Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite has represented The Villages as part of Florida's 5th Distruct since 2002. She won her seat in the House with a narrow win in 2002. She is a resident of Brooksville in Hernando County, recently widowed when her husband, a former NY state trooper died of cancer. She was a former Florida State Senator and is the owner of a Mr. Donut franchise. Brown-Waite sits on the House Financial Services Committee with subcommittees in Capital Markets and the subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, some of the House committees most involved with the financial industry.

Mrs. Brown-Waite missed 10% of the possible votes during her tenure in the House. She is rated as one of the most conservative members of the House, voting with the Republican majority 90% of the time. Recently, she aligned herself with the sub-group of Republican conservatives and voted against the "financial bailout bill" both initially as well as in its final, revised version. Most of Brown-Waite's campaign funding comes from the insurance, real estate and banking industries.

Brown-Waite's Democratic opponent in the 2008 General Election is John Russell. Russell is originally from Buffalo, New York is 52 years old and has been a resident of Dade City, Florida since 1995. He is married to Chyrisse, an environmental scientist and college instructor. Russell is a 2001 graduate of the University of South Florida with a Masters in Nursing and is a Nationally Certified Acute Care Nurse Practitioner. John also has his MBA in Health Systems Management from Niagara University and the State University of New York at Buffalo. Russell has never held elected office.

Brown-Waite has raised $523,812 of which 52 percent was from political action committees representing banking, insurance and real estate firms, and 47 percent from individuals.

Russell, stymied like several Democratic Congressional candidates in Florida by little or no money from the state party and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has raised $14,751, which includes $10,000 of his own money.

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Which of these candidates appears to be distinguished and qualified enough to justify our support? Or should we just "start over" and elect a new representative for the 5th District?

I'll probably choose to "clean house", particulalrly after learning that Brown-Waite was a member of several key House committees involved with the financial industry and has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from industries within the domain of those committees.

I'm in favor of new blood everywhere in DC - Ginny included. I've received pounds of junk mail from here, yet just try to contact her via e-mail (it doesn't work!) or by telephone (no operator and the voice mail box is full) and no dice. If she can't receive input from us - what good is she? I say replace her.......

I guess I might have been removed from her list when I wrote a couple of critical letters about her performance during the tornado here a year or so ago. (She got here well after later than FEMA, but in plenty of time for the photo ops when some big press conferences were held a few days after the storm.)

But if I add an inability to communicate with her to the hundreds of thousands of dollars being put in her pockets, I'm on the "sweep her out with the trash" bandwagon with you. Of one thing I'm quite sure, the banks, insurance companies and real estate firms who are her major contributors don't give more than a half million dollars to a donut shop operator because she's a nice little old lady.

Thanks for the information. Now I know who to vote for to replace her.