Chris Cate: Welcome to the Fluent in Floridian Podcast featuring the Sunshine State’s brightest leaders talking about the issues most important to the people of Florida and it’s millions of weekly visitors. In this episode created by SalterMitchell PR, our executive producer Heidi Otway, the president of SalterMitchell PR, talks to Patti Brigham, the president of the League of Women Voters of Florida.

Heidi Otway: So Patti, thank you for being a guest on today’s Fluent in Floridian Podcast. We’re so thrilled to have you.

Patti Brigham: Well it’s great to be here. Thank you.

Heidi Otway: Great. So let’s dive right on in. You are a native Floridian, born and raised in central Florida. Can you tell us a little bit about your upbringing?

Patti Brigham: Well I can tell you that I’m semi-native. I lived here long enough to be considered a native, but I was born in Colorado.

Patti Brigham: My dad was in the military. We traveled around and when he retired we retired here in Orlando, Florida.

Heidi Otway: Okay. So how old were you when you came into Florida?

Patti Brigham: Well, I was eight years old.

Heidi Otway: Oh, you were eight.

Patti Brigham: I’m definitely a Floridian.

Heidi Otway: Okay, good. So tell us about your upbringing in Florida, in central Florida. I’m sure it was a lot different than it is right now.

Patti Brigham: Well we came in, well, I don’t want to say what year, but it was pre-Disney.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: And this was a small town. And I had been exposed to big cities. We lived in Frankfurt, Germany when I was a kid. I visited regularly with my sisters in Houston. And I couldn’t wait to get out of Orlando because it was so small, but then it started to explode in growth and as I got older and I saw it becoming more of an interesting place, and of course I had friends here and family, I decided to stay.

Heidi Otway: So you’re saying that Disney kind of transformed Orlando?

Patti Brigham: Totally. Orlando was a tiny little town. I mean, a lot of people had never even heard of it. Disney choosing central Florida to build it’s enormous complex changed everything about Orlando. It truly did. And Orlando is still growing as a result. It put it on the map not just for people who wanted to visit Disney, but also for other industries who were related, restaurant, hotel, et cetera. And it made Orlando known, and we are a lot more about… Orlando is misunderstood. We’re a lot more about true Florida than Disney.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: And if you just visit Disney and the area around it, you don’t get that picture. But if you visit Orlando itself, the downtown area, the neighborhoods, it’s totally different. It’s a really lovely city.

Heidi Otway: And so, did you ever leave for a period of time?

Patti Brigham: Yes, I did. I went and stayed… Well, I spent a lot of time with the sister I have that lives in San Francisco Bay area. I thought about living out there for a while. That didn’t really… It wasn’t a good time in my life to make that kind of move. I did go up to Tallahassee and live a couple of times, but I was always drawn back to Orlando, mainly for career reasons.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. So you went to The University of Central Florida, and let’s talk about what was your life like after you graduated. You went into the suicide prevention area.

Patti Brigham: Actually, I did that before UCF.

Heidi Otway: Okay. So tell us about it. Tell us about how you got to where you are today.

Patti Brigham: Sure. I got a job working at… Well, of course I worked at Disney straight out of high school.

Heidi Otway: Oh, you did? What did you do? Were you one of the princesses?

Patti Brigham: Well, no. I had two jobs. I worked in a restaurant but I also worked in the character department, and I was a variety of characters. I played Grumpy from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Heidi Otway: You did?

Patti Brigham: I was an Aristocat. I played Robin Hood at one point. And I was in a parade every day in incredibly hot weather, and there was this myth going around at the time that those huge costumes had air conditioning in them, and I’m here to tell you that did not happen. I don’t know about now, but I don’t believe they probably are now either. So they were hot and this was in the middle of summer in Florida with those costumes on, and I don’t know how I did it now.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: But I did go to work at a suicide prevention center called We Care, and it was also crisis intervention. And it really changed my life. It opened my eyes to different perspectives of humanity, of suffering, and it taught me a lot about how to listen and to not judge as much as possible what other people are going through. So it really prepared me I think to be a better person.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: It made me into a better person. It really did.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. So mental health is now no longer a taboo subject, and for the listeners out there who may have a loved one or know someone who is suffering from mental health issues, what are some of the big things that you could share with them to support that family member or individual?

