Thompson challenges Demings, Webster for U.S. House seat

For District 12 State Sen. Geraldine Thompson, who represents much of West Orange County as part of her district, her decision to run for the seat of Florida’s 10th District in the U.S. House of Representatives was based in large part on the shifting maps of Florida districts.

“I decided in July when I realized that the Senate maps were going to be redrawn,” she said. “All 40 of the senators would have different districts, perhaps, than what we currently have, and this would be the third (cycle) in a row that I would have to run.”

When Thompson saw her whole Florida Senate district was within the newly drawn U.S. House District 10, she thought one way or the other she would have to run and chose to run for Congress, she said.

Thompson’s main challenge in the Democratic primary should be former Orlando Police Chief Val Demings, who ran against Republican incumbent Daniel Webster in 2012 and lost by just 3.58%. Although no primary challenger for Webster has yet emerged, political newcomers Angel Vega and Fatima Fahmy also have emerged to vie for the Democratic nomination.

If elected, the first issue Thompson said she would address would be criminal justice reform, particularly related to nonviolent offenders.

“We need to untie the hands of our judiciary and give them more discretion in terms of sentencing, and President Obama has already begun the effort to reform the criminal justice system,” Thompson said. “We have many people who are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, and it costs the state and the federal government a great deal of money to keep these individuals incarcerated.”

Thompson said she would want to help reshape programs that help nonviolent offenders reenter society, as well as the costs of tertiary education.

“As a former educator, I know that a lot of our students who go to colleges come out crippled with just tremendous debt, and I want to see community college be free,” she said. “From there, people can go on to the last two years, and they would not come out with the kind of debt they have now.”

Regulating loans and organizations dealing with student loans would be part of that agenda, she said.

With Lake Apopka in mind, Thompson wants to support farm workers past and present, who have picked crops treated with chemicals such as DDT and suffered awful illnesses as a result, she said.

“They have incidences in (Apopka) of lupus, and people are dying,” Thompson said. “They have chronic kidney ailments; a lot of them are on dialysis. I would want to work on the federal level with the Environmental Protection Agency to see what has the effect been of exposure to these pesticides, to try to get some help for these former farm workers. I’ve already asked the Florida Department of Health to take a look at it.”

Much money has gone toward pesticide research, with findings such as three-eyed alligators and slews of dead birds and fishes, but not much has been done for the people, she said.

Combined with her nearly 10 years of political experience at the Florida state level, these ideas set Thompson apart from competitors within a continuation of community service that began long before political office, she said.

She also feels she best reflects the district based on experience in socioeconomic classes of all kinds, from emerging from a low-income start to becoming a college graduate and relating to all her constituencies, she said.

“I think I have a cross-cultural kind of competency that allows me to connect with individuals and to find out what their concerns and needs are, and then to place myself in their positions, because I have lived that kind of life,” Thompson said. “That is my experience.”

Contact Zak Kerr at [email protected].