M.I.A. State Senator Mandy Dawson is still alive, but still not straight with constituents

SouthBeachHoosier asks the following public policy question:
Why is the South Florida media so relatively easy on female elected officials who don't show up for work and shirk their responsibility to constituents?
Quick, what recent health situation affecting a local elected female official does this Mandy Dawson case closely (but not exactly) resemble, complete with softball treatement from The Miami Herald?
To be honest, it was one that had me completely dumb-founded, since much like Dawson's case, below -which Linda Kleindeinst does a great job of deconstructing and destroying here alibis- when it was first revealed olast year, it showed that the official put herself above her constituents' interests in having an effective, elected person representing them, not staff.
Is she paid per diem from taxpayers when she's NOT there -in Tallahassee- in person but there "in the spiritual sense?"
Send guesses to southbeachhoosier@gmail.com
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-flfdawson0630nbjun30,0,541902.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

Florida state Sen. Dawson speaks out on her long record of absences
By Linda Kleindienst and Gregory Lewis
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
June 30, 2007

TALLAHASEE -- Mandy Dawson, who missed more sessions of the Florida Senate this year than any of her colleagues, seemed to have vanished from the public eye.
The Fort Lauderdale Democrat, whose district stretches from Fort Lauderdale to Palm Beach Gardens, was absent for more roll call votes this year than any of her fellow senators and skipped the entire three-day special session on property tax reform this month.
But Friday evening, Dawson spoke by cell phone and e-mail with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. She suffers from a degenerative spinal disease and has already had two operations to relieve the pain. Now, she said, she is worried she might also have cancer.
"I've been down for most of three months. I deal with pain constantly," she said.
Since the Legislature adjourned its regular session May 4, few political colleagues had seen or heard from the three-term senator. Before and during the session, Dawson frequently missed committee and floor votes as well as meetings of the Broward and Palm Beach County legislative delegations and the Senate Democratic caucus. There was never a public explanation to her constituents or fellow lawmakers of where she was.
Dawson, 48, said she has been staying at a friend's house in Fort Lauderdale but had communicated with Senate President Ken Pruitt and said, "He knew I was in pain."
She said doctors earlier in the week found a spot on an X-ray of her hip. Women in her family have a history of cancer, she said.
"I'm spaced out, worried and I've been introverted," she said.
Until Friday, Dawson had not responded to numerous interview requests made to her office staff, and even longtime friends and political allies said they had no idea where she was. No one answered the door at her apartment in the Dorsey Riverbend section of northwest Fort Lauderdale earlier in the week.
Dawson has been plagued with health and attendance problems during her nine years in the Senate and has often cited pain as the reason for the absences. She said Friday that she has no intention of relinquishing office.
"Why would I think about resigning?" said Dawson, who is term-limited out of the Senate in 2008.
This year the full Senate has met 26 times, including four times during a January special session to address rising property insurance rates, twice during a mid-June special session on property tax relief and 20 times during the regular 60-day session.
Dawson missed the call-to-order roll call for nine, or more than one-third, of those sessions. She also was absent for three afternoon sessions of the Senate.
Senators can call or write the Senate president asking that an absence be excused. Dawson was officially excused four times. On April 13, she said she had a family emergency. On April 30, it was for an undisclosed personal matter, and she gave no specific reason for missing the property tax special session.
While she did attend every meeting of the Health Policy Committee she leads, she missed between one-third to one-half of the meetings of other panels she is on, including the Banking and Insurance Committee, the Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee and the Criminal Justice Committee.
Speaking in an interview earlier, Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, said he has no plans to remove her as chairwoman of the Senate Health Policy Committee.
"Her constituents are not being unserved," said Pruitt. "While she's not there in the physical sense, she's there in the spiritual sense."
Last year, Dawson missed several weeks of committee meetings and legislative proceedings as she recovered from surgery on her spine, her second operation since 2002. On her return to the Capitol, she wore a neck brace and navigated the hallways in a wheelchair.
Her past issues include public reprimands by then-Senate President Toni Jennings for chronic tardiness and absences in 2000, an agreement to undergo rehabilitation to avoid prosecution on a 2002 criminal charge that she altered a prescription for pain-killers, and a 2005 public reprimand by Senate colleagues for soliciting money from lobbyists to pay for a 10-day trip to South Africa for herself and a companion she refused to name.
Dawson said she is trying to deal with her pain without narcotics. "I don't want to go down that road again," she said. "So my options are to go to bed or keep moving. I am dragging my leg. I'm worried. I really am."

Lynette Norris of the Tallahassee Bureau contributed to this report.
Linda Kleindienst can be reached at lkleindienst@sun-sentinel.com or 850-224-6214.
Copyright © 2007, South Florida Sun-Sentinel