Patti Brigham: Well, as you pointed out, mental health issues should not have a stigma. I mean, we don’t put stigma around other health care issues like cancer or diabetes. Mental health issues are really not that different. I mean oftentimes it’s a chemical imbalance in your body that creates clinical depression or it’s genetic, because that does run in the family. More serious mental illnesses are treated with medication. Then you have the every day therapist that many people see because they just need someone to talk to privately to be totally objective. So fortunately it is not viewed with the same kind of stigma it once was, but there still remains a stigma, which is very unfortunate.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. We have been working recently with the 211 here in the Tallahassee area around mental health, so for those who are listening, you can certainly call your 211 in your community and they can point you to free services around mental health. So just wanted to throw that out there.

Patti Brigham: That’s great.

Heidi Otway: So Patti after your years in suicide prevention, you became a journalist. Tell us about that. How did you become a journalist, from suicide prevention to journalist?

Patti Brigham: Okay. Well, I spent two years as an employee at the suicide prevention center and I was a volunteer there for 11 years. During that time I went to Valencia College, which is now a state college, but was a two year community college then. And I took a class in comparative religion and then in philosophy. And I realized that I was really captivated by philosophy, so I then went to the University of Central Florida and I majored in philosophy. I was one of only three women in that program. It was male dominated. And I had wonderful professors. I was very fortunate, and got my Bachelor’s Degree in philosophy, which of course as I’ve been reminded, what can you do with a philosophy degree other than teach? Well I’ll tell you. I think it’s a wonderful subject because it teaches you critical thinking.

Patti Brigham: And critical thinking is extremely important in life. It’s something that I think a lot of people have naturally but you also have to learn it. You have to learn a bad argument, why is it bad? How do you argue effectively? What is the flaw in the argument? And so it really prepares you to deal with that. So, that had a huge impact on me. I did go into radio. I had always been in love with radio. I loved music. So I started out in radio as a DJ.

Heidi Otway: Which station?

Patti Brigham: Well it was a little tiny country music station in Sanford, Florida, and it was truly paying my dues. I would get up on Sunday morning at 4:30, drive to the AM station. This was in the old days when you had the tower. You had to turn on the… You know, the stations went off at night. But it was fascinating because it was all the Sunday morning program and all of the speakers and singers would come into the studio live.

Heidi Otway: Wow.

Patti Brigham: So there were quite interesting religious speakers, and then there was this incredible gospel group called The Singing Kings of Joy, who would come in with their full band and we’d set them up in this large studio, and I got to hear of this incredible music and watch it through the glass studio windows live. So it was quite a good experience, but I started reading news then, which is of course very different than being a full fledged reporter, and working my way up through radio. I had about a two year break from that because I got involved in theater. I was in a theater group called Simply Shakespeare and performed. I played Kate in the Taming of the Shrew and Adriana in Comedy of Errors. So I was very interested in theater, and that kind of led me into a gig I had with this club in Orlando called The Great Southern Music Hall, which was originally a Vaudeville theater. And I was the MC there for two years and got to meet nationally and internationally known musicians.

Heidi Otway: Like who? BB King?

Patti Brigham: BB King, Count Basie.

Heidi Otway: Wow.

Patti Brigham: Lots of jazz greats. I didn’t meet him, but I MC’d the Ray Charles concert there.

Heidi Otway: Wow.

Patti Brigham: And some classical musicians. Lots of jazz. So I was very lucky to do that. And so, announcing, MCing goes right along with radio. I found myself back in radio, which I really wanted to pursue. And for women it was really news. You weren’t really welcome as kind of a DJ. That was very male dominated. I wasn’t interested in DJing at that point. I found that kind of mindless. And I wasn’t interested in sales, so I got involved with news. And I was lucky enough to work with a station that was all news, a true news talk station with a full fledge newsroom of reporters, which doesn’t really exist in radio anymore unless you’re with a NPR affiliate.

Heidi Otway: Now which station was that? What was the name of the station? What were the call letters?

Patti Brigham: The name of the station was WKIS. And it was also the home of the Florida Radio Network, which was a news service that went around the state.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: Yeah. So I cut my teeth there and then I went on to work at a FM station for three years, three and a half years, as the news director. And eventually, my last job in radio was at an Orlando NPR affiliate, WMFE.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: I produced, hosted, edited, did it all, interviews. An hour long weekly show called The Arts Connection.

Heidi Otway: Wow. Patti what were some of the bigger stories that you covered in your career as a radio journalist?

