Longboat Key Democratic Club turns eyes toward 2022

The Longboat Key Democratic Club started 2022 focusing on the future. Speakers Nikki Fried and Margaret Good discussed the importance of organizing for the year’s elections at the club’s Jan. 4 meeting. 

More than 50 people were in attendance for lunch, and the club took time to recognize first-timers, who went around and introduced themselves. Reggie Bellamy, a Manatee County commissioner, was in attendance too.

Fried, the state's commissioner of agriculture and a candidate for her party's nomination for governor, said Florida’s water is the lifeblood of the state, from homeowners to small businesses. Fighting red tide and protecting coastal areas are high on her list.

“People aren't going to come here when they see red tide and the bad fish and the smells, and certainly agriculture needs water to produce food,'' she said. "But I also knew that it was going to be a balancing act between the environmental impacts of agriculture and trying to make sure that agriculture is still successful, so we've spent a lot of the last three years trying to create that balance.”

Earlier this year, Fried’s department launched the Clean Water Initiative, in which department officials test properties rather than having properties self-report. Violators get sent to the Department of Environmental Protection, and more than 6,600 cases have been sent there so far. 

Fried spoke about the importance of organizing statewide to have more successful campaigns in the future.

“We need to organize like we have never organized before and empower the bottom of the tickets,” Fried said. “We need to empower our city and county commissioners and our local clubs and our caucuses because you are the ones who are doing the work on the ground. How do we expect to win if the core principles are not talking to each other?”

Margaret Good followed Fried and echoed the importance of organizing, especially in the local March elections regarding single voter districts. Good now works with the Sarasota organization Build Local Power, which aims to register Democrats in the area.