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Democrat Greg Pilkington of Indian Lake Estates has announced plans to run against U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross in the 2018 general election.

LAKELAND Democrat Greg Pilkington of Indian Lake Estates has announced plans to run against U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross in the 2018 general election.

He joins a short field of candidates who have filed federal elections papers to represent U.S. House District 15, which includes much of northwest Polk County and parts of Hillsborough and Lake counties.

That list includes Democrats Raymond Pena Jr. of Lakeland, and Cameron Magnuson of Washington, D.C. Others include Loretta Leah Lax Miller, a Republican from Clermont, and Jeffrey Rabinowitz, also of Clermont, who filed under no party affiliation. Under the Constitution, a person must be a resident of the state when elected.

Ross, a Lakeland Republican, was re-elected in November to a fourth two-year term.He defeated DemocraticJim Lange of Lutz with 58 percent of the vote.

Representativesare paid $174,000 per year.

Pilkington, 54, said he sees an advantage over Ross, who was closely allied with PresidentDonald Trump during thepresidential campaign andserved on Trumps transition team following his victory in November.

Pilkington said thatis certain to cost Ross some political capital among those Republicans and independents who are increasingly disenchanted with Trumps leadership.

He was one of Trumps earliest and staunchest supporters, he said, adding that Ross Tea Party leanings are out of step with an electorate ready for more progressive values.

Though a political ingnue, Pilkington, who grew up in Charlotte, N.C., was appointed to that citys mayoral International Cabinet, an advisory body to the City Council that provides input and recommendations on a variety of topics, including international affairs and promoting diversity.

His resume covers a broad spectrum of international experience, most recently as executive officer for budget and strategy for the World Customs Organization, an intergovernmental organization based in Brussels, Belgium.

He served in the appointed position for nine years. His resume also includes stints in international trade, serving as a global project manager for DHL Worldwide Express, and as a program management adviser for FedEx Express.

Pilkington received a bachelors degree in business administration from Pfeiffer University in 1999, followed by a masters in international business studies from the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina in 2001.

He and his wife of nearly 30 years, Beth, have three grown children.

Pilkington lists several key issues important to his campaign, including strengthening and protecting Social Security without increasing age limits. He said additional funding can be derived by removing the maximum Social Security tax cap from $127,200 to no limit on earned income.

He supports a single-payer health-care system and is in favor of passing proposed legislation that would expand Medicare to everyone.

Pilkington says that if elected he would fight for comprehensive immigration reform. He views the expansion of a wall on the Mexican border as wasteful and ineffective.

Eric Pera can be reached at eric.pera@theledger.com or 863-802-7528.

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Democrat plans to oppose Ross in 2018 House election - News Chief

March 22, 2017, 2:15 p.m.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) said in a statement he had "grave concerns" about revelations made Wednesday by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare).

Nunestold reporters that U.S. intelligence agencies monitoring foreign targets hd incidentally heard communications involving members of the Trump transition team and that reports about those communications were disseminated around the government.

Nunes is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and Schiff is the panel's ranking Democrat.

Schiffcalled Nunes' decision to talk to the media and the White House -- before speaking to him and the rest of the committee -- a "profound irregularity."

Here is Schiff's statement:

"This afternoon, Chairman Devin Nunes announced he had some form of intercepts revealing that lawfully gathered intelligence on foreign officials included information on U.S. persons, potentially including those associated with President Trump or the president himself. If accurate, this information should have been shared with members of the committee, but it has not been. Indeed, it appears that committee members only learned about this when the chairman discussed the matter this afternoon with the press. The chairman also shared this information with the White House before providing it to the committee, another profound irregularity, given that the matter is currently under investigation. I have expressed my grave concerns with the chairman that a credible investigation cannot be conducted this way.

"As to the substance of what the chairman has alleged, if the information was lawfully gathered intelligence on foreign officials, that would mean that U.S. persons would not have been the subject of surveillance. In my conversation late this afternoon, the chairman informed me that most of the names in the intercepted communications were in fact masked, but that he could still figure out the probable identity of the parties. Again, this does not indicate that there was any flaw in the procedures followed by the intelligence agencies. Moreover, the unmasking of a U.S. person's name is fully appropriate when it is necessary to understand the context of collected foreign intelligence information.

"Because the committee has still not been provided the intercepts in the possession of the chairman, it is impossible to evaluate the chairman's claims. It certainly does not suggest -- in any way -- that the president was wiretapped by his predecessor."

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Top Democrat on House Intelligence Committee has 'grave concerns' about handling of Trump team intercepts - Los Angeles Times

Debate over spending for the next two years honed in Wednesday on the states massive pension obligations, with one Wichita Democrat making a passionate case for Kansas to pay its bills.

Rep. Henry Helgerson expressed consternation as members of the House budget panel mulled holding back a few hundred million dollars in retirement contributions at this stage in the budget crafting process.