Patti Brigham: Well, I remember succinctly or vividly rather, the shooting in Palm Bay. I believe the guy’s name was William Cruse. He went on a mass shooting spree and that was a big story statewide. Also, when I was working as a news director we would also cover national stories, which you’re not really reporting there as much, but it was during the time of Iran-Contra, the Gulf War. When I was at the Arts Connection at WMFE, it was 9/11.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: So there were some significant historical things happening at the time that I was in news. But in Florida I would say the biggest story that I covered was definitely that mass shooting in Palm Bay, and then of course the gubernatorial races.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. Were you working in news during the Bush, Gore election?

Patti Brigham: Yes. I was at WMFE that year.

Heidi Otway: And tell me about that experience, as it aligns with your role now?

Patti Brigham: Well for me, since I was an arts reporter at that time, I didn’t really get involved in the political coverage.

Heidi Otway: Oh, okay.

Patti Brigham: I stuck with the arts reporting. Then when I left WMFE, I worked as a freelancer for a while for the Orlando Weekly, specifically as an independent arts reporter.

Heidi Otway: Okay. Very good. So Patti, how did you transition from journalist to your current position?

Patti Brigham: Well, I went through a period where I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do and so I went back to school and I got my Master’s Degree in liberal studies. And it was great because I got to work with the same advisor who had worked with me in philosophy. He was my thesis advisor. And it was wonderful to get my Master’s Degree. And when I did that I had sort of a, I hate to use the term midlife crisis, but I just did not want to go back into broadcasting. Broadcasting had changed significantly, and I didn’t want to do that anymore. So I worked for a couple years at a bookstore. This may sound strange, but at that time I got involved with this wonderful program called Marathon Fest out of the Track Shack Foundation. And anyone living in Orlando listening will know about Track Shack. And I got involved in Marathon Fest because I had always wanted to run a marathon, so I trained for a half marathon. And again, that was another life changer. Eventually I ran the Marine Corps Marathon, which I finished.

Heidi Otway: Wow.

Patti Brigham: With a leg fracture, by the way.

Heidi Otway: Oh my gosh!

Patti Brigham: So my time wasn’t great but I did finish it. But that was a totally immersive program and for a couple of years my life revolved around running, training, being with runners, getting up at… One Saturday morning we got up at 2:30 a.m. to do a 22-mile training run. And you bond with your fellow runners when you’re out there suffering together in the Florida heat.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: But that was life changing too because I started getting interested in politics in those long runs and in my discussions with fellow runners. And I had been long interested in current events, and became more interested through the years. And right around that time there was a presidential election going on and I wanted to get involved with the campaign. So I became a volunteer and I met this amazing woman and she told me, “You know what? You need to join the League of Women Voters.” And I said, “Okay.”

Patti Brigham: So I went with her to a League lunch, then called Hot Topics. This was in Orange County. And the presentation was fascinating, so I joined that day and I became involved right away. I got onto the Membership Committee, and before long I… Well, what I’m most proud of is I founded the Orange County League’s Gun Safety Committee. There was none, and four months later I held a caucus on the issue at our lobby days in Tallahassee. And our state president at that time, Deidre Macnab, appointed me as the chair of a statewide committee which I put together.

Patti Brigham: So we put together an infrastructure working against gun violence in Florida, which prepared us to be able to respond to The Pulse mass shooting in 2016. And we formed the Florida Coaliltion to Prevent Gun Violence. We have over 100 organizational partners in our coalition, which sits under the League’s umbrella. And some of them are national partners, but most are state organizations. On our steering committee we count Equality Florida, Southern Poverty Law Center, March For Our Lives, Florida PTA, and the co-founder was The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus, who I worked with a lot when we were fighting the NRA’s push to get concealed carry on our college and university campuses. So I met Andy Pelosi, who is the executive director of that organization. He’s based in New York. And we co-founded the Florida Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, which is still going strong.

Heidi Otway: So Patti, for those who are listening who may have heard about the League of Women Voters but don’t really understand what you all do. I mean, it’s bigger than just voting. I mean, it’s [inaudible 00:17:52] and such. Can you provide an overview? And then let’s dive into some of the other campaigns that you all are working on and have worked on.

