Eric Giunta
Florida GOP promoting leftist in Tallahassee race?
Ann Yarko the only real conservative option for FL State House 9
By Eric Giunta
It may sound cliché, but this November's elections are among the most pivotal in America's history. As it stands, the nation is governed almost completely by dogmatic leftists who subscribe to the secular religion of philosophical materialism and functional atheism. On the federal level, the executive and legislative branches are dominated by a political party (the Democrats) whose leaders openly embrace the quality-of-life ethic of culture-of-death liberalism, while most of our nation's Supreme Court Justices are "living documentarians" who believe they are authorized to substitute their private moral intuitions for the Constitution's original public meaning.
And with Democrats controlling the executive branches of 26 of 50 states, things are not looking much brighter at the local level. The nation at all tiers is governed by welfare statists who have bankrupted the economy with entitlements that cannot possibly be paid for, and who still believe the silly superstition that the economy can be "stimulated" by spending money the nation doesn't have, or by printing more of it and inflating the currency.
I've lived in Florida nearly all my life, and am presently studying in the state capital, Tallahassee. Two years ago, I volunteered my time to work on the Peter Boulware campaign for State House District 9. Running in an historically Democratic district, Mr. Boulware was the true anti-Obama: Republican, a successful African-American small-business owner, devoutly Christian, pro-life, and fiscally commonsensical (i.e., conservative). He lost the race to the Democrat, one Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, by just over half a percentage point.
Though the race was lost, its direction represented just how far the local GOP had come in bridging the gap between Republicans and the "Blue Dog" center-right Democratic grassroots. But rather than build on that progress and continue running articulate, principled conservative candidates, the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) has taken sides in the current primaries, funding the campaign of Ms. Kirk Headley-Perdue to the tune of about $30,000, thereby giving its de facto endorsement to her, and not to her opponent Ms. Ann Yarko.
The RPOF apparently hasn't learned the lessons of the Crist/Rubio Senate primary. Rather than staying neutral in a battle between two of its own, the establishment intelligentsia has chosen its side — and most disturbingly, it seems to be one that does not serve the commonsense conservative interests of the Republican Party, or the District's constituents.
I have contacts in the Perdue campaign, but they declined to go on the official record for this article. This reticence confirmed my resolution to make public my personal endorsement of Ann Yarko for State House District 9. I am a registered independent, but as an active member, and then President, of the local chapter of the nation's premier fellowship of conservative and libertarian law students, over the last two years I have taken a keen interest in local conservative politics. I have been active in the local tea party movement, where from the get-go I met with Yarko's grassroots activism. She and I have become well-acquainted since then, and I can testify to her abilities as an effective mobilizer and her principled, no-nonsense stance on the issues most important to Republican voters. She was one of the principle orchestrators of one of Tallahassee's anti-Obamacare rallies and the American Liberty Alliance Bus Tour Stop for Tallahassee, and her face is a staple at any major conservative function in the city.
Her opponent in the race, Kirk Perdue, is not without her talents and her community involvement, but I can think of no contribution she has ever made toward advancing conservatism in the district. Her many years of social work are commendable, but going through her political platform, and her political history, one wonders what there is to substantially distinguish her from the likes of Ms Vasilinda, or for that matter RINO-turned-"Independent" Charlie Crist.
The first red flag should have been Kirk's recent endorsement by the local leftist rag, The Tallahassee Democrat (not named for the political party, though it might as well be). It's a safe bet the Democrat doesn't exactly have the best interests of the Republican agenda in mind, and one wonders whether its promotion is something a conservative candidate would really want to tout.
Perdue's campaign website presents her as a "non-traditional candidate with traditional values," but one is hard-pressed to find any concrete policy proposals anywhere on her site: the "issues" section is a litany of empty platitudes, and the closest thing we get to a policy prescription is a declaration that she "oppose[s] raising taxes."
To be fair, Yarko's website isn't much better, but better it is: Yarko not only opposes raising taxes, but she pledges to fight to lower taxes, not simply keep existing ones from increasing: "Leon and Jefferson County residents shouldn't have to pay the same rates as those in coastal areas." She also pledges to fight against any kind of Obamacare-like scheme in the state, and to champion tort reform in the pursuit of lower healthcare costs.
