Sean Shaw, Ben Diamond and Chip Merlin
Sean Shaw, Ben Diamond and Chip Merlin

I was sent an article last night with the headline, Sean Shaw for Attorney General? The article correctly noted that Sean is an insurance attorney with the Merlin Law Group. It may also be correct that some unknown people are asking this question for unknown reasons.

As his colleague and employer, Sean talks with me a lot about the time pressures to do his job well as an attorney and as a public servant. He has repeatedly told me the biggest job, and the only job he wants to do, is represent those in his district as a house representative.

The above picture was taken two weeks ago, the night after I testified about insurance matters in the Florida Senate. Between me and Sean is Florida House member Ben Diamond, who was celebrating his birthday. Ben served in the Office of Insurance Regulation at the same time Sean Shaw was the Florida Insurance Consumer Advocate. We talked about nerdy insurance issues facing Floridians, insurance legislation, and we talked about how I could make up to Florida’s Insurance Commissioner after I said the closed claim statistic he cited was a misrepresentation of facts. We talked about how much time it takes for them to do their jobs for their constituents and how much they were enjoying their work doing so.

One thing we did not talk about was either of them wanting to run for anything other than their own seats next year. These public servants were not taking anything for granted, and they seemed like they had to keep “making things happen” to prove their worthiness for reelection.

So, “no.” “No” is the answer to the article and to the headline of this post.