CAMPAIGNING IS IN FULL SWING!

An Opinion By Jan Bergemann

Published August 11, 2026

Next week are Primary Elections in Florida – and the campaigns are in full swing. Our mail boxes are full of campaign flyers, the easements of our streets are flooded with campaign signs and half of the ads in TV are campaign ads, showing us clearly how much good money is being wasted on all these campaigns.

Let’s take a closer look at all these campaigns:

First there are the attack ads, some even anonymous by some wild-named PACs, others telling you in the end who actually “approved” this ad. Attack ads tell me that the candidate behind these ads doesn’t have any real plan for better solutions. These ads are nothing more than trying to tell us that the candidate these ads are aimed at is just a “horrible” person. It tells me that the candidate behind these ads has no real plan if elected to office.

If you see a TV ad for some county job, beware, this person has already been bought and paid for by some special interest. Small donations from local citizens can’t buy TV ads. Campaign money “rich” candidates for city or county commissioners are funded by developers who in exchange hope for the candidate, once elected, vote in favor of total over-development.

And then there are the candidates who promise all kinds of free “stuff”. Well, there is no free stuff. Anything given away for free has to come from somebody, most likely by higher taxes. But before these free gifts can be distributed, some more government workers have to be hired to oversee the distribution – even if they are being told to conveniently ignore fraud.

Make sure you look at the plans for improvements offered by candidates – if they really make sense. Don’t believe the candidates who are trying to tell you that they will lower the gas prices, lower the food cost and/or lower the property insurance premiums without telling you how they plan to do that. That are just empty campaign phrases telling you clearly that the candidate doesn’t have a real plan.

No matter what: Please go out and vote! That’s your civic duty! Idiotic candidates only win, because many citizens plainly don’t vote. If you don’t vote, you actually vote for the candidate you don’t want to see in office.

My grandfather always told me: “If you don’t vote you lose the right to bitch about politicians!”