a<\/em><\/strong> dedicated public defender, taking on a large active caseload along with significant management responsibilities. She has an idealistic view of the law and an ability to get along with everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBlair has run a great, extended campaign. It pulls together a diverse political and social coalition of folks who understand that a Public Defender is the \u201cquality control,\u201d as Blair likes to say, for the power of prosecution. Blair advocates ceaselessly for the importance of that function and the office itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How important is the Public Defender? Well, Leo Schofield says that his greatest mistake as a wrongly-convicted murder defendant was following an inmate\u2019s advice and firing his public defender in favor of an expensive, prominent, has-been lawyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blair is eager to brand the office in a way that prevents such a tragic mistake in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ranks of the serious Republicans need reinforcement<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThere are a small handful of public and\/or institutional leaders in Polk County who actually care about doing their jobs more than having their jobs \u2014 who do not, in one way or another, grift the public they serve. They know who they are. And they keep the wheels of this county turning and the lights on, as the cliche goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The grifting clowns \u2014 the Ben Sasses and Richard Corcorans and J.C. Martins and Ed Showmakers and Seth McKeels and Pedicinis \u2014 who dominate GOP leadership would call all these people \u201clibs,\u201d whatever their party, precisely because they care<\/em><\/strong> about their jobs as a public good, rather than a self-congratulatory grift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cLib\u201d is just another word for \u201cserious\u201d in the modern political vocabulary, even for a GOPer. In my view, my fellow Republican Blair Allen would instantly belong to that class of serious leaders. That\u2019s a vanishingly rare quality in a Polk County leader\/candidate. We need more of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Blair is the *only* candidate running for *anything* this cycle who seems to care more about doing the job she seeks than having it. She is more serious than anybody… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"15","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":48871,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/unnamed-3-jpg.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[27,15],"tags":[9451],"class_list":["post-48870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-op-ed-and-opinion","category-politics","tag-blair-allen-for-public-defender-is-the-best-candidate-running-for-anything-in-polk-county-and-its-not-close"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48872,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48870\/revisions\/48872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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