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Several Unopposed Candidates Win Re-election; Local Field Set For Primary

Dozens of candidates had qualified to appear on the ballot in Escambia County when qualifying ended Friday at noon.

Several candidates will go into office without any opposition:

Supervisor of Elections: David Stafford
Property Appraiser: Chris Jones
Clerk of Courts: Pam Childers

School Board
District 4: Patty Hightower
District 5: William Slayton

Pensacola City Council:
District 3: Andy Terhaar
District 5: Gerald Wingate

Escambia Soil & Water Conservation:
District 1: Betty Ann Wilson
District 2: Anne Bennett

SRIA Board: Thomas A. Campanella

Century Town Council:
Seat 1: Ann C Brooks
Seat 2: Annie Carter Savage

County Court Judge:
Group 1: Pat Kinsey
Group 3 :Jennifer Frydrychowicz

Tax Collector

Sheriff

Superintendent of Schools

County Commissioner, District 1

County Commissioner, District 3

County Commissioner, District 5

School Board, District 1

ECUA, District 1

ECUA, District 3

ECUA, District 5

Pensacola City Council, District 1

Pensacola City Council, District 7

Mayor of Century

FHP: Woman Distracted By Cell Phone Hits House

An Escambia County woman distracted by her cell phone crashed into a house, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

The FHP said 48-year old Jessic Ludvik was eastbound on Olive Road through a construction zone. She swerved partially off the roadway after being distracted by her cell phone. She hit a concrete barrier, over-corrected and hit a house with her 2015 Ford Mustang.

Ludvik was cited with careless driving by the FHP.

Four Seek To Be Century’s Mayor; Two Council Members Unopposed

Four people are running for the office of mayor in Century, and two people have been re-elected to the town council by default.

Incumbent Mayor Freddie McCall is seeking a third term. He was elected to the Century Town Council in 2004, and was elected mayor in 2007 and to his current term in 2011.

McCall is being challenged by

• Ben Boutwell, a first term member of the town council
• Felic Fussner, a political newcomer
• Henry Hawkins, a former council member who ran unsuccessfully for council in 2007 and mayor in 2011.

Five years ago, McCall defeated Hawkins 292 votes to 186.

Clear Tonight, A Chance Of Rain For Sunday

Here is your official North Escambia area forecast:

Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 74. Southwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm after midnight.

Sunday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after noon. Mostly sunny, with a high near 96. Heat index values as high as 105. Calm wind becoming south around 5 mph in the afternoon.

Sunday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 74. South wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening.

Monday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 10am. Partly sunny, with a high near 93. Calm wind becoming south around 5 mph in the afternoon.

Monday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 74. Southwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening.

Tuesday: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 90. Calm wind becoming west around 5 mph in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 70%.

Tuesday Night: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 73. Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening.

Wednesday: A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 89. North wind around 5 mph.

Wednesday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 72. South wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening.

Thursday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 90.

Thursday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly cloudy, with a low around 72.

Friday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 91.

Friday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 74.

Saturday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 91.

Operation Dry Water: FWC Crackdown On Boating Under The Influence

As the summer recreational boating season gets into full swing, the FWC Law Enforcement Division is ramping up its enforcement efforts as part of a national crackdown on boating under the influence this weekend.

The annual  heightened awareness and enforcement campaign, Operation Dry Water, focuses on deterring boaters from boating under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Law enforcement agencies nationwide will be out in force through Sunda looking for boaters who choose to boat under the influence, and then removing them from the water. Increased awareness about the dangers of boating under the influence, along with officers focused on identifying impaired operators, aim to drastically reduce the number of accidents and deaths due to impaired boating.

“It is our job as law enforcement officers to identify and remove impaired boaters from the water so that everyone else can continue to have an enjoyable boating season and not become a victim of boating under the influence. Protecting the public goes to the heart of our mission,” said Maj. Richard Moore, FWC’s Boating and Waterways Section Leader. “Our agency is participating in Operation Dry Water, and joining thousands of law enforcement officers nationwide to decrease the number of accidents, injuries and deaths that come as a result of boaters who choose to drink and boat.”

