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Friday, 09 March 2012 14:59

We’ve heard everything from “this is an outrage” to “it was the right thing to do” when it comes to the decision by the Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office not to pursue the battery complaint filed in February by Osceola County Commission district 3 candidate Tony Ferentinos against incumbent Brandon Arrington.
The State Attorney’s Office characterized the incident between the two candidates as a “shoving match” and said that the complaint was not worth pursuing in terms of the financial and social costs to the residents of Osceola County. We’d pretty much agree with that conclusion.
If you remember, Ferentinos alleged that Arrington shoved him at the commissioner’s district 3 community update Feb. 9 at the Kissimmee Oaks Golf Club.
We don’t know what happened at the event, since we did not attend and we couldn’t find anyone who observed the supposed shoving – even when we contacted people Ferentinos told us had witnessed the incident. Those people either had not seen the incident or were unwilling to comment. In addition, we saw nothing conclusive in terms of the investigative reports and witness statements.
If Ferentinos wants to take the issue of State Attorney Lawson Lamar declining prosecution to the governor or the FBI – as he said he is doing – then that is his right but we believe that would be a waste of resources. We’d prefer these agencies spend time investigating real crime and real corruption, not an incident between two county commission candidates where the alleged victim wasn’t injured.
A sideline issue with this whole thing is that various candidates – both Democratic and Republican, with the exception of Arrington – were distributing campaign literature at the event (both inside and outside the building), which is one of the reasons Ferentinos said that Arrington was angry. Witnesses on Sheriff’s Office reports stated that Ferentinos was passing out fliers inside the building.
From our point of view, candidates distributing fliers at an official county meeting either before or after was not cool. Would these same candidates go to an Osceola County Commission meeting at the county administration building and distribute their fliers? We don’t think so. Some candidates wrongly thought this community update was a forum for a political debate or posturing.
Going forward, we urge all candidates to keep the political discourse civil, to concentrate on issues, to keep political fliers away from official community meetings and to think more about how they are conducting their campaigns.