Patti Brigham: Sure. Well, the League of course was founded 100 years ago. So we are celebrating our 100th anniversary this year. And we were founded right out of the women’s right to vote. And our wheelhouse remains fighting voter suppression and fighting for voter rights. Those are our main core missions. But we have also expanded, particularly here in Florida, to take on other critical issues. The environment, for example. We’re ground zero really for climate change. As I mentioned, gun safety. We have a huge statewide education team. Health care, immigration. I probably have forgotten some of them. Clean energy, certainly. We’ve gotten a lot of Floridians to install solar in their homes. So we are vastly spread out in our mission. Well, not in our mission. Our main mission is voting rights. But we look at the big picture. It’s all connected.

Patti Brigham: We have a lobbying firm, Capital Alliance Group, that represents us in Tallahassee. Our legislative priorities come up through our local Leagues. We have 29 from Pensacola all the way down to The Keys. And we fight for or against certain bills every year in Tallahassee. But the main thing to know about us is our rich history in protecting and defending our democracy. We are a nonpartisan organization. We do not take positions on candidates or political parties. But we do take strong policy positions, and that is almost always after scholarly study and reaching consensus. So we prize education in the League of Women Voters. Education in all areas of life and we approach our issues from a scholarly perspective.

Heidi Otway: How do you all determine what issues to work on or advocate for? You talked about education, immigration, the environment.

Patti Brigham: I’m sorry. They come up from our vast roots. Just like when I put together the gun safety team, there was interest.

Heidi Otway: Was there a particular thing that happened with gun safety that you all realized you needed to have? Was this prior to all the mass shootings that we’re now seeing across America?

Patti Brigham: It was not long after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook. That shooting and the fact that they were not able to pass any smart legislation in D.C. lit a fire underneath many activists and I’m one of them. So, that came from the grassroots. I approached the local presidents in Orange County, “I want to do this.” They said, “Do it.” So they said, “See what you can do.” The environment, it all comes from the grassroots. The legislative, we have four legislative priorities that we work on each session. They come up from the grassroots. Each local league, we have 29, votes on them, sends them up to the state board, and we go over them and put them in levels of priority and choose them depending on how they’re voted on. So we truly are a grassroots bottom up organization.

Heidi Otway: Tell me about a recent victory that you all had at the state level.

Patti Brigham: Well, the victories can be hard to come by. We have had some good environmental wins, which have been great. We’re seeing electrical vehicle charging stations put up around the state. We got the Panic Alarm Bill passage, which we were very happy about on the education side. We worked on some voting bills, that unfortunately were not heard. The reality is this, one party dominates Tallahassee. And when there is one party that dominates the House, Senate, and the Cabinet you get very little movement because there’s very little compromise. So unfortunately, our country, our state, has become so divided that many of the issues that we in favor of, protecting our environment, climate change, dealing with that directly, gun violence prevention, are unfortunately viewed as progressive. We want to work with both sides of the aisle. We don’t care what part you’re a member of, we will work with you.

Patti Brigham: But unfortunately, a number of our issues are viewed as progressive and so it’s been very difficult to get the bills we’ve gotten behind strongly passed in Tallahassee. We have been able to fight some very bad bills, and that’s been very heartening to see. For example, with guns. We’ve been able to keep guns off of college and university campuses. We’ve been able to prevent the open carrying of firearms in our society here in Florida. So those defensive wins are good. But it’s hard to get the proactive wins because of the make up of the legislature. We need parity in our legislature. Both parties should be represented. There should not be just a one party control.

Heidi Otway: Mm-hmm. You guys worked on Amendment 4 too, right?

Patti Brigham: We did. That was a huge victory. Some of biggest victories are citizens initiatives. For example, Florida Forever, that was a big win, Amendment 1 back in 2014. Amendment 4 was a huge win. We had been pushing on that for years working with Desmond Meade’s groups, Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. We finally were able to, with the help of that organization and other groups like the ACLU, get that on the ballot in 2018, and it passed with almost 65 percent of the vote. You need 60 percent of the vote for an initiative to pass. So we were ecstatic about that. And then along came Senate Bill 7066, which put the intention of Amendment 4, which was to restore voting rights to returning citizens or ex-felons, except those who had committed felony sexual assault or murder, to restore their voting rights. And there are 1.4 million returning citizens who did not have them.

Patti Brigham: So we thought, “That’s great.” But then 7066 passed, which attached fines and fees and it threw the whole amendment issue into chaos. Nobody knew how to track these fines and fees down. Our first Vice President, Cecile Scoon, did a great job of, she’s an attorney, holding training with lawyers, rounding up lawyers who could help returning citizens find out if they had any outstanding fines and fees. And if they did, how could they go about paying them. Some of them couldn’t pay. Well we knew what we had to do right away. We had to litigate. And the League, we like to say that the League educates and we advocate. That’s true. Because you see, we are two organizations. We have the C3 for education and a C4 for advocacy.