In Florida it is illegal to operate a vessel with a BAC level of .08 or higher. The FWC wants to remind boaters to stay safe this summer by staying sober on the water. Alcohol use is one of the leading contributing factors in recreational boater deaths. During the national weekend of heightened awareness and high-visibility enforcement, boaters can expect to see an enhanced law enforcement presence and increased messaging about this dangerous and preventable crime.

Yard Sale Today At First Baptist Church Of Cantonment

The First Baptist Church of Cantonment is holding a church-wide  yard sale today from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m.  The church is located at 118 Morris Avenue in Cantonment. All proceeds will go toward a children’s building. Submitted photo for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.

Smokies Top Wahoos 4-1

After the Pensacola Blue Wahoos kicked off the second half of the season with a win, game two of the second half ended in a hard-fought 4-1 loss to the Tennessee Smokies.

In a game that saw Pensacola and Tennessee scatter eight and nine hits, respectively, the Smokies found ways to turn those hits into runs.

The Blue Wahoos struck first in the top half of the first inning when Sebastian Elizalde drove in Zach Vincej on an RBI single.

Tennessee took a 2-1 lead with two outs in the bottom half of the inning, as Billy McKinney singled to score Ian Happ followed by an RBI single by Ben Carhart to drive in Victor Caratini. From that point on, the Smokies would not relinquish that lead.

The Smokies lead increased to 3-1 with a sac fly by Chesny Young to score Jacob Hannemann in the bottom of the seventh. In the eighth, Kelly Dugan homered to left center to provide Tennessee with a 4-1 lead.

Sal Romano (1-8) took the loss in his start for the Wahoos, allowing seven hits and a pair of earned runs in his four innings of work. Romano also struck out three batters and walked one in the outing before being relieved by Evan Mitchell, who tossed a pair of hitless innings. Mitchell walked and struck out a batter in his two innings of work.

Kyle McMyne finished out the contest for the Wahoos, allowing two earned runs on two hits—one of them a home run—in his two innings of work, while striking out a pair of batters.

Jen-Ho Tseng (3-3) garnered the start for the Smokies, allowing the lone run on six hits in six innings of work and earning his third win of the year for Tennessee. He struck out four batters while walking three. R.J. Alvarez and Josh Conway both pitched an inning each in shutout relief. Jose Rosario closed out the contest with a shutout inning, allowing just one hit and striking out a pair while earning his second save of the season.

Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: To Run Or Not To Run, And Bears

There might not have been much cursing or broken clubs, but there was one way in which Florida politics this week resembled a golf game: Everyone seemed to want a mulligan.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio asked for a do-over on his pledge not to run for re-election, three months after Republican voters rejected his presidential bid that prompted the guarantee in the first place. It was a decision that rippled through a campaign season that was beginning in earnest, and candidates at several levels were left scrambling to manage the fallout before Friday’s qualifying deadline.

Meanwhile, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission took a pass on reprising its controversial decision last year to authorize a bear hunt — meaning the state’s ursine community is safe for at least another year. But there was already talk of letting hunters have at the animals again in 2017.

One thing that didn’t seem likely to change: the politics of gun control following the deadliest shooting spree in American history. Democrats at the state and federal level continued to press for new restrictions on the purchase of firearms after the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, but Republicans resisted those calls and accused gun control advocates of pulling political stunts.

TO RUN OR NOT TO RUN

He never delivered a monologue while clutching a skull, but Rubio spent much of the last two weeks doing a convincing Hamlet impersonation, weighing whether to run for re-election despite promising that his first term in the U.S. Senate would be his last. Republican leaders — worried that none of the GOP candidates angling to succeed Rubio would be able to hold onto the seat — were more than willing to fuel his deliberations.

On Wednesday, Rubio made it official. He threw his hat in the ring, a move that elbowed out Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a longtime friend, and two other candidates by the time the week was up. And that was only after a fourth contender, Republican Congressman David Jolly, had decided last week to bow out of the race and run for his own seat again.

The state’s junior senator, who had spent much of his year running for the White House and disparaging his place of work, now saw the Senate as a vital “check and balance on the excesses of a president” — even if real-estate mogul Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, is elected over his Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“The prospect of a Trump presidency is also worrisome to me. … If he is elected, we will need senators willing to encourage him in the right direction, and if necessary, stand up to him. I’ve proven a willingness to do both,” said Rubio, who told reporters last month he would be willing to speak at next month’s GOP convention, where Trump will clinch the nomination.

