OPINION | Conservatives will dominate new Manatee County Commission. So, what's next?
2022 election results pose challenges -- and opportunities -- for GOP commissioners and their critics. Are they up to the task?
A week after the ballots were counted, the reality of the 2022 elections is settling in: The Manatee County Commission — as a result of partisan-charged redistricting, dark-money-funded campaigning and the MAGAfication of the local Republican Party — will be controlled completely by a right-wing, populist bloc free of pestering from moderate Republican commissioners, like the ousted Misty Servia and Carol Whitmore, and the equally moderate Democrat, Reggie Bellamy.
Thank you for your service, commissioners Bellamy, Servia and Whitmore, but you never stood a chance in 2022.
The question for commissioners-elect Amanda Ballard, Jason Bearden and Mike Rahn, who will be sworn in on Nov. 29, is, “Now, what?” The same goes for the holdover commissioners who to varying degrees leveraged their governmental and political influence to sway small fractions of the local electorate to give them the total control they had sought since 2020.
Now, what?
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