Patti Brigham: But we also litigate, and we’ve had some huge wins through litigation. So we went to court over Senate Bill 7066, and we won in federal court just about a month ago. Judge Hinkle’s opinion said you can not make someone pay to vote. That is a modern day poll tax. It is unconstitutional. However, the state of Florida appealed to the eleventh circuit and they said we want an en banc ruling, because previously they had gotten a three person ruling and it came back in our favor. And the eleventh circuit court in Atlanta agreed, so the full court is going to hear the appeal. And unfortunately they placed a stay on Judge Hinkle’s ruling, which means that our returning citizens, except for those who have cleared their fines and fees are back in limbo.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: So that hearing is coming up, interestingly enough, on August the 18th, which is also primary day.

Heidi Otway: It is. So let’s talk about the voting education that the League does statewide. Right now we’re in the midst of a pandemic so there’s uncertainty about the ability to go to the polls. So right now you’re doing a big push on vote-by-mail, so let’s talk about that.

Patti Brigham: But could I just back up one second? Because you had asked me about one of our wins, and I would be really negligent to talk about… Of course, we had a huge win on redistricting a number of years ago… And that’s significant. That was a major win, but we know redistricting is going to be coming back as an issue so we’re going to be gearing up for that all over again. But we got a big win in 2018 in federal court on student voting on college and university campuses, early vote sites, because early vote sites were prohibited. And we went to court, Judge Mark Walker ruled that was unconstitutional. That these college and university campuses had to provide early vote sites or should provide them. That it was not illegal to do so. So the league fought very hard and we worked with a number of Supervisors of Elections and university and college presidents to get those early vote sites, and we got them on all of the major universities in Florida and some state college campuses. And as a result, approximately 60,000 students voted early that year.

Heidi Otway: Wow.

Patti Brigham: So that was a huge victory.

Heidi Otway: That is a victory. That’s real impressive. Let’s talk about the upcoming elections.

Patti Brigham: Yes, let’s talk about those.

Heidi Otway: They’re right around the corner.

Patti Brigham: Absolutely. Well we know that we are in a very different era under COVID-19. COVID-19 is affecting every aspect of our lives. It’s happening in a major election year. So we knew that when we went to a shelter in place, when was that, back in February or March?

Heidi Otway: March.

Patti Brigham: We find things to have become very warped since all of this has been happening and we’ve been staying home so much. We knew we had to suspend person to person voter registration, and we register voters everyday and everywhere we can. I mean, we go into high schools and pre-register 16 and 17 years olds to vote. We register voters in homeless shelters. We go everywhere we are welcome. But we knew that we could not do that. It would be a health hazard to our volunteers and of course to the public that we’re registering. So we suspended person to person voter registration, which is still suspended. And we sent Floridians to vote411.org, which is the league’s platform for all things voting, and you can follow instructions on that website that will take you to your Supervisor of Elections office where you can register to vote.

Heidi Otway: Good. What about vote-by-mail? Let’s talk about that. I mean, we’re hearing it from celebrities. We’re hearing it from various organizations, and of course the League of Women Voters of Florida.

Patti Brigham: Yeah. So we’ve always been advocating for vote-by-mail, but I will say the intensity of our voice on vote-by-mail this year has increased.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: We have a major campaign, as you know, called Request Your Vote My Mail Ballot Now.

Heidi Otway: Now.

Patti Brigham: Request it now. And of course, the vote-by-mail ballots for the primary are currently being mailed out.

Heidi Otway: I got mine last week.

Patti Brigham: Awesome.

Heidi Otway: I’m so excited.

Patti Brigham: That’s great. So we say request your ballot now. Why now? Well, first of all, when you get it you do have that option to fill it out and stick it in the mail. Easy, you’re voting from the safety of your home. Secondly, if you’re not really comfortable voting by mail or you’re really wanting to go take more time to consider who you want to vote for, you are encouraged to take that vote by mail ballot to an early vote site and you can, you don’t even have to go inside, you can drop it into that secure locked drop box, that is specifically there to collect ballots or you can go in, and we encourage you to wear a mask, take your own pen, and you can go in and submit it there. And then there are traditionalists, and actually I have a friend who says, “I’m not voting by mail. I’m not voting early. I don’t care. I’m voting on election day. That’s always that way I’ve done it and I’m going to do it this year.” So it’s like, “Okay.”

