NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Karen Clancy first met Congressman Tom Feeney seven years ago when he helped her with several community projects when he was speaker of the Florida assembly.
This campaign season, she's returned the favor, serving as the Oviedo Republican's Volusia County campaign director.
Clancy said she's a big fan of Feeney for very obvious reasons that she believes people relate to and want from their elected leaders: "He's very strong on small government and letting people live the American dream."
Clancy said she's fighting for Feeney because "it's really a fight for America."
Feeney, whose 24th assembly district includes parts of Orange, Seminole, Brevard and Volusia counties, including locally New Smyrna Beach, Oak Hill, Edgewater and unincorporated Samsula, Silver Sands and Bethune Beach, is seeking his fourth two-year term in Washington. His Democratic challenger is Suzanne Kosmas of New Smyrna Beach, a former member of the Florida Legislature.
Clancy, 46 and single mom to 15-year-old daughter, Emily, said she has enjoyed making frequent visits throughout Volusia in support of Feeney, educating the public on the sleazy misleading TV ads put out by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that portrays him as being under the microscope of the FBI when he's not. Kosmas is not part of that ad campaign.
"They wouldn't be hitting him that hard if he wasn't that effective," Clancy said of the extensive negative TV ads. "
In her jaunts across the county, Clancy said residents want assurance that their elected officials are effective in Washington an looking out for their pocketbooks.
"It's really a fight for America and that's what we're telling everyone out there," Clancy said, adding "the country is so pluralistic -- divided. It's not so much a competition of ideas, but of vision."
Clancy, who lives in New Smyrna Beach and is the sister of Matthew Clancy and Margaret Michelbrink, owners of Clancy's Cantina on the beachside, said Feeney's biggest strength is he's the "family candidate" and "that family is America."
Clancy said working the campaign trail has given her the unique opportunity to explain the Feeney philosophy of small government that works for the betterment of families and individual rights and she's met these constituents in Deltona, Daytona Beach, and places in between, in addition to the home front here in New Smyrna Beach.
"They're all great Americans," she said, "and they deserve to be represented by an honorable man in Tom Feeney."