The story unfolding in Central Florida — where a state senator was caught working with a tourism lobbyist to try to undermine her own county — represents everything seedy about Florida politics.
You have Democratic Sen. Linda Stewart, a former Orange County commissioner, covertly teaming up with a lobbyist for the tourism industry to draft legislation to help that industry. Gross.
The legislation was designed to do one thing — ensure that tourism interests get to keep sucking up millions of tax dollars, even if most of the local elected officials in charge of those dollars object. That’s even grosser.
Then, to put an extra fetid cherry on top of this stink sundae, the tourism lobbyist with whom Stewart worked is also the lobbyist for Orange County, which pays his firm $72,000 a year. That’s like paying your own hitman to take you out.
The Orlando Sentinel exposed all this thanks to public records that revealed text messages between Stewart and Chris Carmody, a lobbyist…