Quite frankly, both these websites are pitiful; neither gives voters much to work with when forming an opinion on either candidate. It reminds one of the popularity contests that pass for "elections" in high school and undergraduate student councils. One hopes more substance will be forthcoming when the winner campaigns in the general election.
One glaring omission from their sites is any reference whatsoever to the hot-button social issues that interest the Florida electorate. Nothing whatsoever on abortion, homosexual "marriage," euthanasia, embryo-destructive research, or human cloning.
And for good reason, as far as Perdue is concerned. For while her campaign has maintained a prudent public silence on the matter, when questioned they will concede that Perdue is "pro-choice" on all these questions, which is to say she supports the legality of both infanticide and the mockery of marriage that an overwhelming majority of Floridians rejected at the polls during the '08 election (this in a state and district that gave its electoral votes to the far-left Barack Obama and Joe Biden). Perdue's campaign was not clear on whether she also endorses tax-payer funding for these offenses against the sanctity of life and marriage. When asked on a local radio show whether she supported homosexual adoptions, she wouldn't answer the question.
On all of the conservative hot-buttons, the Ann Yarko difference couldn't be starker. I interviewed Yarko, and asked her for her candid position statements on these issues. She's a proud Catholic Christian, and staunchly opposes abortion for any reason other than to save the life of the mother. She also supports wholeheartedly the consensus of her would-be constituents that marriage is, and ought to remain, between a man and a woman. On stem cell research, she shared with me her struggles on the matter: she has a relative with Alzheimer's, but is increasingly impressed with the developments that have occurred with adult cell therapy, and less and less enthusiastic about stem cell research that takes the lives of excess embryos. She definitely does not support the cloning of human embryos, and opposes taxpayer funding for such controversial and divisive endeavors.
Ms. Yarko might not be the poster-child for Florida Right to Life, but she's a lot closer to her district's Republican base (and probably the Floridian mainstream) than is her establishment-supported opponent.
Yarko's position on the economic issues is so well-known to even her detractors, that they almost don't bear repeating. She's been a visible presence at every Tea Party rally over the last year and a half, at which Perdue was conspicuous only by her absence. Yarko's opposition to socialized medicine couldn't be clearer:
It's hard for me to speak definitively of Kirk Perdue's stances on any of these issues, given her campaign's apparent reticence to get back to me on them. I wish to do justice to her positions. To my knowledge, Perdue also opposes the Democrats' health-care legislation and the stimulus packages. I also understand that she supports the petition for a Balanced Budget Amendment.
District 9 voters might also be interested to know that Perdue's only political contribution over the last five years is to the campaign of Ms. Loranne Ausley for state Chief Financial Officer. Ausley is a leftist Democrat, and is running for the position against conservative Republican Jeff Atwater, the popular Florida Senate President. Perdue's campaign would not respond to my query as to why she would donate some $250 to a welfare-statist Democrat. This certainly does not speak well to Perdue's credentials as a fiscal conservative.
What comes out of one's pocketbook speaks much louder than what comes out of one's mouth.
Ann Yarko is certainly not the ideal Republican candidate for this race. Few would contest the judgment of the Tallassee Democrat, that 26 year-old Yarko "needs some seasoning." But what she doesn't have in experience, she more than makes up for in passion, organizational skills, and (most importantly) a firm grasp of the worldview that makes conservatism and fiscal libertarianism possible.
For the popular protests against big government and welfare statism to make any sense, they must be rooted in a profoundly moral understanding of the universe and man's place within it. The libertarian argument is inherently ethical: it presupposes the inalienable dignity of the human person, from which follows the idea that his property is sacrosanct, and that the most legitimate government is that which is closest to those who will be affected by its policies. When we lose sight of conservatism's metaphysics, the Right's economic policies remain open to caricature as just so much selfishness. A woman whose moral compass is not firmly rooted in such ethical basics as the sanctity of all innocent human life (from conception until natural death) and the sanctity of the natural family (society's most basic political unit) may not be the best person to entrust the public welfare to, nor the public dime.
Florida District 9 voters deserve a real choice this November. They will only get that if Republican constituents put their heads on straight, and vote for conservative Ann Yarko.