Patti Brigham: So there are those traditionalists who want to vote on election day, and we do know there’s going to be in person election. It’s not just going to be vote-by-mail. There will be polling places open. How many? We don’t know. We do know there’s going to be a reduced number, but they do have the option to either take that ballot and surrender it and get a new one there or sometimes they let you go ahead and use your vote by mail ballot and they check to make sure that you’re not voting twice, of course. We really encourage you though if you are voting by mail, to make sure that your signature matches with your supervisor of elections office. And what they base the signature match on is what they have on file, which is usually the signature that is on your drivers license.

Heidi Otway: Okay. That’s good. That’s good to know.

Patti Brigham: Yeah.

Heidi Otway: I was going to ask you, how do you determine if it’s your signature that you have?

Patti Brigham: Well, and it’s particularly important for young people to check that and also older people because as we age our signatures change.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: My signature was almost unreadable.

Heidi Otway: Mine too. That’s why I wanted to know. What do I need to look at to see what my signature is, because my signature has changed over time?

Patti Brigham: Right. You would check with your Supervisor of Elections. The other great thing about vote-by-mail is that you can track your ballot and you can go onto your Supervisor of Elections website. Again, you can find it through vote411.org, and you can see if your ballot has been received, to make sure that your vote has been received. So you have control over your vote. We want you to have options and we want you to use your power at the polls. That is probably the greatest way to exercise your power as an American citizen – by voting.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. Patti let’s talk a little bit about some of the myths that people or the concerns that people have about vote-by-mail. Can you dispel some of the myths? I know I’ve been seeing a lot of stories about if you don’t get it mailed in a certain time it won’t be counted.

Patti Brigham: Well it has to be received by 7 p.m. on election day. I will say that there’s a lot of misinformation out there about vote-by-mail not being safe. It’s untrue. There has been little, very little true voter fraud around vote-by-mail. The Brennan Center has done some excellent articles about this. The Brennan Center at NYU. True voter fraud via vote-by-mail is not something that is a huge concern. It’s very low instance of that. Millions of Americans are using vote-by-mail. The numbers have been increasing over the years, and we’re certainly going to see a massive increase in vote-by-mail ballots this year because of COVID-19.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: The League of Women Voters would not be pushing vote-by-mail if we were not convinced it is safe. We work closely with our supervisors of elections and we know that this is a safe method of voting. We also encourage early voting, whether it be voting by mail or an early vote site, because we don’t want to see a repeat of what happened, for example, in Wisconsin during their presidential preference primary with only one polling place open in, I believe it was Milwaukee, and huge lines around that polling place with people not socially distancing or not wearing masks. This was during the pandemic, and we don’t want to see a repeat of that. We want you to get to the early vote site if that’s the way you’re going to vote early, not at the end of early voting, but when early voting starts because we’ve talked with one of the supervisors who said, “If our citizens wait to vote early on the last days of early voting, you’re going to get lines.” And we don’t want lines.

Heidi Otway: And it’s open for several days of early voting so you have a large window of opportunity.

Patti Brigham: That’s correct.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. So Patti, is there anything else before we wrap up our conversation that you want to share with our listeners about voting in Florida?

Patti Brigham: Well I just can’t say enough about how important it is to vote. I mean, I’ll tell you a story. I recently had to get a new cell phone, and I was sitting, and of course it takes forever to have your data transferred over. You’re going to spend some time in the store. And so I was talking with this young woman and she was probably 20. There was a TV on and there was a lot of news coverage. It was about the election and we just sort of struck up a conversation. And I said, “Are you going to vote?” And she goes, “Well, I don’t really know.” And I said, “Really?” And I said, “How come?” And she says, “Well, I’m registered and everything but I’m just not sure.” And I said, “Well, are you happy with the way things currently are? And if you are, that’s a way to keep them that way or if you are not happy with the way things currently are, that’s a way for you to try to change things.” And I encouraged her to exercise her power.

Patti Brigham: And I don’t know if she will do so, but I certainly hope so. And that’s something that is a concern to me, that there is still an attitude that it’s not that important or it’s not going to count or there’s nothing we can do about it. Yes, there is. The most important you can exercise your personal power as an American citizen is to take your protest or your endorsement to the polls and vote.

