ‘one of the most important issues that we will face this century.’ Funny how Ronnie here hasn’t done diddly about it.”
Buoyed by the acclaim over his efficiency Monday night time, Crist is now seeking two more debates. That appears, pardon the pun, two little two late. I sincerely doubt Bambi needs a second likelihood to freeze up below the new lights.
Listen, we the voters ought to insist that each political debate in Florida embody questions proper in the beginning about the environment, significantly our water high quality and its widespread decline. Those points are, as DeSantis himself stated, “the foundation of not just our economy, but our way of life.”
I feel all of us ought to ship a word about that to David Smith at Sinclair Broadcast Group, 10706 Beaver Dam Road, Hunt Valley, MD 21030. I wager if we ship sufficient complaints, he would possibly even have somebody learn one or two on the air.
Assuming he’s not busy taking one other drive in his firm automobile.