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Highlands Today

Busy Senator Makes Town Hall Meeting In Sebring

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By Gary Pinnell | Highlands Today

Published: May 31, 2008

SEBRING — Bill Nelson lives in Tallahassee, but he started Friday morning in Fort Myers. A northeasterly drive in his dark gray Nissan Pathfinder took him to town hall meetings in LaBelle, Moore Haven, then Sebring.

He had to be back in Washington at 9 a.m. Saturday to argue the case for seating the Florida delegation at the Democratic National Convention, so Florida's U.S. senator had to arrive at the Orlando airport by 8 p.m. Friday to catch a flight to Washington. But U.S. Airways canceled the red-eye, so his aides made hasty phone calls to people he expected to meet at 3:30 p.m. in Sebring City Hall. Could they be there 30 minutes early?

Nelson needed to fly from Sebring in a private plane so he could make the 6:15 flight in Orlando.

Even so, the chamber was crowded with more than 60 people. And they pounded Nelson with questions about illegal immigrants, border security, the cost of medicine and health insurance, the price of gasoline, and whether China beat the U.S. to the punch by securing oil drilling rights on the north bank of Cuba.

It's the same in every meeting, Nelson pointed out.

Florida's senior senator never confirmed the Cuba-China drilling venture. But newspaper stories on the Internet substantiate that in 1977, the U.S. and Cuba signed a treaty that evenly dividing the 90-mile wide Florida Strait to preserve each country's economic rights. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated the energy field on Cuba's 45-mile-wide side has 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That's about two months worth of American energy consumption.

Nelson made it clear he's not for drilling in the straight, because that's where the major current of the Gulf Stream flows, then circulates around Florida's west coast, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and northeast Mexico before re-entering the Atlantic Ocean. An oil spill in those waters could mean a major ecological disaster.

"It's a huge threat to the Gulf Stream," he emphasized to the audience.

Dressed in khaki slacks and a blue shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow, Nelson said America has been ignoring the energy crisis. In 1973, OPEC announced they wouldn't ship oil to nations that supported Israel. Gas prices doubled, from 25 cents to 50 cents a gallon. In 1979, OPEC was limited production, and gas prices spiked at $1.25 a gallon. A glut of crude in the mid-1980s sent prices tumbling back down to 65 cents a gallon.

In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and prices zoomed to $1.50 a gallon. In less than 10 years the price was again less than $1.

"Every time we got a wake-up call, we went back to sleep," Nelson said. "The next president must deal with this."

Alternative energy sources must be employed, he said, and they can include water-powered turbines in the Gulf Stream, requiring new buildings to produce their own solar power as Germany does, and "producing ethanol from things we don't eat."

Nelson, by the way, is a superdelegate to the Aug. 25-28 national convention in Denver. But if Florida's delegation isn't seated, he won't be either. After Hillary Clinton won Florida, he declared his support for the New York senator.

Nelson, who is an attorney, sued the DNC, arguing before U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in December that the states, not the political parties, control the elections. The judge dismissed Nelson's suit in December, saying the parties have the right to set their own primary schedule.

Nelson said on Friday he was willing to compromise and seat half of Florida's 211 delegates and 25 superdelegates, but they should be in the percentage chosen by Democrats on Jan. 25. Otherwise, the one-person, one-vote principal will be violated.

One member of the audience wanted to know why Nelson "votes against the American people" and for illegal aliens.

The man is misinformed, Nelson said. He did vote for a fence between Mexico and the U.S. The problem is that the Department of Homeland Security doesn't have its act together — Nelson's words — and they've never finished the wall.

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