How many years have legislators been saying, Well deal with this later on? he asked. This isnt an enhancement, this is debt. You put this off, the state is financially vulnerable to bankruptcy.

Some members of the committee appeared torn, expressing agreement with Helgerson that the states pension woes are significant and urgent, yet citing uncertainty over available revenue. The panel voted 12 to 9 to review the matter later in the session, after revenue projections for the next few years are updated in late April and other factors, such as the cost of funding schools, are more clear.

Among those missing pieces of the puzzle, noted Erin Davis, R-Olathe, is whether the Legislature will reform the states tax statutes.

We have no tax plan on the horizon, Davis said. The tax plan that the House passed and the Senate passed was vetoed by the governor.

She was referring to a proposal that would have raised nearly $600 million next year alone. Lawmakers failed to override Brownbacks veto, falling short just three votes in the Senate.

Kansas has about $8.5 billion in unfunded retirement liability the gap between the pension systems resources and the retirement benefits promised to public employees.

In 2016, the state delayed a quarterly payment into the retirement system and will do so this year as well. Part of the debates in recent weeks over the 2017, 2018 and 2019 budgets concern when and how to repay those funds. For 2018 and 2019, a key sticking point is whether to keep state contributions flat or let them increase as indicated by law.

For two decades, the state has been paying less in contribution rates than needed according to actuarial assessment.

Gov. Sam Brownback has proposed keeping state contributions flat in 2018 and 2019.

At a separate meeting in the afternoon, he answered a reporters questions about the KPERS situation by citing progress on that point.

Where we were when I started we were 52 or 54 percent funded, and were 67 percent funded today, Brownback said. We are in so much better shape on KPERS today than when I came in as governor.

He was referring to efforts to reduce the portion of the states liability that is funded versus unfunded.

The House and Senate budget committees are working on dual versions of budget solutions for the next few years.

Troy Waymaster, a Bunker Hill Republican and chairman of the House budget committee, said Wednesday his goal was to pass a bill out this week, but it could take longer.

The Senate budget panel expects to pass its version out of committee on Thursday.

The Senate bill includes 2 percent raises for most state employees, many of whom havent seen pay increases for about a decade.

The Houses bill doesnt include raises at this point. Given the Senate panels proposal, Waymaster said it could be a topic that surfaces later.

Meanwhile, the Senate budget committee voted Wednesday to include some measures to help alleviate a 4 percent cut to higher education from last year. Part of the amendment brought by Sen. Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka, includes reducing the cut by a quarter in fiscal 2019.

It is not a full restore it is putting the decrease back to 3 percent, Schmidt said. From my perspective, thats a step in the right direction.

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Kansas House Democrat makes impassioned plea not to withhold ... - Topeka Capital Journal

Democrats typically have trouble recruiting candidates for Statehouse races, but now they're having trouble keeping up with all the people who want to run.

Candidates are already coming out of the woodwork across the country, thanks to a backlash against President Donald Trump and a newfound recognition on the left of the importance of state legislatures to counter GOP control in Washington, D.C.

The surge of potential candidates has been so unusual that, for the first time, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee felt the need to coordinate its recruiting efforts with all the groups that work to find candidates.

On Tuesday afternoon, representatives from about 20 organizations, including labor unions and influential outside groups like Emily's List, gathered at the DLCC's headquarters in downtown Washington for the first "Combine" a reference to the NFL event where teams check out potential recruits.

Democratic officials have had to add extra candidate training sessions to keep up with demand and increase enrollment in existing ones. One major training group, Emerge America, reports an 87% surge in candidate applications over last year.

The women's group Emily's List says nearly 10,000 women have expressed interest in running for office since November, including for state legislative seats. Meanwhile, Run for Something, which is focused on recruiting millennials, says its heard the same from almost 8,000 young people.

The enthusiasm turned last month's special election to decide control of the Delaware State Senate into a national battle for Democrats. One thousand people signed up to volunteer while millions of dollars poured in from online donors. Democrat Stephanie Hansen, who ended up winning the race, thought she was being prank called when former Vice President Joe Biden rang to offer his support.

"Everything has changed," Jessica Post, the DLCC executive director, said in an interview in her office.

Things have been rough for Democrats at the state level. Republicans control more than two-thirds of partisan state legislative chambers 67 of the 98 total after picking up 27 chambers since 2008.

With 7,383 state legislative districts nationwide, there was lots of talk at the organizing meeting Tuesday of spreadsheets and databases.

Around the room, participants discussed how unusual it is for candidates to be coming to them, rather than the other way around.

"Literally, the day after the election, we saw a huge increase in the number of women who wanted to run for political office, and we've been extremely busy since then," said A'shanti Gholar, the political director of Emerge America.

