After losing his bid for lieutenant governor on the Alex Sink ticket, Rod Smith wants to be the head of the state’s Democratic Party.
Smith prosecuted serial killer Danny Rolling as a state attorney and represented Alachua County as a state senator before running for governor in 2006 and lieutenant governor with Alex Sink this year.
To run for party chair, Smith would first have to be a chairman in the Alachua Democratic Party, according to Jon Reiskind, the Alachua County Democratic Party chairman, in a phone interview Tuesday. “We’re going to make that possibility available to him,” he said.
The leadership roles available are the county’s state committeeman, state committeewoman, vice chair and the chair of the county’s Democratic Executive Committee.
Reiskind stated that they are working on the details and should know within a day or two, but joked that, “We could speculate that he’s not going to be the committeewoman.”
Smith is seen as the front-runner for the role after Karen Thurman, the current chairwoman, announced her resignation Friday.
While Smith has not officially announced his bid for the position, he told The Gainesville Sun on Friday that he is seeking it.
Eric Jotkoff, the communications director for the state Democratic Party, said Tuesday that Thurman will soon announce the time and place of the election of the next chair.
Sink and Smith lost to Republican Rick Scott and his running mate, Jennifer Carroll, by one percentage point earlier this month.
But in Alachua County, Sink beat Scott 59 percent to 38 percent.
Smith’s secretary, Joyce Parish, said he was out of the office Tuesday and was unavailable for comment.
