Your feedback ensures we stay focused on the facts that matter to you most—take our survey.
Al Krulick
Al Krulick (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Florida's 7th Congressional District. He lost in the Democratic primary on August 23, 2022.
Krulick completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.
Krulick was also a 2014 independent candidate who sought election to the U.S. House to represent the 7th Congressional District of Florida.[1] Krulick failed to qualify as a Democratic candidate.[2] Al Krulick lost the general election on November 4, 2014.
Biography
Al Krulick was born in New York, New York. He earned a bachelor's degree from Binghamton University in 1974. His career experience includes working as the editor-in-chief at Business View Publishing.[3] He is also a former actor at Disney-MGM Studios.[4] Krulick has been affiliated with Actors' Equity AFL-CIO.[3]
Elections
2022
See also: Florida's 7th Congressional District election, 2022
General election
General election for U.S. House Florida District 7
Cory Mills defeated Karen Green and Cardon Pompey in the general election for U.S. House Florida District 7 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Cory Mills (R) | 58.5 | 177,966 |
 | Karen Green (D) | 41.5 | 126,079 | |
| Cardon Pompey (No Party Affiliation) (Write-in) | 0.0 | 10 | ||
| Total votes: 304,055 | |||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Florida District 7
Karen Green defeated Al Krulick, Tatiana Fernandez, and Allek Pastrana in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Florida District 7 on August 23, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Karen Green | 44.9 | 23,051 |
 | Al Krulick | 21.0 | 10,787 | |
 | Tatiana Fernandez | 20.0 | 10,261 | |
 | Allek Pastrana | 14.2 | 7,289 | |
| Total votes: 51,388 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Stephanie Murphy (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Florida District 7
The following candidates ran in the Republican primary for U.S. House Florida District 7 on August 23, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Cory Mills | 37.9 | 27,757 |
 | Anthony Sabatini | 23.7 | 17,332 | |
 | Brady Duke | 15.3 | 11,221 | |
 | Ted Edwards | 5.8 | 4,259 | |
 | Russell Roberts | 5.5 | 4,031 | |
 | Erika Benfield | 5.4 | 3,964 | |
 | Scott Sturgill | 4.2 | 3,094 | |
 | Al Santos | 2.1 | 1,504 | |
| Total votes: 73,162 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Jeremy Liggett (R)
- Joe Cavagna (R)
- Lee Ogilvie (R)
- Kristopher Stark (R)
2014
Krulick ran in the 2014 election for the U.S. House to represent Florida's 7th District.[1] Krulick ran as an independent candidate. He was defeated by incumbent John Mica (R) in the general election on November 4, 2014.[5]
| Party | Candidate | Vote % | Votes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican |  John Mica Incumbent |
63.6% | 144,474 | |
| Democratic | Wesley Neuman | 32.1% | 73,011 | |
| Independent | Al Krulick | 4.3% | 9,679 | |
| Total Votes | 227,164 | |||
| Source: Florida Division of Elections | ||||
2010
Krulick ran as a Green Party candidate in 2010 for Florida's State Lieutenant Governor.[6]
1998 & 1996
Running as a Democrat, Krulick lost back-to-back races against Bill McCollum for Florida's 8th Congressional seat in 1996 and 1998. Disney's PAC did not back him in 1998; instead they backed his Republican opponent.[7]
After publicly complaining that Disney would not back their own employee, a Disney spokesperson stated that "We respect Mr. Krulick for participating in the political process and we hope he will respect our right, as well, to make independent decisions as it relates to our PAC contributions.[7]
Campaign themes
2022
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Al Krulick completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Krulick's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
| Collapse all
Krulick has participated in over a dozen political campaigns including: mayoral, state house, gubernatorial, congressional, and presidential, as a volunteer coordinator, field director, and speech writer. He has been a precinct captain, a ward leader, and a delegate to state Party conventions in Massachusetts and Florida.
Krulick ran for the U.S. Congress as a Democrat in 1996 and 1998 against Republican incumbent, Bill McCollum, receiving 33% percent of the vote both times. In 2014, he ran as an NPA candidate against Republican incumbent, John Mica.