Post is used to having to sell grassroots activists on why they should even care about state legislative races. But last week, she found herself being asked for selfies after a speech to local Democrats in St. Louis.

"It used to be an effort to persuade people to put their name on the ballot," Post said. "Now, the candidates are calling us up and they're saying I want to run. Point me in the right direction...They're looking at Trump and saying I want to do something."

RELATED: Democrats Beware: Sanders Movement Turns to Midterms

Clearly, Democrats have rediscovered the importance of Statehouses this year, after losing over 900 state legislative seats under President Barack Obama.

Obama has thrown his weight behind an effort, lead by former Attorney General Eric Holder, to win them back ahead of redistricting in 2020, when lawmakers will redraw congressional maps.

And the Democracy Alliance, a group of major liberal donors meeting later this week, has decided to make state campaigns a top priority.

When Amanda Litman, a former Hillary Clinton campaign aide, launched Run for Something on Inauguration Day, she was planning to spend a lot of her time hunting for potential candidates.

"We thought we would have to struggle to find 100 people who would want to run," she said in an interview.

More than 1,000 people signed up in the first week.

"Barack Obama inspired a generation of people to get into public service out of hope. Trump could inspire a generation of people out of fear. And that's horrible, but can also be valuable," Litman said, calling it a "Trump bump."

Of course, many of the people expressing interest in a run now will not follow through with it. Campaigning is much more difficult than attending a training session. And there's no guarantee that more candidates means more victories.

And Ellie Hockenbury, the spokesperson for the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee, said the GOP has already found strong candidates this year's races, though they're just getting started on next year's midterms.

"We are still in the early stages of identifying and recruiting state-level candidates for the cycle, as filing deadlines are still a ways away," she said in an email. "The level of GOP success in the states over the past eight years leaves us optimistic that it will be another good cycle for recruiting and supporting impressive candidates across the country."

The first test will be in Virginia, which is one of only two states to hold major elections this year (the other is New Jersey, where Democratic control is not much in danger).

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Thousands of Would-Be Democratic Candidates Flood States in Trump Backlash - NBCNews.com

The last decade has been rocky for Angela Brancato, who grew up in Chicago's Mount Greenwood neighborhood and then left with her fiance in 2007 for brighter job prospects in upstate New York and later North Carolina.

The prospects never materialized, and they returned in 2012 to Mount Greenwood, where she found part-time work at a neighborhood diner.

That's where she works today. She voted for Donald Trump. Two months after his inauguration, Brancato and other supporters in Chicago remain optimistic about his presidency.

"When (Barack) Obama ran, he ran on the idea of change," Brancato, 31, said on a recent morning before going to work. "The country certainly has changed in the last eight years, and it's not a change that I particularly care for."

Pockets of intense Trump support exist in the broad-shouldered city of deep blue Democrats, particularly in Brancato's Mount Greenwood on the Far Southwest Side, in Edison Park and Norwood Park on the city's Far Northwest Side and in sections of Sauganash/West Ridge on the Northwest Side neighborhoods with substantial populations of police and firefighters.

Trump won nearly 70 percent of the vote in three Mount Greenwood precincts and more than 50 percent in 15 other precincts in Chicago's 19th Ward, which includes the Beverly neighborhood. In five Edison Park and Norwood Park precincts, Trump gathered more than half the votes. He also got nearly 60 percent of the vote in three precincts in Sauganash/West Ridge.

Those Chicagoans who voted for the businessman say they did so to rev the economy, support law enforcement, shake up a stagnant political system, and check immigration and government growth. While Trump fumed over an investigation into his campaign's possible ties to Russian hackers and the Senate grilled his Supreme Court nominee, his Chicago supporters gave the new president incomplete ratings on his job performance.

Brancato said her vote came down to her economic distress and the Affordable Care Act, which became too costly for her to use. She said she and many others are fed up with politics as usual, that the education system is moving in the wrong direction and the country should be more conscientious on immigration.

"I voted for Trump because he's not really a Republican," said Brancato, who added that she voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2004. She didn't vote in 2012. "I'm hoping and praying that he can somehow get these people who are so hopelessly block-headed to at least listen to each other."

'Dude, shut up'

Brancato is concerned, however, about Trump's unfounded and combative comments on voter fraud and surveillance on his phone, a continuation of her frustration with Trump's abrasive comments in the campaign.

"It would just be like, 'Dude, shut up,'" Brancato said. "'One of these days something's going to come flying out of your mouth and it's going to do irreparable damage.'"

She said Trump's allegations should be investigated fully and she remains concerned by indications that Russian hackers may have tried to influence the November election.

Down the street from Brancato, at United TV Service, owner Dave Benedict said he voted for Trump because he is taking "a businessman's approach to running the country." Like Brancato, he viewed Hillary Clinton as an extension of Obama's eight years as president, which Benedict viewed as a failure.

