Declarations

Declarations

Anderson effort

“We feel like we put forth the effort that was required to win this race. We brought out the issues.”

— Gary Anderson, a former state fiscal officer from Jackson, who challenged Mississippi’s long-time Insurance Commissioner George Dale for the Democrat nomination for insurance commissioner and won by a slight 51 percent to 49 percent margin. Anderson now faces Republican candidate state Sen. Mike Chaney of Vicksburg who prevailed over Ronnie English of Vancleave in a 79 percent to 21 percent victory. The general election is scheduled for Nov. 6.

Dale effort

“I made an effort to tell the voters what I had done in my term in office.”

— George Dale, after losing the Democrat Party’s primary for Mississippi insurance commissioner.

Southern effort

“The insurance industry is neither monolithic nor monopolistic and the industry, with thousands of different companies, is actively competitive in most parts of the country. But that’s not the case along the coast, and we need to find ways to restore competition and bring more companies back for our insurance customers.”

— Alex Soto, a Miami agent who is president of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, addressing the Southern Governors Association meeting and urging the governors to use their “bully pulpits” to bring together the leaders in the insurance industry as they look for ways to ease the region’s coastal insurance crisis.

Hard lesson

“It was totally an accident.”

— Victoria Hosner’s husband, David Hosner, in the Naples Daily News, explaining how his wife accidentally hit the gas pedal and accelerated backward, running over a man giving her a driving lesson. The victim had to be airlifted to a hospital. Hosner continued to drive in reverse and caused about $6,000 worth of damage, authorities estimated.

Police boot

“They had leather soles and when I hit the brake, my foot slipped off and hit the accelerator. It was my fault.”

— Michael Herko, a 40-year police veteran in a small rural north Florida town, who crashed his car into a convenience store when his cowboy boot slipped off the brake. The accident led the department to prohibit officers from wearing cowboy boots with leather soles while on the job.