Democrats said the move smacked of political opportunism. And they were quick to bring up some of the same issues that dogged Rubio’s presidential bid, including his sporadic-at-best attendance at Senate votes that conflicted with his White House ambitions.

“Rubio lost 66 of 67 counties in March because he abandoned the people of Florida and showed himself to be nothing but an opportunistic career politician,” said Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Allison Tant. “Today’s news only confirms that further.”

Still, polls indicated Rubio had a far better chance of beating Democratic Congressman Patrick Murphy, the establishment choice, or Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson, a liberal firebrand, in the November general election. And Rubio all but cleared the field, with Lopez-Cantera, Republican Congressman Ron DeSantis and businessman Todd Wilcox dropping their candidacies by the end of the week.

Developer Carlos Beruff trudged on, slamming Rubio as a career politician and making it clear he intended to remain in the race.

“The power brokers in Washington think they can control this race,” Beruff said in a fiery statement following Rubio’s announcement. “They think they can tell the voters of Florida who their candidates are. But the voters of Florida will not obey them.”

The dominoes fell quickly, particularly in DeSantis’s district, where many of the other candidates abandoned ship after the incumbent said he would run for the U.S. House again. But at least one state lawmaker — Rep. Fred Costello, R-Ormond Beach — decided to stick it out.

“Let me be clear. Congressman DeSantis and I both have outstanding conservative records,” Costello said in the statement. “This election will be based upon who the voters believe will best serve our community. Nobody is better prepared or will work harder to benefit the residents of Congressional District 6 than I. My record of Congressional District 6 community service is unmatched.”

Dozens of other candidates from across the state also qualified ahead of the Friday deadline, with every member of Congress drawing at least token opposition as other races took shape or changed slightly.

Democrat Andrew Korge dropped out of a high-profile battle against incumbent Republican Sen. Anitere Flores and instead waded into a Democratic primary for a nearby Miami-Dade County Senate seat. That put him in a three-way primary contest with incumbent Sen. Dwight Bullard and Ana Rivas Logan, who once served in the state House as a Republican.

In Congressional District 2, a largely rural and conservative seat in Northwest Florida, Fort White businessman Jeff Moran stepped aside and endorsed his former rival, Tallahassee attorney Ken Sukhia, in the GOP primary.

BEAR WITH US

There’s a fresh reason bears in Florida might target your pick-a-nick basket. Namely, no one will be allowed to shoot them for a while.

On a 4-3 vote Wednesday, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission shot down a staff recommendation that would have allowed a hunt in October, albeit one with fewer permits and smaller hunting grounds than the 2015 event that saw 304 bears killed over two days. But that doesn’t mean that bears are out of the woods for good.

“I don’t think it means hunting goes away,” Commission Chairman Brian Yablonski said at the end of a daylong meeting in the rural Franklin County community of Eastpoint.

Yablonski added that the delay will allow non-lethal efforts to take hold. Those efforts include expanding the availability of bear-proof trash containers in communities with high incidents of bear-human interactions.

The state agency has about $825,000 this year — due in part to money raised from the 2015 hunt — to match with money from local governments for the non-lethal options.

Opponents, including some who challenged the 2015 hunt in court and some wearing shirts that said “Bear lives matter,” told commissioners they intended to work against any killing of bears for sport, which they contend will hurt tourism in Florida.

“We’ve had two shootings recently that have given Florida a huge black eye,” said Katrina Shadix of Oviedo before the commission vote. “Do we want to add another controversial bear hunt to our image?”

But Newton Cook, a member of The Future of Hunting in Florida, said those who question the state agency’s scientists “are wrong” and simply seeking an excuse to call for a delay or postponement of the hunt.

“Thirty states have bear hunting,” Cook said. “This is not rocket science.”

‘THE FINAL STRAW’?

The chances that any shooting incident is going to change the fraught politics of guns in America are always slim, and the killings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando have proven no different. After the incident that claimed 49 lives — in addition to shooter Omar Mateen — on June 12, both sides of the firearm debate were quickly back to their rhetorical battle stations.

