Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, fancies herself a feminist, but nobody who saw her deliberate the confirmation of PSC Commissioner Lisa Edgar Friday would believe it.
Liberal Democrat Sobel practically salivated as she chewed on the garbage served up by Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, who voted for Edgars confirmation in the committee he chairs, then led the effort to kick her to the curb in the waning hours of session.
The burly, surly senator cited aging newspaper clippings and discredited ethics charges, but failed to have his way with Edgar, despite back-up from his lapdog, Vice Chairman Sobel. Edgar, a 24-year public servant, wife, and mother of two became the first and only PSC commissioner to be appointed by three Republican governors and confirmed by three Senates on bipartisan votes.
There was a principled case to be made for giving Edgar a gold watch and sending her off to the lucrative life of lobbying that awaits senators in the Age of Eight is Enough. Nobody knew that better than Edgar, who began her career as a Senate staffer and whose public and private life has been examined under the microscopes of some of the best reporters at some of Floridas best newspapers.
But Edgar has a public servants heart and no fear of looking people in the eye. She got out of a sick bed to appear before Chairman Latvala and Vice Chairman Sobel and their ethics and elections committee, which recommended her for reappointment without telling the public that they didnt really mean it.
Everyone in the Capitol knows that Edgar made herself available to any senator who wanted to talk to her about anything, including the plain brown envelopes filled with old news and stale innuendo that were almost as widely circulated as President Obamas Kenyan birth certificate.
So it was a surprise to hear Sobel and other senators trash Edgar in the same sentence as they claimed they had not had an opportunity to know her, or personally investigate the bona fides of whatever they were making up as they went along.
And it was downright shocking to hear Sobel refer to Edgar, repeatedly, as that woman.
Thats a nasty, degrading phrase that any decent, right-thinking human being -- especially progressives, I would have thought -- stopped using around the time that no Irish or Jews need apply signs were consigned to the dust bin of history.
More was at stake Friday than one womans job. Had Latvala and his bipartisan band of bully boys and mean girls had their way, Florida would have lost its high profile in the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC). Edgar is a member of the executive committee of the 125-year-old organization, which will hold its annual meeting this year in Orlando.
Anitere Flores, R-Miami, obviously disgusted, took to the floor to note that Edgar had been thoroughly vetted by Senate committees. So, too, didArthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, the newly elected Senate minority leader, speak on behalf of senators and spectators who were appalled by the Coward Jack Latvala's Character Assassination of Lisa Edgar.
You could see on Flores' and Joyner's faces what real feminists watching from the gallery and on the Florida Channel were thinking: They would not, in a million years, have done this to a man.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