- I believe that American democracy is teetering on the edge and is being threatened by a Republican Party that has become nothing more than a personality cult, subservient to a twice-impeached former president who continues to lie about the results of the 2020 election. Defeating Trumpism is the single most important political issue of our time
- The most important existential issue of out time is confronting climate change and the warming of Planet Earth by greenhouse gases. We must de-fossilize our energy sources and work assiduously to promote non-polluting technologies, such as solar, wind, biothermal, etc. in order to leave a habitable planet for future generations.
- Career politicians have proven that they cannot foster the necessary changes in our polity because they tend to be more inclined to serve their own professional aspirations than the needs of the people. I believe in citizen legislators who act only for the general welfare while promulgating real solutions to the nation's problems, unfettered by career goals and choices.
2) The Second Amendment of the Constitution reads as follows: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Today, many Americans cite the Second Amendment as guaranteeing their unrestricted right to own any type of firearm to use for any reason whatsoever, carefully disregarding the first two phrases of the amendment, while emphasizing the second two. We need to restrict gun ownership in ways that protect the general welfare while helping to end the carnage caused by too many firearms.
Without missing a beat, the Senator offered to come back to the district and campaign for me. I was utterly floored by his kindness but, in a jocular way, replied that I didn't think that another northern Jew would be helpful in Christian, conservative, Central FL. He laughed and we parted.
He died in a plane crash 14 years ago, while campaigning for re-election to a Senate which sorely misses his passionate support of the ordinary, working class citizens of this country. He is one of my political heroes and I like to think that in my own small way, I am carrying on his fight for the issues he so fervently cared about.
Here is something he said about politics: "Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives."
Those who deny climate change are either ignorant of the proven science or are in the pocket of those corporate interests whose bottom lines will be affected if we, as a society, finally make the necessary and concerted effort to replace the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas – with clean, free, and renewable sources of energy – wind, solar, and geothermal, among others.
The situation is urgent. While it is already agreed by the world’s climate scientists that we cannot stop the effects of global warming, there is still time to mitigate the damage it is doing to our planet and its people. We have a window of opportunity, but it is closing quickly. We need to reverse the wrong-headed policies that continue to support the fossil fuel industries and make the transition to renewable energy more attractive and more economically feasible. And we need to do it quickly.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Krulick's campaign website stated the following:
| “ |
Here is my to-do list if hired for the job: Abortion Rights One of the most fascinating ironies of our current political scene is the sight of anti-vax protesters holding signs that read: “My Body, My Choice.” The slogan, which has been appropriated from the feminist movement and proponents of women’s reproductive rights, is meant to represent the idea of personal bodily autonomy free from government intrusion, or in its present iteration, without the external domination of “mandates.” These folks believe that no one can force them to give up their right to corporeal self-ownership, which, in this case, would require them getting injected with a vaccine that is meant to halt the spread of a pernicious virus. It’s their body, they maintain, ergo, their choice. And yet a vast majority of these self-same proponents of individual freedom would deny that same right to women who wish to seek the constitutionally protected right of a safe and legal abortion.The hypocrisy is stunning, yet not entirely unusual, considering it reflects the all-too-human tendency to “do as I say; not as I do.” Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled that the Due Process Clause of the 14th amendment to the Constitution, provides a fundamental “right to privacy,” that protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose whether to have an abortion. This right was upheld in 1992, in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, when the Court, once again affirmed that a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion is constitutionally protected. In other words: “Her body, Her Choice.” And yet, today, that right is being eroded bit by bit, in state after state. For example, Texas’s Senate Bill 8, which has been allowed to stand by the current SCOTUS, bans abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy – before many women even know they’re pregnant. It also has a “sue thy neighbor” scheme that encourages any person in the state to sue people who, in any way, help someone obtain an abortion. Recently, the Republican majority in Tallahassee passed another restrictive law, banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. And this summer, many expect that the Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, when it considers the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. If the nation’s highest court decides to reverse nearly 50 years of precedent, it could affect 36 million women of reproductive age in 26 states – including Florida. Considering that 80 percent of people in American want abortion to be legal, Congress must act to create federal statutory rights that parallel the constitutional right in Roe v. Wade. These rights would have at least two key components. First, they must prohibit states from interfering in the ability of a health care provider to provide medical care, including abortion services. Second, they must prohibit states from interfering in the ability of a patient to access medical care, including abortion services, from a provider that offers them. Our democracy cannot be held hostage by Republican legislators or right-wing courts. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, Congress must ensure that the will of the people remains the law of the land. Too many women and families are going to be adversely impacted if abortion rights are left up to individual states. We must protect the right to choose. Now’s the time!
