The answer is that capturing the Florida agricultural commissioner’s post would be a key victory in liberal and progressive push for gun control. As the Tampa Bay Times notes, Florida is unusual in that the Florida agricultural commissioner, rather than the courts or other law enforcement, is the entity that regulates and controls things like concealed carry permits :

We’ve all seen those lists of objects, names, or places on tests along with the question of which one doesn’t belong or is out of place. Apply that test to the three Florida races affected by the vote fraud/incompetence in Broward and Palm Beach counties: senator, governor, and agricultural commissioner. Uh, agricultural commissioner? Why is anyone trying to steal that election, one lost under the radar among the seemingly more important national impact offices at stake?

If it seems unusual for Florida's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to handle concealed weapons permits, that's because it is unusual -- nearly every other state gives the job to police or courts… the NRA had lawmakers quietly move the Division of Licensing, which handles the concealed weapons permit program, from the Florida Department of State to the state's Department of Agriculture in 2002, so that the program was answerable to an elected official.

Marion Hammer, the NRA's chief lobbyist in Florida, defended the move and the practice as a way of protecting the Second Amendment rights of Floridians from a confusing array of county and city gun ordinances:

To get a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Broward County, for example, you had to pay a $500 fee, be interviewed by people ranging from a psychologist to county officials, and show that you had a dangerous job or had threats to your life and needed to carry a gun. Fewer than 40 people had permits. By contrast, more than 10,000 people had permits in Duval County, where the restrictions were looser. To Hammer and the NRA, the varying ordinances were more than just a nuisance to gun owners, who couldn't travel from county to county without potentially breaking a law. They were also a threat to gun rights, and she set out to do away with them… The Department of State handled permitting until 2002, when the Secretary of State, an elected position, was turned into an appointed position. Hammer said on Monday that she wanted concealed weapon licenses moved under an elected official answerable to the public, so she pushed lawmakers to transfer the program to the Division of Licensing to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

It was in Broward County that the shooting massacre at Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida occurred, sparking a renewed gun control debate on whether the best way to protect our school children was to post armed guards, allow teachers who were ex-cops or ex-military to have access to defensive firearms or just continue with insane practice of allowing schools and other soft targets o remain gun-free zones giving armed predators free rein to stalk their unarmed victims.

Gun control was a major issue in Florida in 2018 and the Democratic candidates for all three contested offices made it clear they were no friends of the Second Amendment or the right of self-defense:

The Democrat candidate for Florida Agriculture Commissioner, Nikki Fried, is no friend of Florida gun owners. As we reported in our Florida primary election article, Fried backs ever more gun control restrictions and wants to make concealed weapon permits in particular much harder to get. She also supports removing the state’s preemption law in favor of allowing cities to pass their own patchwork of gun control laws across the state. In a video she released this week, Fried openly states that her goal is to make it much harder for Floridians to exercise their Second Amendment rights. And she apparently thinks she’s running against the NRA rather than her GOP challenger, Matt Caldwell… Fried, in conjunction with Andrew Gillum (Democrat candidate for Governor) and Sean Shaw (Democrat candidate for Attorney General) are pushing the gun control trifecta: the elimination of stand your ground protections, banning “assault weapons” and targeting concealed weapons permits. Just last week Gillum visited Broward County (Parkland) and attacked Florida’s concealed weapons permit system too.

Concealed carry in various forms has spread nationwide as the Supreme Court in a series of rulings that recognize that the Founders meant the right to bear arms was an individual right that applied nationally. As concealed carry spread, crime rates, particularly violent crime, fell. Yet the resistance to gun rights met with a bevy of so-called “sensible restrictions” on gun ownership that impact criminals not at all. Concealed carry reciprocity between states and other jurisdictions with differing rules is a key issue for those who believe in the right of self-defense against predators.

Gillium, Nelson, and Fried are the Florida trifecta of gun control. They forget the countless lives saved by defensive gun use or how four Broward officers stood outside doing less than nothing as Parkland students were being slaughtered by a student well-known to the school and to the cowards of Broward led by Sheriff Scott Israel, They ignore the fact that just one good guy with a gun and a concealed carry permit might have prevented or shortened the whole tragedy. They want to create more gun-free zones and more unarmed victims.

The Second Amendment was also on the ballot in Florida and the attempt to steal this seemingly insignificant office shows the election involved both bullets and ballots.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.