Weekly Roundup: A stormy week in Florida

By BRANDON LARRABEE
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, September 2, 2016.......... It wasn't quite a week of firsts in Florida, but it was a week of "the first time since."
 
For the first time since 2005, a hurricane made landfall in the state --- ending a decade of calm for a peninsula that juts out into one of the most active tropical storm areas in the world.
 
And for the first time since it was created in 1992, someone with a name other than "Corrine Brown" won the state's 5th Congressional District, as former state Sen. Al Lawson toppled one of Florida's longest-serving incumbents.
 
There was a first that seemed inevitable, as the state confirmed the first cases of mosquitoes testing positive for the Zika virus. With the disease already being transmitted locally, it had seemed like just a matter of time until that happened --- just like another hurricane in Florida or the end of Brown's time in Congress.
 
But like those inevitabilities, no one knew exactly when it would happen until this week rolled around.
 
THE STORM AFTER THE CALM
 
Debates over issues like property-insurance reform had taken on a predictable cast at the Legislature over the last several years: warnings that a hurricane had not hit the state in quite some time but that the Sunshine State would experience a large tropical storm soon.
 
Those predictions came true Friday morning, as Hurricane Hermine --- not to be confused with a similarly named character from the Harry Potter books --- made landfall near St. Marks around 1:30 a.m.
 
By late morning Friday, officials were reporting one storm-related fatality, a homeless man in Marion County who was hit by a tree. But more than a quarter of a million people across North and Central Florida had lost power, and downed trees and other hazards made travel difficult.
 
"Some of the state's hardest-hit areas were along the coast as you would expect," Gov. Rick Scott said during a media briefing Friday morning at the state Emergency Operations Center.
 
"There is a lot of work left to do following the storm," he said. "We'll spend the coming days assessing the damage and responding to the needs of our communities and Florida families."
 
State offices were closed in 37 counties, and schools were shuttered in 35.
 
It was Scott's first hurricane as governor, though he had gotten some practice going through the paces with near-misses and tropical storms. It was also the first hurricane for hundreds of thousands of Floridians who moved to the state over the last decade.
 
There was a least one more way in which the storm was distinct from the past, as noted by the Miami Herald's Patricia Mazzei on Twitter: "Florida's first live-tweeted hurricane." The platform launched in 2006.
 
BROWNOUT
 
In the marquee race of Tuesday's primary elections, there was no real surprise. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio was re-nominated by the Republican Party, fending off developer Carlos Beruff and a couple of other candidates in a landslide.
 
Rubio's Democratic opponent will be Congressman Patrick Murphy, whose race turned into a rout after his most prominent rival, Congressman Alan Grayson, faced allegations of domestic abuse from an ex-wife. The allegations, which Grayson denies, became public in the closing weeks of the campaign.
 
But that didn't mean that Tuesday passed without any major changes. For almost a quarter of a century, Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown and her winding district were lightning rods for controversy.
 
In 1992, three congressional districts were created to give African-American voters a chance to elect candidates of their choice to settle a voting-rights dispute. One of those was the 5th Congressional District, which wound its way from Jacksonville in the north to Orlando in the south.
 
A voter-approved ban on political gerrymandering changed all that. Brown was forced to run this year in a district that ran from Jacksonville in the east to Gadsden County in the west, cutting through Tallahassee along the way. That brought her a primary challenge from Lawson, whose power base was in the Tallahassee area.
 
"I'm not going to Washington looking for a job," said Lawson, who won 47.7 percent of the vote to Brown's roughly 39 percent. "I'm going to Washington to make a difference."
 
Another congressional incumbent facing a stiff challenge, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, hung onto her seat against outsider Tim Canova.
 
It wouldn't be election night in Florida without at least some controversy, though, this time in the form of a slip-up that saw Broward County post some voting numbers online nearly half an hour before polls closed at 7 p.m. Under Florida law, releasing election results before the polls close is a third-degree felony.
 
Secretary of State Ken Detzner said Tuesday evening he had referred the matter to the Broward County state attorney and sheriff. Asked if the Broward elections office could be fined, Detzner said, "It's a little more serious that that."
 
The Broward office blamed the snafu on a vendor, and Detzner said the elections otherwise seemed to go off without a hitch.
 
THE OLD CRISIS
 
All the attention to Hermine almost distracted from the issue that had consumed Florida officials for much of the last few weeks: the continuing threat of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, now confirmed to be borne by Florida mosquitoes.
 
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam and Scott's office announced that the disease had been detected in three mosquito samples, but stressed that all of them where in a small portion of Miami-Dade County where the virus was already being locally transmitted.
 
Still, the governor said the state would step up its efforts to swat the virus, and Republican Congressman Vern Buchanan called for a quick vote on funding to fight the disease.
 
But while Scott tried to project calm, Buchanan took up a different note.
 
"Congress must put aside partisan differences and come together immediately to protect the public," Buchanan wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. "The situation in Florida worsens each week, and now looming rainfall from tropical storms threaten to create a fertile breeding ground for the mosquitoes that carry the virus."
 
That highlighted the coming together of Florida's twin problems right now: Scott urged residents to get rid of standing water as quickly as possible once Hermine had passed. After an eventful week, the last thing the state needed was a feedback loop.
 
STORY OF THE WEEK: Hurricane Hermine became the first hurricane to hit Florida in a decade, killing at least one person and plunging tens of thousands into darkness.
 
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "This is life-threatening. We have a hurricane. You can rebuild a home. You can rebuild property. You cannot rebuild a life." --- Gov. Rick Scott, urging Florida residents to be cautious Thursday as Hermine approached.