Joe Harding and his wife Amanda are pictured with their children Vivienne, 6, Joseph, 4, Gideon, 5 months and Fiona, 3. Photo Courtesy of Joe Harding
By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Joe Harding, a candidate for the seat of retiring State Rep. Charlie Stone, R- Ocala, introduced himself Tuesday to the Levy County Commission, saying he is new to politics but wants to make a difference in Tallahassee.
Harding and his wife Amanda, who own a horse boarding farm in Marion County, are the parents of four children ranging in age from 5 months to 6 years. He was raised in Williston and moved away for several years to work in construction management. He worked on approximately $400 million of construction projects around Florida.
He was raised on a small farm in the Williston area. His father was a Baptist pastor in Williston for 45 years and he was one of 11 children in the family.
After working in construction management, Harding said he realized he wanted to come back home.
Harding lives in District 20 rather than District 22, but in an interview Thursday Harding said he and his wife own property in District 22 and plan to move there before he qualifies for state office. If elected, he must live in District 22 by the time he is sworn into office on Nov. 13.
He said that’s not a problem.
“My homestead is in District 20. It’s a Williston address and it’s about a mile outside the district,” he said. “I actually own another property within the district, so we will be moving there well before the election and before the qualifying period to meet the requirement.”
“For me, I’m not a politician, never run, and I didn’t prepare my life for the past five years to run,” Harding added. “I have a horse farm that is in Marion County and we homestead that and it makes sense for tax reasons and that’s been my primary residence. I’ve been training a successor that’s taking over the horse boarding, so that’s part of the reason for the delay.”
His five-month-old son, Gideon, presented an unexpected challenge last August when he was stillborn with no heartbeat. His umbilical cord was kinked. An Ocala firefighter who lives in Williston and is a friend of Harding rushed to the Harding home to save the infant. After 12 minutes without a heartbeat, the little boy began to respond. Gideon survived with no ill effects. The Harding’s intended to birth the child at home.
“It kicked us in the gut, it’s made us stronger people for it, but it was one of the biggest challenges as we were trying to ramp up for the campaign,” Harding said. “Gideon is a miracle baby for sure; without a pulse or heartbeat, the fire rescue, when they got there it was pretty grim. A good friend of mine who works with Ocala Fire Rescue and lives in Williston, he was able to get there before fire rescue. He got the pulse started after 12 minutes. He was able to revive him and then was able to bag breath for him. That firefighter was given a lot of awards in Ocala for it; it is a testament to prayer and God saving us, and also a miracle.”
When doctors first examined Gideon they gave him a slim chance of not having lingering complications, but they were wrong.
“He has no blind spots, no brain damage, no issues, none of the problems they suspected he might have. It’s a miracle,” Harding said.
But Harding said he learned something about the shallowness of politics when his newborn son was recovering.
While his son was in the hospital, Harding said his family was warmly embraced and supported by friends and relatives, but on the flip side, he actually received phone calls from people asking if he intended to continue running for District 22.
“That is sad. Unfortunately, that is politics and how folks think,” he said.
Harding said he has two motivations for running.
“It’s my kids and their future and looking where we’re heading with the state and country, and number two, the need we have for workforce development with vocation programs in our schools,” he said.
Harding said everything he has done in his career has been related to businesses that really struggled to find people to work in those businesses.
“We have pushed for our kids to go to college and I’m all for that, but we devalued the blue-collar jobs that built this country and paid our taxes and we have a shortage because of that,” Harding said. “I really hope if I can do one thing as a legislator, it’s to set a value on those jobs and partner with school districts to understand how do we fund those classes (for vocation and technical education; Math classes and English classes are funded differently than a framing class and I get that, but we need them.”
Harding said he supports a two-path system of education that would allow a student to go the academics route, or if the student was more interested in the vocational route, they could go down that path.
“If you say in 10th grade you want to go technical/vocational, but you change your mind in the 12th grade, I think you should be able to test into that,” Harding said. “When you look at the unemployment rate and how low it’s getting, I don’t know if I have the magic answer, but we’re going to have to address our employment issue because at some point we’re running out of bodies. We’re running out of people.”
Harding is seeking to replace Stone, who is term-limited and can’t seek re-election. Stone’s seat is open this year.
——————
Board of County Commission Regular Meeting February 4, 2020; Posted February 6, 2020
