No resident in Plant City has the excuse of showing up to the ballot box uninformed thanks to a new extension of the Plant City Candidate Forum created by the Greater Plant City Chamber of Commerce.
Two years ago, the chamber pulled off a new event that changed the way the community looked at elections. The inaugural Plant City Candidate Forum brought more than 50 candidates to the Trinkle Center to meet the public and discuss their stances and plans for office. Hundreds of attendees went to the event and had the opportunity to ask the candidates about issues close to their hearts during the meet-and-greet, listen to their future plans and then vote in a straw poll so candidates had an idea of where they stood in the community.
The event was set to occur again when the pandemic swept the nation. Rather than cancel altogether, the chamber pivoted, determined to safely allow residents to hear from their elected officials. It unveiled a series of videos, each featuring one candidate, that allow voters to cut through the stump speeches and get to the heart of the issues for each race.
“In some ways, with this candidate forum we had what we are calling a ‘COVID silver lining,’” Chamber President Christine Miller said. “Before, the only people that were able to hear the message from their candidates were those who were able to attend the event. This year, when we realized we couldn’t hold the forum in person, we were looking for a way to still help our voters be educated and have all the information they would need when they go to fill out their ballot. It was a lot of hard work, but we were able to pull it off and present something that honestly we are all very proud of.”
More than 60 candidates agreed to interview with the chamber and the videos are organized and broken down by race. Because we are currently in the primary, only the races that will be on the primary ballot are represented on the chamber’s website right now. The rest will be rolled out after the primary but before the November election.
Chamber staff, members of the Government Affairs Committee, board members and trustees all volunteered their time to make the videos and pull off the elaborate undertaking.
And no candidate was lobbed a softball.
Experts on each of the areas helped write a set list of questions for each candidate, which were compiled by Community Relations Manager Sophia Hyde. All the U.S. Representative candidates had the same questions and all of the Clerk of Circuit Court candidates had the same questions as the others in their individual race. Throughout the videos many of the candidates pause and compliment the thoroughness of the questions asked. The videos delve deep into the ins and outs of the offices the candidates hope to soon obtain.
“Education is the foundation of a lot of the programs that the chamber puts out,” Miller said. “For example, it’s behind our AG committee. The AG committee isn’t just about AG, it’s about educating our community on the impact and the effects of AG on our community and in our community. This is the same thing. The foundation is really about educating the residents of Plant City so they can be empowered and informed voters. I think that so many people have said, ‘Oh I’ve not voted’ or ‘I vote by name’ or something and I just cringe at the thought that somebody might have been elected because you picked one name over another rather than because of their stances. This was really a goal to just create informed voters in an easy format.”
Though the videos have just been rolled out, the positive response from the community has flooded in. It has already become such a hit with the public that Miller said they aim to continue with some video element in the future, though she added they will still hold in-person elements once it is safe to congregate as nothing replaces meet-and-greets where voters can ask the candidates about issues they hold dear to their hearts.
It’s an impressive feat and compiles a detailed analysis of each candidate’s stance, from their own mouths, that is not seen anywhere else in the community. Its information voters would more than likely not be able to track down on their own and speaks volumes for the growth the chamber has been able to accomplish in the last few years.
Miller will have been with the chamber for four years this month. When she started, there was no Government Affairs Committee in place. In that short time the organization has formed the committee, pulled off the inaugural Candidate Forum that drew massive crowds and compiled an in-depth virtual forum despite the ongoing pandemic.
“I really do feel that our team turned out a great project for our community and I’m really proud of it,” Miller said. “Sophia really was the one that took the lead on this, but our entire team spent so much time pulling this together. It adds so much value to our community and in my mind I can’t think of it as anything other than time well spent.”
The videos can be found at plantcity.org/candidate-forum or on the Greater Plant City Chamber of Commerce’s Facebook page.