State Sen. Greg Evers, a Baker Republican running for Congress, riled LGBT activists by running a contest for which the prize was an AR-15 — a gun similar to the one Mateen used at Pulse. Evers announced Monday morning on Facebook that he was giving away an AR-15 to a district resident who “likes” the social media post and shares it with others.

By the end of the day, Facebook had removed Evers’ gun giveaway promotion, saying it violated the social media site’s “community standards” policy that bans posts “promoting graphic violence.”

But the media maelstrom surrounding the gun contest continued.

Evers, who has received an “A” or “A-plus” rating from the National Rifle Association during his 15 years in the state Legislature, said he felt compelled to move forward with the gun giveaway after listening to President Barack Obama, who traveled to Orlando last week and has used the mass killing to push for stricter gun-control measures.

“It wasn’t an easy decision to move forward,” Evers said. “But when Barack Obama went down there and he blamed a terrorist attack on the weapon, that was the final straw.”

LGBT activists saw things differently.

“I think it is tasteless, disrespectful, disgusting, political pandering at its worst,” Stratton Pollitzer, deputy director of Equality Florida, an LGBT advocacy group that has raised more than $6 million for victims of the massacre. “The idea that he wants to put the same style assault rifle that was just used for mass murder into the hands of a random stranger is grotesque.”

Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats — including several from Florida — staged a daylong sit-in on the House floor in an unsuccessful effort to get Republican leaders to hold a vote on legislation barring people on government watch lists from purchasing guns.

STORY OF THE WEEK: After months of maintaining he would not run for a second term, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio entered the race for his seat in hopes of preserving the Republican majority in the Senate.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “When they ask about guns, and then they lecture you to get rid of guns, that’s politics. It’s not medicine. We take our children to the doctor because they are sick. We don’t take them there for political lectures on guns.”—Marion Hammer, a longtime Tallahassee lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, on the legal fight over a Florida law that seeks to restrict doctors from asking questions and recording information about patients’ gun ownership.

by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida

Scott, Cabinet Honor Orlando Shooting Victims

At the state Capitol on Friday, Governor Rick Scott, his wife, Ann, and the three members of Florida’s Cabinet honored the victims of the June 12 attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando — the worst mass shooting in the nation’s history.

Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater put yellow roses in front of 49 Florida flags — one for each of the club-goers who died after being shot by gunman Omar Mateen, who was later killed by police — lining the front lawn of the Capitol.

The flags were accompanied by photographs of each person who was killed in the attack at the gay nightclub.

“The memory of this horrific tragedy will never be forgotten, as well as the legacies of each of the 49 victims,” Scott said in a press release accompanied by photos of the memorial site. “While we can never completely heal from the pain of such loss, we continue to be reminded of each life taken in Orlando and their individual impact on so many. We mourn with the families and loved ones as they grieve, and ask all Floridians to continue praying for those affected by the terror attack in the coming days. This memorial will be a place to remember and honor their lives.”

The flags will remain up for 49 days.

Courtesy photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.

by The News Service of Florida

Tornado Damaged Historic Century Methodist Church Coming Down

The tornado damaged 114-year old Century United Methodist Church is coming down, board by board, piece by piece..

“It’s being dismantled, not demolished,” Rev. Janet Lee said Thursday. “The hope is that there is enough wood there that is good enough to use in some way when we rebuild.”

The simple, but beautiful wooden church stood strong on Church Street since just after the turn of the Century. It was left precariously leaning  after a February EF-3 tornado lifted it off it’s foundation and shifted the entire building about two feet away. The building was deemed a total loss and in danger of collapse by a structural engineer.

In the days after the tornado, church members and volunteers worked, despite the danger, to remove stained glass windows, pews and other furniture, and chandeliers from the building. Members have former members have stopped by, some posing for pictures on the porch, and reminiscing  about the weddings and funerals and special services — the important moments in their lives and the in the lives of their families — that took place in the little wooden church.

“We tried to remove the things that had spiritual or historical importance,” Lee said.

Plans are already taking shape to rebuild the church.

“We will rebuild on that spot,” Lee said, “but there is no time frame right now.”

For now, church members meet across the street in a house owned by the church.

Pictured top and inset: The slow process of dismantling the tornado damaged Century United Methodist Church is underway.  Pictured below: A look inside the historic structure about a week after the February 15 tornado. NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.

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