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- Christine Jennings (born November 26, 1945) is a banker and businesswoman, and a Democratic politician in Florida currently serving as the chair of the Sarasota County Democratic Party. In 2006, Jennings was the Democratic nominee for the United States Congress to represent Florida's 13th congressional district. The seat was left open when incumbent Katherine Harris ran for the U.S. Senate. In the 2006 election, 237,861 votes were cast, but for unknown reasons, 18,382 of the electronic ballots in Sarasota County recorded no vote for a congressional candidate. By the tally of the remaining votes, Jennings received 373 fewer votes than her opponent, Republican Vern Buchanan. Of the counted votes in Sarasota County, Jennings won 52.8%. If the missing votes had broken for Jennings by the same percentage as the counted votes in Sarasota County, the Democrat would have won the race by about 600 votes instead of losing by 368, according to a review by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. An audit of the machines found nothing wrong, and it is believed that some voters failed to vote for the congressional candidate because it was on the same page as the crowded governor's race. Other voters who failed to vote in the congressional race initially were able to catch the mistake on the review page of the ballot. Still others, who had voted, noticed their votes had not been recorded when they reviewed the votes at the end. There has been no explanation as to why some votes did not record after they were made. Jennings, a former Republican, never graduated from college and started her career as a bank teller at the age of 17. In 1992, she founded Sarasota Bank, which was bought by Colonial Bank in 2003 for $40.5 million. In her career as a banker, Jennings rose to become president, CEO, chairman of the board and director of Sarasota Bank. She also served as president of the Sarasota Downtown Association and president of the Sarasota Film Festival. (en)
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