Florida House District 72 represented more than one win for Democrats two ago. When a special election arose at a low point in Donald Trump’s popularity, the nation turned to Sarasota's suburbs to see how middle America felt about politican. It felt pretty blue.

Margaret Good on Feb. 13, 2018 snagged the House seat, prevailing in a district Donald Trump won by four percentage points. In fact, Good won by seven points, an 11-point swing. Compare the Good win to retired Republican Rep. Alex Miller, who won the seat in 2016 by 16 points, and you suddenly envisioned the sea change in suburbia about which Democrats fantasized in plain view.

Sure, it always was more complicated, considering the dynamics of a special election with one race on the ballot. That became clear when Good narrowly won reelection in November by just over 1,200 votes. Still, Democrats held on.

So why’s it feel in September of 2020 like the district will soon swing red again?

There should be plenty of hope Democrats can hold the seat. Following an analysis of August returns for Where The Votes Are, I dug deeper this week and confirmed 505 more Democrats in House District 72 voted in the Aug. 18 election than Republicans. That's despite the fact Republicans as of July 20 held an edge of more than 8,200 registered voters compared to Democrats. 

Republicans also had to pick a nominee in a heated primary, where Navy vet Fiona McFarland defeated Charter Review Board member Donna Barcomb by a mere 263 votes. Democrats had no primary, even after Good took herself out of the picture to challenge Vern Buchanan for his seat in Congress. Despite a sudden vacancy, only one Democrat, Drake Buckman, filed for the seat. That means while Democrats had plenty to vote on in August, a House District 72 primary took up no space in their minds last month.

Where do things stand now? As we speak, polls show Trump possibly tied but likely losing to Democrat Joe Biden in Florida, four years after winning his adopted home state by nearly 113,000 votes over Hillary Clinton.

As for money, Buckman has a cash advantage— for now. Without any primary, Buckman was also able to sit on his money. Through Sept. 4, the Democrat had $44,339 in cash on hand. McFarland’s campaign, after being drained to $2,724 at the end of the primary, now reports $20,119 in cash on hand.

But that's just a partial telling. The young GOP candidate just spent a quarter million dollars boosting name recognition between campaign spending and political committee support. Barcomb helped raise McFarland’s profile too. Sure it was with disparaging messaging calling McFarland soft on protesters and shaky on abortion, but the sharpness of those attacks dulls in a general election and maybe even paints McFarland as a moderate as she appeals to independents for the first time.

Meanwhile, Democratic sources at the state level appeared to all write this race off the day Good declared for Congress. Florida House Victory seems to be struggling to direct mass resources into battleground, and maynot even send five figures to the Sarasota Democrat. Florida Republicans, led by local leader Joe Gruters, seem ready to deliver six figures worth of assistance.

When I argued months ago Buckman needed a primary challenge, he bristled. Democrats instead seemed sure the party was better off betting all their chips on November and skipping a divising August contest. But no one in Tallahassee seems to be buying the message. Good, meanwhile, appears in poor standing against Buchanan after abandoning a race where she almost certainly would have the upper hand right now.

Jacob Ogles is contributing senior editor for SRQ MEDIA. 

An excellent liberal arts education requires both depth and breadth. Students should master one discipline and acquire a working knowledge of a range of other disciplines. This affords each student a set of disciplinary tools, and a set of different ways of viewing a situation or problem. 

One could hardly imagine a better subject for such an approach than the pandemic. It has touched virtually every aspect of our lives and society.

At New College, religion professor Manuel Lopez and digital humanities librarian Cal Murgu have brought together 20 faculty members from various disciplines to teach a fully remote course this fall entitled “COVID-19: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Pandemic.”

Among the instructors are biologists, an epidemiologist, a medieval historian, an ecologist, a biochemist, a data scientist, a computer scientist, a medical anthropologist, sinologists, political scientists, a constitutional historian, an economist, a sociologist, a physician, literary historians, a dramaturg and a creative writer.

“This is not going to be a normal semester at New College, or at any other college and university in the United States for that matter,” Murgu and Lopez say. “As part of a collective effort at New College to understand the current crisis, we have designed a course that will explore the pandemic using an interdisciplinary approach, and with a specific focus on how it has affected our local communities.”

To the latter end, we are bringing in experts from the Sarasota-Manatee area to discuss the impact the pandemic has had on the local region. And the course includes a separate internship that allows our students to work with Dr. Lisa Merritt at Sarasota’s Multicultural Health Institute on community-based COVID-19 research.

While the format and content of the course is unique to New College, the idea of bringing the topic of COVID-19 into a collegiate curriculum is not. Similar courses have been implemented at other institutions like Whitman College and the Imperial College of London.

“If you have a global crisis like the one we’re living in and you’re at a liberal arts institution, you have to talk about it. We are all going to deal with the crisis in one way or another but, as an intellectual community, we can think about in a unique way,” Lopez says. “I think we can really show our community and Florida that what we do here is relevant; it would be a missed opportunity not to do this.”

The introduction to the three-month-long course was held on August 24. Lectures will follow on multiple topics, such as the history of epidemiology, microbiology and quarantine; outbreaks and the tools used to track the data; the economic impact of the virus; pandemics in literature; social determinants of health and community-engaged approaches; environmental changes and pandemics; and “The Wuhan Diaries.”

This will be a course unlike anywhere else, as we bring in expertise from all disciplines and share what we have learned over the past several months. 

The experience be will be accessible to a much broader audience than the New College community as a sort of time capsule.

“We want to use the course website as a repository—an artifact that gives you a sense of what happened here during the pandemic,” Murgu says. “Perhaps we could build on this model in the future at New College, where we offer a regular interdisciplinary approach to important challenges that we’re facing.”

Donald O’Shea is president of New College of Florida. 

For more information on the “COVID-19” course, click here.

Congressman Vern Buchanan is either ashamed of his record, afraid of his opponent state Rep. Margaret Good, or acting arrogantly. The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee, Sarasota Tiger Bay Club and the League of Women Voters of Sarasota County all extended invitations to Buchanan requesting his participation in candidate forums. Buchanan summarily dismissed each inquiry. I surmise he is hiding under his desk in light of the recent revelations surrounding his discriminatory record towards gay people. 

Buchanan's sprawling network of allies at the highest levels of the regional news media continue to paper over the Congressman's history of intolerance and bigotry. You may wonder why you have not heard about Buchanan's vote against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 which augmented 1969 federal hate crimes law and extended federal investigatory and prosecutorial powers into violent crimes motivated by one's gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. For hate crimes motivated by the victim's race, color, religion or national origin, the prerequisite that the victim be engaging in a federally protected activity was removed.  The bill's namesakes — Matthew Shepard and James Byrd — were both victims of unthinkable crimes.

This bill, ushered through Congress with bipartisan support, was advanced by a broad coalition of national organizations including the National Council of Jewish Women, the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP.  We are left scratching our heads when Buchanan's vote against the Shepard-Byrd Act is juxtaposed with his vote to extend similar federal power to the investigation and prosecution of animal cruelty cases. I guess gerbils come before humans in the warped world of Buchanan. 

Further, Buchanan voted against the Equality Act which would have made discrimination illegal on the basis of sexual orientation in the workplace and public accommodation. 

Of the 364 votes Buchanan missed over the years, those are two votes for which he made sure to pull the lever. 

This type of prejudice is shocking and should not be embraced by our community. This November, please safely return your ballot by mail and put an end to Buchanan's bigotry. 

Gabriel Hament is a Sarasota native. He has led and volunteered on campaigns for the Sarasota County School Board, Sarasota City Commission and Florida House, including volunteering for Good’s state House District 72 campaign.