West Boca High Grad for State Rep: Joshua Izaak

Okay, so we’re not exactly Joe Biden fans. But Joshua Izaak is a fan, and that’s probably not a bad thing in a Democratic primary race. Izaak is running for State Representative in District 81, which runs west of the Turnpike from the county line up to Wellington. West Boca has a big chunk of the voters, possibly a majority within the district.
We met Mr. Izaak in Mission Bay Plaza, as you can see below.

Sometimes we get criticized for doing too many negative stories, or mentioning the arrestee’s high school in the headline of a crime story. This is one of those moments we get to do the reverse – a positive story about a local kid.
Mr. Izaak attended Water’s Edge Elementary and Loggers’ Run Middle Schools. He spent a year at Olympic Heights and then West Boca High opened near his home in Boca Falls. His academic accomplishments go up from there, graduating from Emory University and recently from law school at the University of Florida. He’s now 25 years old.
His Democratic political resume includes internships with Ted Deutch who was a State Senator at the time, and with Congressman Robert Wexler. If you read the About page on his website, it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t just sip the liberal Democrat Kool-Aid. He chugs it.

During Joshua’s second summer in law school, he worked at the Democratic National Committee in the Voter Protection Department. Joshua worked to combat Republican attempts to restrict access to the vote through discriminatory laws aimed at reducing voter turnout. Joshua also worked to find solutions in response to the conservative Supreme Court’s decision to strike down portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Ideologically he’s not my guy. But he’s running in a primary against a Democratic incumbent with no Republican in the race, so it’s not about ideology or party.
During our conversation he was particularly motivated about education. He’s passionate about schools based on his own experience in the ones our kids go to. And contrary to what we expect from his liberal Democrat credentials, he’s strongly against Common Core and high-stakes testing. He wants to decouple school funding from test results.
I challenged him on that from a political standpoint. As we recently reported, West Boca schools do well in such testing. So our schools benefit from the link between testing and funding. Izaak stuck to his guns. The problem, as he sees it, is that schools teach to the tests instead of just teaching so even the kids in the “winning” schools suffer.
Speaking of guns, Izaak criticized Kevin Rader for voting to expand the Stand Your Ground law to protect warning shots. We will be meeting with Rader on Monday and will ask him about that. Izaak is thus positioning himself to the left of Rader on “gun control.” That’s not something that persuades me but might be effective in a Democratic primary.
The two other big distinctions Izaak draws between himself and Rader deal with special interests and access. He feels Rader is affected by special interests, especially in his own industry. Rader works in insurance and Izaak criticized him for an amendment that would shift the burden of dry wall replacement from condo associations to individual condo owners. That might not seem important until you realize how many votes are in Century Village and similar housing in our district.
After the interview I asked Izaak to provide a link or other support about this amendment. He sent me this YouTube video which shows Rader on the floor of the House presenting an unimpressive defense of his amendment.

As for access, Izaak said that Rader is not sufficiently responsive to voters in the district. We’re not sure how to measure that but we’ll ask Rader about it anyway. He certainly responded quickly to our request for an interview.
Despite some disagreements, I was impressed with Izaak. He’s smart, well-educated, passionate, and energetic. He’s the kind of success story we’re happy to see coming out of our local schools and we hope to see more like him.
We should note that although it’s a Democratic primary, Republicans can vote in it because there’s no Republican candidate in the race. The primary election is on August 26th.
Update: We just found a video of Izaak speaking about his campaign.

Disclosure: We also live in Boca Falls, though in a different subdivision and we’ve never met or even heard of Izaak or his family before. We also live around the corner from Ted Deutch and we have met him and his wife, but only briefly.