When I first ran for Congress 26 years ago, I said that the single most important issue facing our nation was campaign finance reform because it touched upon every other facet of our system of self-governance. At the time, I spoke out against the dependence of our elected representatives on the ever-increasing flow of special interest money financing their re-election bids. I pointed out that lawmakers were becoming less and less beholden to the voters and more and more in the pocket of the corporations and political action committees whose funds flowed, largely unimpeded, into their campaign accounts. I explained how these large contributions were distorting the legislative process, affecting whom lawmakers see, and what and how things get done in Congress. I suggested that democracy simply could not survive when elected officials are inevitably obliged to legislate on behalf of their big donors and not in the best interests of the general population. Now, more than two decades later, things have gotten much, much worse. In fact, there is a broad understanding in our country today that the United States has ceased to be a democratic nation in any true sense of the word; that our political system has been transformed into an oligarchy ̶ a place where wealthy elites wield the most power, and rich, well-connected individuals steer the direction of the country, regardless of, or even against the will of, the majority of voters. We must be louder than the oligarchs. We must hire representatives who still believe that power comes from the people and not the pocketbook, and we must support those who are willing to uproot the current corrupt system of campaign finance and declare, once and for all, that private money has no place in the public domain. And so, today, campaign finance reform is still the most important political issue facing our nation. If nothing changes in this area of our national life, then none of the other serious problems we must solve will ever be approached or remediated in a way that promotes the general welfare of our citizenry. The oligarchs will have won and the rest of us will be mere bystanders, simply watching the slow, painful demise of the great American experiment in democracy begun over two centuries ago by those who believed that the people were meant to rule and govern themselves. Now’s the time!
Climate change is real, and it is happening now. Heat waves, floods, droughts, fires, superstorms, rising sea levels, and devastating hurricanes and tornados are witnessed and experienced by millions of our fellow citizens in all parts of the country, and no amount of prevarication or denial can wish it, think it, or argue it away. Today, we are reaping the whirlwind of our 200-year-old love affair with the carbon-based forms of energy that have powered our modern world. Those who deny climate change are either ignorant of the proven science or are in the pocket of those corporate interests whose bottom lines will be affected if we, as a society, finally make the necessary and concerted effort to replace the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas – with clean, free, and renewable sources of energy – wind, solar, and geothermal, among others. Take a look behind the scenes of those who contend that global warming is a hoax, or some sort of liberal cant, and you will always see the carbon footprints of some player in the fossil fuel arena. They are footing the bill for all the erroneous and duplicitous pronouncements in print and elsewhere, and their payouts extend to various right-wing think tanks, and more abhorrently, to members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives. It is estimated that there are over 100 climate change deniers in the U.S. Congress – and every single one of them receives campaign contributions from dirty energy companies and/or their affiliates. And the arguments of these shortsighted, climate change deniers are always the same and they always miss the point: If we give up on fossil fuel production, they contend, energy prices will go up, jobs will disappear, and the economy will suffer. It’s a prime example of those who profess to know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. They ignore the value of clean air. They ignore the value of healthy lungs. They ignore the value of leaving a habitable planet behind for our children, our grandchildren, and generations to come. They clearly don’t respect the value of Mother Earth. But even if one were to take their arguments at face value, they don’t stand up under scrutiny. The truth is that our economy will be stronger if we invest in clean energy. More jobs will be created than lost and, as the costs of alternative energy continue to decrease, less of our money will be siphoned off by the giant oil, gas, and coal companies. The only losers will be the oil companies and the politicians who cynically profit from their largesse. The situation is urgent. While it is already agreed by the world’s climate scientists that we cannot stop the effects of global warming, there is still time to mitigate the damage it is doing to our planet and its people. We have a window of opportunity, but it is closing quickly. We need to reverse the wrong-headed policies that continue to support the fossil fuel industries and make the transition to renewable energy more attractive and more economically feasible. And we need to do it quickly. We need tax incentives and government programs that will help accelerate the growth of the renewable energy industries. We need ways to encourage consumers to switch to cleaner forms of power. But for that, we will need Congresspeople and legislators throughout the country who believe in science and a citizenry that is informed and fired up… one that will demand the changes we need to make in our national energy policy. In short, we need a government and a county that is willing to lead the world, in order to save the world. The clock is ticking. Now’s the time!
