Manatee County Commissioner Carol Whitmore said she always believed voters would impose term limits on officials through elections. On Tuesday, voters picked political newcomer Jason Bearden in a lopsided Republican Primary and set an end date for her 16 years of public service. 

“I’m fine. I’m disappointed,” she said Wednesday. “But the drawback is some people don’t like when you have been in office for a long time.”

Whitmore has served on the Manatee County Commission holding a county-wide seat since 2006, and before that served as mayor of Holmes Beach, where she held a commission seat dating back to 1991.

She will continue to serve the community, she said, but in a private capacity. A registered nurse, she has focused for years on ensuring indigent care is available to the poor, including palliative care. She has also served as a board member or president on a variety of health care and social service groups in the region.

“I want to do good still in Manatee,” she said. “That’s why I ran again.”

Accomplishments under her belt include a no-kill animal shelter, a cause she spent years as a county commissioner on before it was finally established a decade ago. Activists who brought an animal to the county that had been abused while owners used it for dogfighting touched her heart and committed her long-term to the cause. 

She knows some of her work may have generated controversy, maybe enough that it led to her ouster. She still heard from the campaign trail about the COVID-19 restrictions put in place in Manatee County for just a matter of weeks. But those were developed based on the recommendations of health and public safety leaders throughout the region. 

“I had seven friends who died of COVID,” she noted. “That included Gary Tibbetts who worked in (U.S. Rep.) Vern Buchanan’s office, and it included former County Commissioner Gwen Brown. And then it included five others. We followed the advice of professionals and some didn’t like that. But this was the first time in anyone’s lifetime we had a global pandemic.”

She leaves somewhat concerned about the direction of the Manatee County Commission where she served more than a decade and a half. There are former allies on the board she fears have grown accustomed to holding too much power. As she exits in a few months, she often finds herself in the minority on high-profile votes.

There’s still tension around the bitter election season. She’s disappointed Bearden never engaged in a debate, skipping out on the only scheduled one at a Tiger Bay meeting. Instead, the election played out, as she describes it, in “evil mailers” leveling accusations with no way for candidates to respond.

There’s broader concerns, she said, about politics unrelated to government dictating the direction of policy. “I hope they get away from national things and worry about Manatee County voters,” she said. “We need leaders to lead. Some don’t do that. Some let power get to their head and say if you don’t agree with me, you are the enemy.”

For the moment, Whitmore won’t say if she sees herself running for public office again. But she remains in Manatee County, a community where she grew up and has seen times bad and good, in a place where as a 15-year-old she lived on the streets homeless but where she later rubbed elbows with federal officials and business giants as an elected official.