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Rebecca Smith, Jackie Toledo meet in House District 60 GOP primary

 
Rebecca Smith, left, and Jackie Toledo, right, are the two GOP primary candidates for Florida House District 60. Smith owns a construction company, and Toledo is a civil engineer.
Rebecca Smith, left, and Jackie Toledo, right, are the two GOP primary candidates for Florida House District 60. Smith owns a construction company, and Toledo is a civil engineer.
Published Aug. 15, 2016

TAMPA — In the race to replace outgoing House Majority Leader Dana Young, Republicans in state House District 60 will choose between a construction company owner and a civil engineer who have not held public office before.

So there's some overlap in the backgrounds of Rebecca Smith and Jackie Toledo, who are vying to represent an area that includes the South Tampa peninsula, plus coastal areas like Dana Shores, Davis Islands, Apollo Beach and the western part of Ruskin.

There are also differences in the ways they talk about the job.

A first-time candidate, Smith, 56, founded and owns the A.D. Morgan Corp. construction company and has served on a variety of local and state boards, including the city of Tampa's Variance Review Board and the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority, both of which she chaired.

"I know I can make a difference," said Smith, who said she has guided her company through three economic downturns. The firm builds projects such as university buildings, community parking garages, schools, libraries and courthouses. It has seen annual revenues as high as $75 million, though they're currently about half that.

Serving in the Legislature would be "moving to the next level, saying 'What else can I do?' " Smith said. "I've been able to live my dream. How much more can I do to make sure I provide opportunity to the people around me?"

In the nearly 28 years that she has owned her company, Smith said she has focused first on providing for what she describes as an extended work family, with a staff of 30 that includes second-generation employees, while gradually becoming more politically focused and engaged.

The evolution in her political thinking, she said, began with a global perspective and led to something closer to home. Starting in 1999, she participated in a U.S. Department of Defense program, the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference, that got her thinking about what's going on in the world both militarily and politically. Over time, Smith said she came to have "very low confidence in our geopolitical standing under our current president."

On a parallel track, she also found herself feeling that political leaders were not listening or paying attention to small business owners like her. Smith said this sense of being "very frustrated and disenfranchised," combined with business and community service success and encouragement from local leaders, led her to consider and embrace the opportunity to run when Young decided to leave the House seat and run for the Senate.

What she would bring to the job, Smith said, is a "commonsense approach," a desire to make sure Florida K-12 students graduate with the ambition to become part of a thriving community, a goal to make sure Florida has "managed growth" that balances new development with the resources to support it and an emphasis on safety, security and the needs of first responders.

She also talks about reining in rule-making that is unnecessarily complex and sometimes just unnecessary.

"My ambition and intent and focus in going to Tallahassee is to do the same thing that I've done in my business, same thing I've done on boards," she said. "You don't need to make it complicated to make it impactful."

In contrast, Toledo describes a similar desire to serve — "I've always been involved in my community," she says — and lists specific initiatives or bills she wants to see passed.

Toledo, 40, has worked on transportation projects as an engineer and runs a performing arts program for children. She has served on the Mayor's Hispanic Advisory Council and last year ran for the Tampa City Council, losing in a hard-fought runoff to Guido Maniscalco.

To create jobs, Toledo said she would support repealing the 6 percent sales tax on commercial leases. Florida is the only state in the country that charges the tax, and its repeal is an unfinished item on Gov. Rick Scott's to-do list.

She also talks about using technology to eliminate repetitious business permitting requirements from one community to the next in an attempt to ease the burden on small businesses that operate in more than one county.

On education, she wants to repeal the national Common Core educational standards.

"I believe that Common Core has created a system where teachers are not really in control of the classroom," said Toledo, who has five children, aged 5 through 17, in both public and private schools. "Teachers are just having testing as their only measure of their performance. I think that over-testing a child is not really teaching them."

On transportation, her other priority, Toledo emphasizes safety. In the past year, she cofounded a nonprofit, Walk Bike Tampa, that has gotten the Tampa City Council, Hillsborough County Commission and Hillsborough School Board interested in a safety philosophy known as Vision Zero. Vision Zero is a road safety project that began in Sweden and has been adopted by New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and other U.S. cities. Its goal is to make preventing all traffic fatalities the organizing principle when it comes to transportation planning.

The same safety-first approach could be taken at a statewide level, she said.

"My background and my profession would be a great asset at the state level," Toledo said. "I think an engineer is needed. We are problem-solvers."

Early voting in the race started Monday. The winner of the Aug. 30 primary will face Democrat David Singer, an attorney, in the Nov. 8 general election.

Contact Richard Danielson at rdanielson@tampabay.com. Follow @Danielson_Times