Cam Fentriss, FRSA LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL
It’s campaign season again. It happens every two years. Every four years, we also get to pick a president and that always increases voter interest and turnout.
FRSA is active in Florida’s House and Senate campaigns and our focus is on what will be best for our roofing industry. That sounds easy enough – just support all the Republicans running for office, right? Wrong. When we examine the track record over the last few election cycles, we can see our job is more complicated than that.
We have two major priorities: a fair and strong workers’ compensation system and stopping unlicensed activity. We need legislators in office who will respect and acknowledge these priorities and help us with related issues.
Instead, over the last four to six years, we seem to have a supermajority in charge of the Florida House (to a lesser degree in the Florida Senate, but that may change) that does not seem to take the concerns of the construction industry very seriously. We need to change that – here is a start:
Strategy One: We can make it a priority to get to know the people running for these state offices so we will know who is or is not most likely to keep the roofing industry viable and healthy.
Strategy Two: We can support those who are most likely to support us on our issues.
To succeed with these strategies, we need to be active on both the local and state levels. On the state level, we have our FRSA PAC and we participate in candidate interviews. On the local level, we need people to get involved or, if you are already involved, we need you to let us know about it. Let me provide you with a little more detail about how this works.
The FRSA PAC is funded primarily by your contributions. At the time of annual renewal of your FRSA membership, you pay $40 to the FRSA PAC unless you opt out of this. Most of our members do not opt out, but for any of you who do, I hope you will reconsider next time. The FRSA PAC works to help you and your business. It is not a frilly political slush fund that supports a bunch of empty suits. With the FRSA PAC funds, we make decisions on which candidates to support based on the person’s track record, answers to interview questions, and any other information available.
We participate in organized state level candidate interviews through the AIF Political Council (Associated Industries of Florida). This is a business organization that organizes the Workers’ Compensation Coalition and has vast expertise in business issues, especially workers’ comp, as well as tremendous elections analysis talent. Through the interview process, we can explore the knowledge of a candidate and we can also provide that candidate with additional information. This is often much more valuable than meeting the winners after the elections.
Local candidate interviews or meet-and-greets are just as important as state level candidate interviews. This can be a great project for your Affiliate or for a small group of your local members. Whether as a group or individually, this is an important opportunity to meet people who may be representing your interests in Tallahassee for two to four years. Often, they do much more than just sit in Florida’s capital and vote on bills. Getting to know these people can be very helpful to you and your business.
If you are already involved or are interested in being involved with meeting and evaluating your local candidates, we welcome your participation and we want to hear from you. We would love to know what you are doing, and we would also like to have your input on what candidates you think will do good things for the roofing industry.
Being politically active is important to you and for your business. Having a professional association to help pull it all together for the roofing industry is crucial. Please take some time to be active and be part of what FRSA does for your benefit.
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