The last time we wrote about Florida’s state Senator Stephen Wise, chairman of the Senate’s Education and Pre K-12 Committee, was when his latest creationism bill failed. See Florida’s 2011 Creationism Bill: Probably Dead, and before that: Florida’s Stephen Wise: Hidden Depths of Stupid, in which Wise was quoted as saying: “Why do we still have apes if we came from them?”
Wise also promoted a creationism bill in 2009 (see Florida Creationism: This Year’s Bill Will Die). The man is not only an ignoramus, he’s career ignoramus. Well, we have some good news about this foolish legislator — he’s on the way out.
We learned about this from Northeast Florida redistricting notes, which appears in a blog maintained by the Florida Times-Union of Jacksonville, Florida. There’s not much information there, but they link to this earlier article which gives us some background. It appears that “The state is undergoing its once-a-decade chore of redrawing political lines.” Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us:
Jacksonville [where Wise lives] would lose a member of Congress and two of Northeast Florida’s congressmen would be drawn out of their districts under a set of maps unveiled by the Florida Senate on Monday.
Okay, but what about the state legislature? Here it comes:
Under the Senate’s plan, the district currently held by term-limited Wise would represent everything except downtown Jacksonville. The front-runner to replace Wise is Aaron Bean, a Nassau County resident.
Two interesting tidbits there. First, Wise is term-limited, so his days in the Florida Senate are numbered. Second, for the coming election, his district may lose downtown Jacksonville. We’re guessing, but that sounds like the district might then be even more Republican than it is now. Here’s Bean’s campaign website: Aaron Bean for Florida Senate. It says:
I am Aaron Bean and I am a candidate for the Florida State Senate in District 5 to replace Sen. Steven Wise, who is due to retire due to term limits in 2012.
We can’t tell much about Bean from that website — especially his position on creationism — but it’ll all be revealed in due course. Bean used to be in the Florida House, but he got term-limited out. He was there in 2008 when Ronda Storms’ creationism bill almost passed, and Alan Hays’ version of that bill (HB 1483) passed in the House, but we can’t find how Bean voted on it.
Anyway, that’s the big news (and we’re probably the last to know about it). Stephen Wise is soon to depart the legislature, and the pundits think Aaron Bean will supersede him. In all likelihood Bean is a clone, but we’ll find out soon enough.
Meanwhile, Wise still has the 2012 legislative session in which to do what he does best — being stupid. It should be fun.
Copyright © 2011. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Interesting. Maybe more term limits should be set to coincide with the decadal census. It seems (in this case) that having the current office-holder leaving at the same time as the redistricting has made redistricting go fairly smooth.
SC: “…his district may lose downtown Jacksonville. We’re guessing, but that sounds like the district might then be even more Republican than it is now.”
Probably right. Jax’s city limits incorporate the entire county, and therefore areawise, Jacksonville is mostly rural. Driving into Jacksonville on I-10 from the west one goes through many miles of pine forest after passing the city limit sign.
Just a comment on the “why are there still apes (or monkeys)” nonsense. I can understand that misconception persisting among the science- and logic-challenged 20+ years ago, because it might take a trip to the library to clear it up. But nowadays, a few minutes of googling should clear it up. And 99+% of 8th graders are capable of understanding and accepting why it is a misconception.