"He kind of has a trigger finger when it comes to his opinions," Benedict said of Trump. "He's not going to be politically correct. He's just going to tell you his opinion and that's the way it is."

Benedict, who said he voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008, said it is too early to tell how effective a president Trump will be. Benedict said he would be concerned if proof emerged that Trump's campaign colluded with Russians to influence the 2016 election or if Trump's claim that Obama ordered surveillance on Trump's phone turns out to be false.

Former 19th Ward GOP Committeeman Steven Graves said it should come as no surprise that Trump did well in Mount Greenwood, "because this is a middle-class, hardworking neighborhood," where people are tired of "the same old same old," and believe Trump can deliver jobs, lower taxes, cut government, secure our borders and strengthen the military.

"I think they felt like they finally could hit back," Graves said. "I think his heart's in the right place and I think he's learning as he goes." But, Graves added, "when he says, 'Drain the swamp,' half the crowd is his crowd."

Trump's election came at a particularly volatile time in Mount Greenwood, where 90 percent of residents are white and many police officers reside in brick Georgians and trim ranches on narrow city lots. Three days before the election, police shot and killed Joshua Beal, 25, an African-American from Indianapolis, in Mount Greenwood.

Authorities have called the confrontation a road rage incident. The shooting, which remains under investigation, sparked protests that pitted police supporters against groups critical of the shooting.

Trump backers in law enforcement privately said they are aggravated their support is perceived as racist, when they maintain it is based on what they see as declining support from Obama and the likely continuation of that if Clinton had been elected.

Turmoil to empathy?

About 30 miles north of Mount Greenwood, in neighborhoods that include Edison Park and Norwood Park, Robert Athey said he voted for Trump as a way to curb a federal government that was overreaching. Athey, who served as the Midwest representative of the U.S. secretary of labor in 2002-09, also said the Affordable Care Act was unaffordable.

Athey, of Norwood Park, also said that Obama and Clinton, as secretary of state, mishandled the U.S. response to Syria's civil war and Clinton in particular showed incompetence in the 2012 terrorist attack on U.S. government buildings in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead.

About Trump's performance, Athey said the Democrats have instituted "a war" against the president since his election. They can "attack the personality and avoid the policy," he added. It is too early to say much about the job Trump has done in office, he said.

But Athey acknowledged that Trump has hurt himself with Twitter posts and unfounded comments. His best explanation for the content of Trump's more controversial statements is that the administration is "so overwhelmed by the attacks that ... he gets ahead of himself on issues that don't matter."

"I kind of wish he wouldn't do it," Athey said. "It kind of dilutes his message and the message of the people who work for him."

He and other Trump supporters said backers of the new president tend to keep a low profile largely because, as Athey said, "the liberal media made Trump out to be the most horrible person in the world and people are reluctant to express their support."

Suzzanne Monk, who with her husband, Alexander Duvel, owns Worlds of Music Chicago in the North Center neighborhood, said their support for Trump led to bullying that is prompting them to close the musical instrument store by the end of April, convert it to an online business and leave Chicago.

In a letter she sent to several media outlets, Monk wrote that "because we support Trump, we no longer feel proud, or safe, being in this city." Duvel filed a police report in August citing harassing texts and phone calls.

Monk also contends the main reason for closing the store is that prospective customers have been intimidated "merely for associating with us."

Those whom Monk specified as harassing and intimidating the couple deny the claim. They say Monk and Duvel brought the problems on themselves for aggressive and offensive social media commentary and videos attacking liberals.

Benedict, the electronics repair shop owner in Mount Greenwood, said he has not been harassed or lost business for supporting Trump. Brancato said she also has not been harassed, although her fiance, who works in a more politically liberal neighborhood of Chicago, keeps quiet about his Trump support.

Edison Park Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Melissa McIntyre said business owners avoid political conversations with customers out of a sense of professional protocol, and that it was unlikely any would suffer negative consequences if they publicly declared their support for Trump.

On the other hand, she said, some residents were angry with a local restaurant that participated in A Day Without Immigrants on Feb. 16 by closing for the day to demonstrate how important immigrants are to America's economy.

"People said they'd never go there again," McIntyre said.

Since Monk's story gained media attention on March 17, she said she has received an outpouring of support. Her "Save Music Store from Trump Haters" GoFundMe campaign, started in January, raised more than $17,000 as of Tuesday afternoon. Monk said about $9,000 has arrived since Saturday.

She acknowledged that unrest over the Trump presidency may have engaged people more in public affairs.

"I hope that can transform," Monk said, "and keep bringing the dialogue and bring America back together."

Chicago Tribune's Annie Sweeney contributed.

tgregory@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @tgregoryreports

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Pockets of strong Trump support in deep blue Democrat Chicago ... - Chicago Tribune