Nancy Smith

If Monday's Supreme Court decision doesn't light a fire under Florida's conservative base, I have no idea what will.

More Americans would go to the polls if somebody would just entertain them when they get there. Sad, but apparently true. There's research to prove it. Throw a parade, a picnic, a barbecue, a block party in enough cities and Florida polling places could lure 4 percent of the otherwise lazy and disengaged.

You wait. Michael will go down as the most political hurricane in Florida history.

News on most days comes straight out of President Trump's smartphone. Everything else is scraps.

Twice during Tuesday night's debate Sen. Bill Nelson bemoaned the state of Florida teachers' salaries -- "they're $10,000 less than the national average for teachers," he said. 

You know Republican Maria Elvira Salazar is a pretty good candidate when the Florida Democratic Party resorts to treating voters in Congressional District 27 like idiots in order to discredit her.

Democrats are giddy over Andrew Gillum's September lead, I get that. But the rest of us are hoping they might take a break from blowing raspberries at Gillum's Republican opponent long enough to answer some of the questions we have about this hard-left gubernatorial candidate.

Maybe his South Florida constituency long ago grew numb to U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings' serial unscrupulousness. Certainly nobody kicked up much of a fuss when it was discovered Wednesday the Democratic congressman, serving in the shadow of his own checkered past, promoted a convicted money launderer in his Palm Beach County office to full-time "staff assistant."

To hear the Democrats tell it, you'd think Rick Scott drove Florida education off a cliff. Have you see their latest ad, "It's School Time"?

The Democrats knew they had to do something. The news in Florida was way too good.

In the battle over immigration policy, it's easy to overlook how much Florida agriculture needs an uncomplicated guest farmworker program. We're talking about am industry in this state that contributes $8 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product. Yet, it's suffering critical labor shortages as Congress makes up its mind how much it can help.  

It's not quite as painful as Cersei's walk of shame through the streets of King's Landing, but, by God, Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples and Rep. Katie Edwards-Walpole, D-Plantation are walking down those cold, stone steps -- figuratively speaking -- every day of the week.

Nowhere in Florida is the new law dealing with beach access the firestorm it has become in Walton County. The reason is complicated.

Many had predicted 2018 would be "the Year of the Woman" in Florida.  Instead, it turned into the "Year of Party Extremes" -- a year when moderates fell, when both party bases flexed their muscles, when pollsters demonstrated a surprising fallibility in a political climate dominated by technology and social media. 

Politics always turns dirtier a week ahead of voting day, but somebody involved in the Republican primary for commissioner of agriculture crossed the line this year -- flooding phones with text blasts of candidate Baxter Troutman in an orange jumpsuit with a link to a 6-year-old Lakeland Ledger story, "Baxter Troutman Accused of Hitting His Wife with a Bedspread."