For Florida Senate District 20, we recommend Gerald Baldi

The Florida Senate District 20 race features longtime incumbent Jim Boyd and political newcomer Gerald Baldi.

Baldi, 70, is a former advertising executive who moved from real estate to financial services, and finally to banking. He helped organize Indivisible Manatee’s regular west Bradenton rallies and has been an active community organizer, particularly on national issues.

Baldi didn’t decide to run until mid-March, and he faces an uphill battle against a well-funded incumbent with very high name recognition in the community. This endorsement, however, is as much an indictment of Boyd as a plea for Baldi. Boyd has repeatedly voted to eliminate elements of home rule by supporting developer-driven preemption bills in Manatee County, including SB 180 and SB 399.

Manatee County residents have strongly opposed these statutes, which have left the current Manatee County Commission unable to reverse the previous board’s decision to gut our wetland protection policies. For Boyd, who clearly cares more about doing developers' bidding than serving his constituents, their pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

If you like the idea of developers deciding how Manatee County will be run, and more power being concentrated in Tallahassee, Boyd is your man. If you think overdevelopment has negatively impacted traffic, infrastructure, water quality, sprawl, and other quality-of-life issues, and you want it to stop, you have an alternative.