© Eric Giunta
It may sound cliché, but this November's elections are among the most pivotal in America's history. As it stands, the nation is governed almost completely by dogmatic leftists who subscribe to the secular religion of philosophical materialism and functional atheism. On the federal level, the executive and legislative branches are dominated by a political party (the Democrats) whose leaders openly embrace the quality-of-life ethic of culture-of-death liberalism, while most of our nation's Supreme Court Justices are "living documentarians" who believe they are authorized to substitute their private moral intuitions for the Constitution's original public meaning.
And with Democrats controlling the executive branches of 26 of 50 states, things are not looking much brighter at the local level. The nation at all tiers is governed by welfare statists who have bankrupted the economy with entitlements that cannot possibly be paid for, and who still believe the silly superstition that the economy can be "stimulated" by spending money the nation doesn't have, or by printing more of it and inflating the currency.I've lived in Florida nearly all my life, and am presently studying in the state capital, Tallahassee. Two years ago, I volunteered my time to work on the Peter Boulware campaign for State House District 9. Running in an historically Democratic district, Mr. Boulware was the true anti-Obama: Republican, a successful African-American small-business owner, devoutly Christian, pro-life, and fiscally commonsensical (i.e., conservative). He lost the race to the Democrat, one Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, by just over half a percentage point.
Though the race was lost, its direction represented just how far the local GOP had come in bridging the gap between Republicans and the "Blue Dog" center-right Democratic grassroots. But rather than build on that progress and continue running articulate, principled conservative candidates, the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) has taken sides in the current primaries, funding the campaign of Ms. Kirk Headley-Perdue to the tune of about $30,000, thereby giving its de facto endorsement to her, and not to her opponent Ms. Ann Yarko.
The RPOF apparently hasn't learned the lessons of the Crist/Rubio Senate primary. Rather than staying neutral in a battle between two of its own, the establishment intelligentsia has chosen its side — and most disturbingly, it seems to be one that does not serve the commonsense conservative interests of the Republican Party, or the District's constituents.
I have contacts in the Perdue campaign, but they declined to go on the official record for this article. This reticence confirmed my resolution to make public my personal endorsement of Ann Yarko for State House District 9. I am a registered independent, but as an active member, and then President, of the local chapter of the nation's premier fellowship of conservative and libertarian law students, over the last two years I have taken a keen interest in local conservative politics. I have been active in the local tea party movement, where from the get-go I met with Yarko's grassroots activism. She and I have become well-acquainted since then, and I can testify to her abilities as an effective mobilizer and her principled, no-nonsense stance on the issues most important to Republican voters. She was one of the principle orchestrators of one of Tallahassee's anti-Obamacare rallies and the American Liberty Alliance Bus Tour Stop for Tallahassee, and her face is a staple at any major conservative function in the city.
Her opponent in the race, Kirk Perdue, is not without her talents and her community involvement, but I can think of no contribution she has ever made toward advancing conservatism in the district. Her many years of social work are commendable, but going through her political platform, and her political history, one wonders what there is to substantially distinguish her from the likes of Ms Vasilinda, or for that matter RINO-turned-"Independent" Charlie Crist.
The first red flag should have been Kirk's recent endorsement by the local leftist rag, The Tallahassee Democrat (not named for the political party, though it might as well be). It's a safe bet the Democrat doesn't exactly have the best interests of the Republican agenda in mind, and one wonders whether its promotion is something a conservative candidate would really want to tout.
Perdue's campaign website presents her as a "non-traditional candidate with traditional values," but one is hard-pressed to find any concrete policy proposals anywhere on her site: the "issues" section is a litany of empty platitudes, and the closest thing we get to a policy prescription is a declaration that she "oppose[s] raising taxes."
To be fair, Yarko's website isn't much better, but better it is: Yarko not only opposes raising taxes, but she pledges to fight to lower taxes, not simply keep existing ones from increasing: "Leon and Jefferson County residents shouldn't have to pay the same rates as those in coastal areas." She also pledges to fight against any kind of Obamacare-like scheme in the state, and to champion tort reform in the pursuit of lower healthcare costs.
Quite frankly, both these websites are pitiful; neither gives voters much to work with when forming an opinion on either candidate. It reminds one of the popularity contests that pass for "elections" in high school and undergraduate student councils. One hopes more substance will be forthcoming when the winner campaigns in the general election.
One glaring omission from their sites is any reference whatsoever to the hot-button social issues that interest the Florida electorate. Nothing whatsoever on abortion, homosexual "marriage," euthanasia, embryo-destructive research, or human cloning.
