Longboat Dems, GOP join together to find common ground

Five Democrats, six Republicans and an Independent are talking politics.

It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, or the prelude to a bar fight. But on Longboat Key, that’s called Miracle on the Key, and it happens about every month.

“We want more people in Longboat Key in particular to understand that a small group are able to do something here that doesn’t seem to be able to be done in Washington,” said Nick Gladding, a new member of the group and president of the Republican Club of Longboat Key.

Founded shortly after the events of January 6, 2021, Miracle on the Key shows that even in a more politically divided country, Longboaters can gather to discuss their differences civilly.

Lucie Lapovsky, president of the Longboat Key Democratic Club, has been a member of the group for years.

“We feel very strongly that for our country to move forward, we need to work together and see where we can agree on things,” Lapovsky said.

Robert Gary, Scott Gray, Paul Hylbert, Lynn Larson, Ed Sabol, Herb Soroca, Shawna West, Sue Jacobsen, Jeff Spalter, Jay Rixse, Lapovsky and Gladding are the current members of the group. The cast is more complicated than one group of Republicans, one group of Democrats and an independent. Diverse backgrounds — university president, entrepreneur, federal prosecutor, environmental lawyer, to name a few — make for a diverse range of opinions and perspectives, Lapovsky said.

“We all have had different jobs, history, some grew up urban, some rural, low income, middle, high income,” Lapovsky said. “That all clearly influences the way we look at things.”

The group meets privately, sometimes virtually and sometimes in person.

Touchy subjects like immigration are not to shy away from, and there are certainly disagreements between members of the group.

“We did get hung up on the idea of masks as far as ICE and Border Patrol wearing masks,” Gladding said.

But there’s common ground, too. A main goal is finding what that is and communicating it.

Group discussions highlighted separating and determining fact from narrative. Miracle on the Key members stay in communication between meetings, sharing statistics and their perspectives on current events. Those perspectives are often very different based on social media algorithms and news sources.

“If you take what was going on in Portland with ICE. The Democrats saw people in frog costumes demonstrating peacefully. The Republicans saw one person throwing something at ICE people. So we had a totally different point of view in terms of what was fed to us from the TV stations or what was written up in the newspapers of what was going on,” Lapovsky said. “So we’d share it with each other, and when we started looking at really what the facts were and what was really going on, we had more of a common ground.”

So often, instead of headlines, the members use data to guide their discussions.

Political discussions can get heated, and the group started in 2021 with a mediator on hand.

“We had the facilitator that would be there to say ‘calm down we see we’ve hit a nerve,’ and there are places that we’ve hit nerves. There are significantly different viewpoints about our president,” Lapovsky said. “But I think there’s a level of respect. We all think everyone in the group are smart, well intentioned people.”

That mutual respect and a willingness to listen to opposing viewpoints is what makes Miracle on the Key a successful venture that has continued for almost five years.

When finding common ground, a member of the group writes the agreement and returns to the next monthly meeting with a draft letter. Newspapers receive letters condemning political violence, enacting immigration reform and advocating for a focus on education, and the group saves them as a reminder of political agreement.

As the group continues into its fifth year, it has higher goals than letters to the editor of local publications. Gladding said he hopes they can share the group’s cross-party, agreed-upon views with Washington, Tallahassee and openly with locals. He hopes it gives the community pride.

“There are a lot of people that come down here from the east coast or wherever for six months, we want them to see that these people at this little town may have different views, but they’re trying to work together,” Gladding said. “We just want them to see that this is a good thing for our little town.”