{"id":373514,"date":"2026-08-17T09:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T09:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/373514\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T09:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T09:13:08","slug":"rising-costs-on-minds-of-tampa-area-voters-before-primaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/373514\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising costs on minds of Tampa-area voters before primaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of the concerns aired by voters this election season have revolved around the rising cost of — just about everything. That was on Pamela Agan’s mind. She recently moved to New Port Richey from Ohio. <\/p>\n

She went to a Republican get-out-the-vote rally last week in Pasco County, headlined by Byron Donalds, who’s running for governor. <\/p>\n

Agan said she was struck by the cost of insurance here, and supports the upcoming statewide referendum to reduce property taxes. It would kick in later for newcomers like her. <\/p>\n

“That would be amazing to (not) have property taxes after 8 or 10 years of being here,” she said, “but the insurance blew me away and with car insurance too.”<\/p>\n

Property taxes, property insurance – and above all, rising prices – were on the minds of several people streaming out of the St. George Greek Orthodox Church in New Port Richey. <\/p>\n

ALSO READ: Democrats vying for Florida’s Senate seat discuss affordability and the Iran War<\/a><\/p>\n

Lynn and Patrick Murphy came from their home in Hudson to see Donalds.<\/p>\n

“Affordability is big on our list,” Lynn Murphy said. “And property taxes, we’re seniors, so for us, we’re OK, but it’s, you’re on a fixed income, so you just, you don’t want to go into all your savings and everything. You just wanna be able to afford to live in Florida.”<\/p>\n

Patrick Murphy said the cost to insure their homes and cars will definitely factor in who they plan to vote for. <\/p>\n

“(Donalds) pointed out the insurance situation needs to get better, and I’ve heard him talk about that quite a bit, and he’s got a background in that, so, and I could tell that he’s serious about that,” he said. “Everything’s doubled in the last 5 years.”<\/p>\n

Lynn Murphy echoed some of Donalds’ speech about how leftists are winning races “up north” and don’t want to see that happen here. <\/p>\n

“I do have a concern about a lot of people moving from out of state into Florida,” she said. “I’d like to keep Florida Florida, you know, that concerns me a little bit. They’re leaving for a reason and I don’t want them bringing their ideas here.”<\/p>\n

Murphy called Donalds a “true conservative.”<\/p>\n

Scott Campbell of Pasco County is a former law enforcement officer in Orlando and Miami, and supports Donalds’ law and order positions.<\/p>\n

“I think that Donalds models DeSantis, and that’s good,” he said after the rally. “There’s a lot of vacancies right now on death row and hopefully Donald’s will keep that up, because these people need to go and we need to protect Florida and its citizens.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many of the concerns aired by voters this election season have revolved around the rising cost of —…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-373514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}