Cara Jennings
Lake Worth City Commission, 561/586-1730, Lakeworth.org
The shortcut to losing an election in this country is to be labeled something worse than a liberal, like a radical, an anarchist or even an activist. The odds get longer when the politician displays all three as a badge of honor the way Jennings did this year. The 29-year-old co-founder of the anti-globalization group Radical Cheerleaders thought she could do some good as a Lake Worth city commissioner. Her friends discouraged her, and her opponent, Jorge Goyanes, ridiculed her left-of-center views as "flower-children philosophy." Yet despite having an arrest record for her actions in a rally against the Organization of American States meeting in Miami last year, Jennings capitalized on a door-to-door campaign that accepted no money from developers to squash Goyanes by 23 percentage points (61.8 to 38.3) in the March 28 runoff election. Since beginning a two-year term that Jennings says will be her last, she has sided with small, independent business owners against developers and national retailers who would transform low-key Lake Worth into something more like Delray Beach. She may or may not succeed, but for once, the radicals have someone on the inside representing them instead of being on the outside carrying a sign.
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