Tales from the Mark Side: The Conservative Voice in Manatee County

Manatee BOCC must put personalities aside for a better 2022

By Mark Young

Personality politics don’t work.

It doesn’t work when voters choose personality over policy and it doesn’t work when those elected choose personality battles over policy battles.

Policy politics is what moves Manatee County forward and that journey to success should be dignified and professional.

This rings especially true for what has been largely a Republican controlled Manatee County Board of Commissioners that has suffered its fair share of in-fighting over the years. A lot of that in-fighting didn’t have a lot to do with policy making.

The recent marathon fight just to select a new chair for the BOCC and what appears to be subsequent personality paybacks leads me to believe that things won’t be much different on the county dais as they have been for a very long time stretching back a decade to the media-dubbed “mean girls” era.

I admit that’s a bit of an assumption on my part, but therein lies the problem. Even if it’s an appearance of personalities overshadowing policies, constituents are left to make those assumptions.

You have to ask yourself whose fault that really is, and hint: it’s not ours.

Don’t get me wrong, politicians should have strong personalities, but those powers should be used to spread a policy driven message and nothing else.

Americans are tired of the nonsense at the national level and I’m here to tell you that we are tired of it at the local level, as well. Such personality conflicts do not well serve the citizens of Manatee County, or in particular, the Republican Party.

Republicans can disagree on the necessary evils and mundane tasks of budget proposals and changing various codes, but we don’t compromise our values. We leave that to the liberals.

Local Republicans must unite around those values and move them forward into policy. There is no place for vindictive politics with a dose of personal grudge in the Republican Party.

This isn’t an overall criticism of this board. For the most part, they have come to decisions that have made this county a better place to live despite its continued infrastructure overload and traffic woes.

There has also been too much turning the other way as individual residents have had to suffer for the benefit of the so-called masses with a total lack of transparency and accountability.

That must change in the coming year. Republicans, now more than ever, must stand tall and represent the Conservative values that define us. That means with one another, too.

In the case of representative politics where you are the face of the voters, sometimes the journey to success is equally as important as the destination itself.

For those in office, up for reelection and for those who seek their seats, we are watching you closer than ever before. These times ahead of us are too important not to.

So, to accomplish these things that will ease the infrastructure overload, it will require cooperation from our majority, and cooperation requires elected officials to put their egos aside for the betterment of our citizens.

As I’ve said before, if you are honored with the majority of the vote, you are not a public figure. You are a public servant.

You work for us, plain and simple. You are an employee and we the citizens are the real CEO’s of Manatee County.

When your personality sends a stronger message than your policy, you have a problem and we are watching.

I see factions starting to form once again on the BOCC. Republicans should never be in this situation.

And you don’t have a whole lot of time with the primary season around the corner. 2022 is an important year for the Republican Party, our community and our Republic.

Decide now whether you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem. Or we, the voters, will decide for you.