Decades before James Madison’s Bill of Rights was being debated in 1789, it had long been accepted wisdom that the 3.5 million people living in the original 13 colonies depended upon firearms to secure wild game for food, as well as for their defense against hostile forces during the French and Indian War. And even after the successful American Revolution against the British Empire, it was generally understood that each able-bodied man had a duty to defend his individual state against the potential danger of a standing army, either domestic or foreign, and thus, the Second Amendment of the Constitution was promulgated to codify both this right and this responsibility in the following language: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In the years since then, the United States has created, maintained, and expanded a standing national army, while still maintaining a “militia” by way of the National Guard, which can be swiftly integrated into the national defense force when necessary. Today, however, many Americans cite the Second Amendment as guaranteeing their unrestricted right to own any type of firearm to use for any reason whatsoever, carefully disregarding the first two phrases of the amendment, while loudly emphasizing the second two. And while nobody denies any citizen the right to defend their home, or to keep sporting guns for hunting game or for recreational purposes, even the most conservative judicial minds question the validity of the notion that gun ownership is a fundamental, non-contestable, God-given right. Indeed, in 1990, Warren Burger, a former conservative Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, wrote the following: “The gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American people by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies – the militia – would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.” In 2008, in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, another conservative jurist, wrote that “there is nothing in the Second Amendment to construe the right to own and carry weapons is unrestricted.” America has more guns than any other nation in the world and that number continues to grow each year. Today, more than 81.4 million Americans own over 393 million firearms. And each year, some 40,000 citizens die as a result of gun violence – some by suicide, some by murder, and some by accident. In 2021, there were 693 mass shootings in the country, which left 703 people dead and 2,842 injured. And while a majority (roughly 53%) of Americans favors stricter gun laws, Congress continues to reject any additional legislation that would help keep us safer, even though the Preamble to the Constitution cites the necessity of our national government to “insure domestic tranquility,” and “promote the general welfare.” Rational approaches to gun control is not a plot to deny Americans their freedom – it is a sane response to a national epidemic of gun violence which continues to leave a legacy of pain and trauma in communities across our country every single day. We can’t wait for more innocent people to die. Now’s the time!
I would work to achieve affordable, universal health care for all. The United States is the world’s only democratic, industrialized nation on the planet that doesn’t insure its citizens against the economic hardships brought about by disease and accident. Health care is a human right, and not a privilege of the wealthy. We must reclaim our national health from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies who profit from our misfortunes. Everyone gets sick, and lots of people have accidents, but not everyone can access healthcare when they need it. Even though the Affordable Care Act has signed up 13.6 million Americans this year, 28 million American men, women, and children in this land of plenty still have no health insurance at all, often preventing them from receiving even the most basic healthcare services. But even Americans who do have health insurance still struggle to afford its costs. Roughly 155 million people rely on employer sponsored insurance (ESI) plans whose premiums have risen by 47%, and deductibles by 69%, over the last decade.It’s no wonder that the inability to pay medical bills is the country’s number cause of personal bankruptcy, outpacing those due to credit card bills or unpaid mortgages. And yet we still cling to outmoded, overly-expensive and wasteful ways of insuring ourselves against the economic ravages caused by disease or plain bad luck. It’s interesting that most people don’t realize that the “normal” and accepted way of insuring ourselves through the workplace was not a deliberately designed policy, but was, in fact, due largely to a series of unplanned accidents of history. The first event occurred during WWII, when Congress passed the 1942 Stabilization Act, a law that limited the amount of wage increases employers could grant their workers during wartime. As more and more American men joined the armed forces, the labor market contracted. Nonetheless, the country still needed bodies on its assembly lines. But because of the wage cap, employers were forced to find other means to entice workers and keep them on the job. The incentives they decided on were benefits like health insurance. These health benefits packages were not considered a part of employees’ wages, so it was a convenient way around the federal government’s limit on pay hikes. Labor unions accepted these new benefits, in lieu of