And for good reason, as far as Perdue is concerned. For while her campaign has maintained a prudent public silence on the matter, when questioned they will concede that Perdue is "pro-choice" on all these questions, which is to say she supports the legality of both infanticide and the mockery of marriage that an overwhelming majority of Floridians rejected at the polls during the '08 election (this in a state and district that gave its electoral votes to the far-left Barack Obama and Joe Biden). Perdue's campaign was not clear on whether she also endorses tax-payer funding for these offenses against the sanctity of life and marriage. When asked on a local radio show whether she supported homosexual adoptions, she wouldn't answer the question.
On all of the conservative hot-buttons, the Ann Yarko difference couldn't be starker. I interviewed Yarko, and asked her for her candid position statements on these issues. She's a proud Catholic Christian, and staunchly opposes abortion for any reason other than to save the life of the mother. She also supports wholeheartedly the consensus of her would-be constituents that marriage is, and ought to remain, between a man and a woman. On stem cell research, she shared with me her struggles on the matter: she has a relative with Alzheimer's, but is increasingly impressed with the developments that have occurred with adult cell therapy, and less and less enthusiastic about stem cell research that takes the lives of excess embryos. She definitely does not support the cloning of human embryos, and opposes taxpayer funding for such controversial and divisive endeavors.
Ms. Yarko might not be the poster-child for Florida Right to Life, but she's a lot closer to her district's Republican base (and probably the Floridian mainstream) than is her establishment-supported opponent.
Yarko's position on the economic issues is so well-known to even her detractors, that they almost don't bear repeating. She's been a visible presence at every Tea Party rally over the last year and a half, at which Perdue was conspicuous only by her absence. Yarko's opposition to socialized medicine couldn't be clearer:
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There aren't enough words to tell you how wrong Obamacare is, how dreadful it will be for our nation, our doctors' ability to provide care, for health care costs and quality. It is the piece of legislation that has put us on a collision course with socialism and bankruptcy all done at the hands of special interests and dependency theology. It is a main priority of mine to do all I can to stop the negative ramifications of this bill. I have publicly appealed to voters to support Amendment 9 [Florida Health Care Freedom] and will work tirelessly to make sure that we have good free market solutions to health care.
It's hard for me to speak definitively of Kirk Perdue's stances on any of these issues, given her campaign's apparent reticence to get back to me on them. I wish to do justice to her positions. To my knowledge, Perdue also opposes the Democrats' health-care legislation and the stimulus packages. I also understand that she supports the petition for a Balanced Budget Amendment.
District 9 voters might also be interested to know that Perdue's only political contribution over the last five years is to the campaign of Ms. Loranne Ausley for state Chief Financial Officer. Ausley is a leftist Democrat, and is running for the position against conservative Republican Jeff Atwater, the popular Florida Senate President. Perdue's campaign would not respond to my query as to why she would donate some $250 to a welfare-statist Democrat. This certainly does not speak well to Perdue's credentials as a fiscal conservative.
What comes out of one's pocketbook speaks much louder than what comes out of one's mouth.
Ann Yarko is certainly not the ideal Republican candidate for this race. Few would contest the judgment of the Tallassee Democrat, that 26 year-old Yarko "needs some seasoning." But what she doesn't have in experience, she more than makes up for in passion, organizational skills, and (most importantly) a firm grasp of the worldview that makes conservatism and fiscal libertarianism possible.
For the popular protests against big government and welfare statism to make any sense, they must be rooted in a profoundly moral understanding of the universe and man's place within it. The libertarian argument is inherently ethical: it presupposes the inalienable dignity of the human person, from which follows the idea that his property is sacrosanct, and that the most legitimate government is that which is closest to those who will be affected by its policies. When we lose sight of conservatism's metaphysics, the Right's economic policies remain open to caricature as just so much selfishness. A woman whose moral compass is not firmly rooted in such ethical basics as the sanctity of all innocent human life (from conception until natural death) and the sanctity of the natural family (society's most basic political unit) may not be the best person to entrust the public welfare to, nor the public dime.
Florida District 9 voters deserve a real choice this November. They will only get that if Republican constituents put their heads on straight, and vote for conservative Ann Yarko.
© Eric Giunta
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