The sex scandal that began the 2018 legislative session is nothing. An apology wiped the slate clean and the two senators caught in their after hours playing house are moving on as if nothing happened. So is the Florida Senate under President Joe Negron.
Where is the leadership in the Florida Senate? I mean, when they aren’t off appreciating each other’s assets.
On Wednesday’s show we finally saw another Florida media outlet (The Tampa Bay Times Buzz section) decry the impact the affair apparently had on the acts of the Democrat senator in the tryst. It’s about time, but it is incomplete.
While Senator Oscar Braynon’s acts appear incompetent or influenced by his relationship with Senator Anitere Flores, her actions can be no less suspect. Both have exhibited compromised judgment in their extramarital actions, but any thinking person would reason that the relationship between them was bound to influence how each dealt with the other’s issues in the senate.
Somehow the Senate President had the arrogance to say that he saw no impact of the relationship in the work each has done in the senate. He’s leaving Flores in her powerful position in leadership.
That is nothing short of willful blindness and a lack of political understanding on Negron’s part. How do you have a close personal relationship, an affair at that, and not be inclined to support your partner in subterfuge? How do you then have the integrity to work against the political interests of that person with whom you share intimate moments? More importantly, how can the Senate President with a straight face keep such a person in a most trusted leadership position.
Look, Tallahassee’s frat boy culture is no secret. But the lack of responsible leadership in addressing this issue is astounding. The competence of Joe Negron must be in question and thereby the competence of the entire body of the Florida Senate. He is, after all, the alleged leader of the band. The question now becomes, the band of what?
Only Negron can address this before the voters of Flores’ and Braynon’s districts can. The problem is that it appears that Negron won’t. And that alone speaks volumes!