Poll: 97% Want Sansom Held Accountable

ST. PETERSBURG – Progress Florida today launched www.SackSansom.com in response to overwhelming response from an online poll asking if newly elected State House Speaker Ray Sansom (R-Destin) should be held accountable for his “cash and carry” style of “leadership.”

On the same day Sansom was named the new Speaker of the House it was announced he had landed a six-figure salary job at Northwest Florida State College (formerly Okaloosa-Walton Community College). Further reporting revealed that earlier this year, in the midst of a state budget crisis, Sansom quietly steered $25 million to the college even though officials had only requested $1 million.

The poll, launched on December 4th by Progress Florida, with 1,882 Floridians having voted over the course of a week, finds that 97% of respondents believe Sansom should either resign (51%), quit his college job (23%) or be censured by his colleagues in the House (23%).

“Floridians are tired of hypocrisy and abuse of power in our political system and they want accountability. That’s why we launched SackSansom.com,” said Mark Ferrulo, executive director of Progress Florida.

In the short time since the Sansom scandal broke a litany of new revelations has have come to light:

- Sansom used state resources and staff to fax his job application for the post at Northwest Florida State College that will pay him $110,000-per-year – $25,000 more than his predecessor in the same job. His communications director has since acknowledged this was “not appropriate.”

- The job was unadvertised, no other candidates were considered for the position and Sansom’s application wasn’t included in a public notice for the meeting of the college’s board of trustees before they decided to hire him.

- Sansom recently earmarked millions in “education funds” to build a jet hangar for a major donor to his campaign with a financial stake in the project.

Progress Florida is a non-profit, statewide organization supporting progressive solutions for Florida. Visit us at www.ProgressFlorida.org.

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Note: some of the information contained in this release was compiled from reporting by the St. Petersburg Times and Palm Beach Post.