This one is iffy, but if Republicans nominate an astute, well-known candidate, I’d give our side about a 50/50 chance.
I guess the headline was written for the folks in Port St. Lucie.
I remember seeing his campaign signs all over when I was a child in St Pete. I am now 57 years old. He has held elective office for over 50 years. Not what the founders had in mind.
The St. Petersburg Times/Pravda, err, Tampa Bay Times jumps with glee!
I was really disappointed when redistricting put me in Young’s District instead of Bilirakis’s.
"Spend more time with his family"?! At your age you're using that phrase? That's a barely believable excuse for a 52 year old politician to make.
Two things, old man:
1. At 82, whatever family you have is damn near as elderly as you are. The opportunity for bonding with them was back in the 1960s. If you missed that because you instead served fifty years in Congress striving to have public parks and bridges named in your honor, well, that's what you chose to waste your life on. Let's hope you're not around to see what kind of creeps and fiends prowl 'Bill Young Park' after the sun goes down.
2. Nobody wants to go visit doddering old relatives. Best you can hope to get is maybe one last three-hour afternoon visit from whatever family is passing through and they'll all pile back into the minivan the moment you nod off in that old chair of yours with the shawl wrapped over the back. Grandkids see those shaky liver-spotted mummy mitts of yours reaching towards their little pink faces and they think 'EEEK!', wincing in dreadful anticipation of your yellowing teeth and quivering wrinkled lips drawing near to plant a kiss they're obligated to have inflicted upon them.
Too bad you didn't have the honesty to say "I'm retiring on the count of old-assedness. Thank you." and leave it at that.
Bill Young has been around so long he is now longer “young” except in name. I would think this will be a Democrat gain.