Heidi Otway: Great advice. Go vote people. Go vote.

Patti Brigham: Absolutely.

Heidi Otway: Patti at the end of every interview we like to ask our guests three to four questions just to learn a little bit more about you, and I have to say, I’ve learned so much about you. You are truly a renaissance woman in my opinion.

Patti Brigham: Yeah.

Heidi Otway: Having done so many different variety of things where you were following your passion, and I just so appreciate that about you and I hope this inspired some of our listeners to follow your passion and do what you love to do. So my first question to you is, what is a person, place, or thing in Florida that deserves more attention than it’s currently getting?

Patti Brigham: I’m going to name a person. There is a professor of humanities and African American studies, he’s also a fine artist, at Seminole State College. His name is Professor Trent Tomengo. He is a brilliant scholar. He has a lot to say. The League recently had him on one of our Lunch and Learns. We’ve been holding these Lunch and Learns for our League members every Friday at 1 p.m. during COVID-19. And we had him speak on Juneteenth, the eventual abolishment of slavery. And it was an amazing presentation. He is a brilliant scholar and I believe he deserves to be known nationally and he’s also a wonderful artist. But he is truly an original thinker, a deep thinker, and he is one of my heroes.

Heidi Otway: And this was a Zoom call with him, is that right?

Patti Brigham: Yes.

Heidi Otway: Okay, well we need to talk to you about getting him as a guest on the Fluent in Floridian Podcast.

Patti Brigham: I think that would be fabulous.

Heidi Otway: Great. So what is your favorite Florida location to visit?

Patti Brigham: Well other than the local parks in Orlando, my very favorite location in Florida to visit is… Well there are two actually. And I haven’t been to the first one in many years and I haven’t been there that often. It’s St. George Island.

Heidi Otway: Oh, yeah.

Patti Brigham: I love St. George Island. In fact, the first time I went there I was a young woman and I remember I was with three people and it was a windy day and it was very deserted, and I remember lying on the beach and reading the novel Rebecca.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Patti Brigham: So I got great memories of that island. Then the other place is The Ringling Museum in…

Heidi Otway: Sarasota.

Patti Brigham: Sarasota.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. It’s beautiful. And what is a book that you’ve read recently that you would recommend?

Patti Brigham: Well, I would recommend the books, if the listeners are interested in certain musicians, because I am a major music buff, primarily of rock and roll.

Heidi Otway: Okay. See a renaissance woman. I knew it.

Patti Brigham: And I will tell you that I have read many books the past couple of years about Jimmy Page, who is a masterful guitarist and was the guitarist for Led Zeppelin, and they’ve been fascinating. It looks into his mind as a musician, and aside from all the wild not so great behavior. Also, I’ve read a number of books about The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, but my most recent passion has been reading about Jimmy Page. I grew up with rock music, and of course I was in high school when Led Zeppelin was popular, but I hadn’t listened to them for a number of years. But in 2017 I found out that I had breast cancer, and there I started watching, I was late on this, so I started binging Game of Thrones. And as I was watching Game of Thrones I thought, “If Game of Thrones was a music it would be Led Zeppelin.” And so I started listening to Led Zeppelin again. I started looking at YouTube at their old concerts I’d never seen. And I am here to tell you that it is their music that helped get me through breast cancer.

Heidi Otway: Wonderful. That’s wonderful. Thanks for sharing that story with us.

Patti Brigham: Sure.

Heidi Otway: Well Patti, it was great to have you as a guest on the Fluent in Floridian Podcast. We are thrilled to be working with you, of course, on this vote-by-mail initiative and the goal is definitely to get more people to go to the polls. And we thank you for all that you do for the state of Florida.

Patti Brigham: Heidi thank you. I am enjoying working with you all so much, and looking forward to continuing our work. And am really excited about this vote-by-mail campaign. I think we’re going to get a lot of people voting by mail and it’s already happening.

Heidi Otway: It’s already happening. All right. Thank you Patti.

Chris Cate: Thanks for listening to the Fluent in Floridian Podcast. This show is executive produced by April Salter with additional support provided by Heidi Otway and the team at SalterMitchell PR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchell PR has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communication, social media, advocacy, and media relations assistance. You can learn more about SalterMitchell PR at saltermitchellpr.com. You can also learn more about the Fluent in Floridian Podcast and listen to every episode of the show at fluentinfloridian.com or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app. Have a great day.