raises, in their collective bargaining agreements with company managements. The second event occurred in 1943, when the Internal Revenue Service ruled that employer-based healthcare should be tax-free, meaning that employers could deduct what they spent on these benefits packages from their corporate tax payments. The impact of these two events propelled the rapid growth of employer-sponsored health insurance. Plan participation grew from 9 percent of the population in 1940 to 63 percent in 1953, and 70 percent by the 1960s. Today, it’s about 55%. For many years, this system worked well. Health care costs were low, as were insurance premiums, because companies were able to bargain with the insurance carriers for bulk coverage. The majority of Americans were insured against catastrophic medical events, and employers were saving on their taxes. But as medical costs began to spiral out of control over the last few decades, and more and more companies cut back on the generosity of their plans, we soon began to realize that healthcare, when doled out by profit-making hospitals, and with costs increasingly controlled by rapacious insurers concerned only with their shareholders’ bottom lines, was going to become a national burden that we no longer would be able to afford. And that day has finally come. And it isn’t because wiser men and women did not see the writing on the wall. Some form of national health insurance has been on the presidential back burner for a hundred years, dating back to Teddy Roosevelt and his unsuccessful 1912 comeback bid for the White House. Franklin Roosevelt toyed with the idea as part of his 1935 Social Security Act but decided it would be too controversial to include in the legislation. Harry Truman picked up Roosevelt’s mantle and proposed national health insurance legislation in 1945 and again in 1948. When he was president, Dwight Eisenhower proposed a comprehensive health and welfare program that was rejected by Congress. John Kennedy tried to enact Medicare, which was subsequently passed, along with Medicaid, by his successor, Lyndon Johnson, in 1965. In 1974, Richard Nixon proposed a comprehensive health insurance reform that included an employer mandate to offer private health insurance and the replacement of Medicaid by state-run health insurance plans available to all with income-based premiums and cost sharing. In 1993, Bill Clinton proposed the “Health Security Act,” which would have provided universal health coverage to all Americans. But, over the past century, every attempt to create some sort of national healthcare coverage was defeated by the special interests – insurers, hospitals, doctors, and the pharmaceutical industry, as well as their bought friends in Congress – a cabal of profiteers and their stooges, who stood to lose untold riches should the power to ration and charge for healthcare be removed from their purview. Finally, in 2009, a Democratic Congress, without one single affirmative Republican vote, passed Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, but without a “public option,” which, if included, would have been the first concrete step in taking away the power to insure from the country’s large insurance companies. So, today, America is still the only industrialized, democratic state on the planet that does not have some sort of national healthcare insurance plan for all its citizens. And that must change. It’s time to expand what Medicare is doing for our citizens over 65, what the military and the Veteran’s Administration does for our men and women who currently or formerly wore the uniform, and what Medicaid does for the poor and indigent among us. The best possible solution to our current healthcare crisis is a comprehensive, single-payer, universal health insurance program that covers every American citizen. Period. It’s finally time to recognize that healthcare is not a privilege for the well-off, nor should it be a profit-making enterprise that makes insurers, drug makers, doctors, and hospital shareholders, wealthy. Healthcare is a basic human right. And just as every American can expect to have the fireman show up if his or her house is burning; just as every American has the right to a free public education; every American should have the right to expect that in time of need or emergency he or she has the right to affordable, adequate, and necessary healthcare. We must fix this outdated, broken arrangement between citizens, healthcare providers, and our government. Now’s the time![8] |
” |
| —Al Krulick's campaign website (2022)[9] | ||
2014
Krulick's campaign website listed the following issues:[10]
| “ |
|
” |
| —Al Krulick's campaign website, http://krulickforcongress.com/issues.html | ||
See also
2022 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Florida Elections Division, "Candidate List," accessed May 2, 2014
- ↑ Facebook, "Facebook Friends," April 22, 2014
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on February 14, 2022.
- ↑ Orlando Sentinel, "Democrat Al Krulick Sets Another Run At Congress," accessed Aug 7, 2014
- ↑ The Huffington Post, "Election 2014," November 4, 2014
- ↑ Project Vote Smart, "Krulick," accessed August 7, 2014
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Orlando Sentinel, "Disney's Pac Doesn't Back Employee Krulick," accessed Aug 7, 2014
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Krulick for Congress, “Issues,” accessed August 16, 2022
- ↑ Campaign website, "Issues," accessed October 30, 2014
