Former Florida Senate Minority leader Nan Rich (D-Weston) made a campaign stop in Naples on Saturday. Rich, who was term limited out of the Senate last fall, addressed a crowd of more than 60 people at a meeting of the Democratic Women’s’ Club of Collier County.
Her address focused on criticism of Governor Rick Scott’s administration and her primary platform issues of election reform, education, and healthcare. Rich said current proposals in the House to expand healthcare coverage for the poor would be “traumatic” for the state.
“You’re talking about one million people that would be insured and the House plan is talking about 115,000 people and not using a single dollar of the money that is our taxpayer dollars that should come back to this state for use in healthcare of the people in the state of Florida,” said Rich.
“If we do not do this, the hospitals will be devastated. Particularly your teaching hospitals and children’s hospitals who rely and have such a heavy component of Medicaid patients and they will have no money because the subsidies go away and the Medicaid expansion money is supposed to take its place.”
Rich advocates for increased funding for education and reforms in how classroom teachers are evaluated. “They (teachers) don’t want to be evaluated on kids that they don’t even have in their classrooms,” said Rich. “That’s what the bone of contention is right now in the legislature. The legislature passed and the governor signed a terrible piece of legislation that actually rates teachers for kids that never were even in their classrooms.”
She’s critical of the Parent Empowerment in Education bill known as the Parent Trigger bill currently moving through the legislature. That proposal could allow failing public schools to be turned over to a private charter company. She even criticizes Gov. Scott’s call for a $2,500 across the board pay raise for teachers. “That raise does not even come close to making up for what has been lost by teachers who have not had increases and who have actually had decreases because of the amount they have to pay into their pension, the increase to healthcare,” said Rich. “We’re still below where we were in 2005 in funding of public education and teachers. So teachers are not being fooled by this.”
Rich also calls for a return to 14 days of early voting and characterizes the 2011 law that reduced early voting days as a move to suppress the democratic vote.
Rich, who’s been on the campaign trail for the past several months, is the most recognized democratic candidate officially in the 2014 race for governor. There is speculation that former governor Charlie Crist and former Florida CFO Alex Sink could enter the race, although neither Crist nor Sink has announced plans to run.
