Scott Wagman has an unusual campaign brochure handout that is either creative or gimmicky, depending on how you feel about him; it's a recreation of paint-color sample cards held together by a little clear plastic ring, It is a nod to the paint manufacturing business that bore his name, Scott Paint, which he grew into a $20 million-a-year, 150-employee chain of stores throughout Florida before selling the business in 1998.
Wagman is well known in social and philanthropic circles if a newcomer to politics before announcing his campaign for St. Petersburg mayor. He and his wife — community leader and Signature Bank co-founder and chairwoman Beth Houghton — are well known in St. Pete social-philanthropic circles, donating $1 million to Great Explorations museum and serving on various nonprofit boards. He now works in real estate.
Wagman campaigns with the optimism, intensity and the seriousness of a CEO. He sat for this interview with one of his high-profile Democratic political consultants, Mitch Kates, listening nearby in the CL studio. Here is part of of our conversation dealing with police and public safety:
CL: What's wrong with the police department?
Wagman: I believe it's situation of top leadership and management. The situation with the police force comes down from the top as to what are the goals of the police force {and] what is the expectation of top leadership for the police force to provide the service to the community. In my experience, which is based in business and having to lead through people to accomplish a goal, if those goals at the very top are not clearly defined, are not clearly communicated, then the people who have to execute that work really can't do it effectively, because they don't know what they are supposed to do?
Would you be looking to name a new police chief instead of Chief Chuck Harmon?
The way I succeeded in business, and the way I'll succeeed as mayor of St. Pete, is to surround myself with the absolute best and the brightest that we can attract to St. Petersburg. I would have to look, I would not be true to my past as a business executive to not look at alternatives to the present structure we have in the police deparmtent right now.
You have talked about your desire to reinstate the ability for officers to have high-speed chases of fleeing criminals.
The people of St. Petersburg deserve the best policing we can afford. We give police guns with bullets, we train them. They are taught how to discriminate between an appropriate use of the gun to shoot someone and an inappropriate use. Right now a blanket policy of not allowing police high-speed pursuits is not an effective policy because the criminals, the perpetrators, know that. They know they can run and they won't be chased.
You have been on your campaign's "Mission to Listen," so tell me, what do you hear from neighborhood leaders about crime?
In a recession, crime becomes a hot topic all across the country. Whether it's north, south, east or west, black or white, Latino or Vietnamese, crime is a top top item everywhere I go on my Mission to Listen. It's to a large extent framed on the presence of police, specifically, downtown. What many of the restaurateurs, the business people, the potential purchasers of a home here are saying … is that where are the police?
Are street cops being constrained from doing their jobs?
I'm hearing there is a disconnect between the boots on the street, the street cop, and the upper-tier leadership. There is a difference between what the leadership is saying and from what I'm hearing from the street cop.
What is that message they hear?
As an example with the no-pursuit policy, a lot of the street cops are believing and feel that many of the tools they have at their disposal to fight crime, to not just fight it after it happens but to prevent crime, have been stripped away layer by layer from their arsenal of tools. They're being told… — by told it may not be directly but its by supposition — that we don't want any horrendous activity or event that could taint St. Petersburg as we had the 1996 "disturbances," as some people like to call the riots we had, or the tent-slashing event. It's this newsmaking headline event that is to avoided at all cost.
…In doing our job in providing for public safety for our citizens, occassionally something may be newsworthy that we can't control, but you have to go a higher level of citizen protection.
(Disclosure: One of Wagman's consultants, Larry Biddle, is the domestic partner of CL Editor David Warner. As a result, Warner did not participate in the assignment or editing of this story.)
More on the web
You can download the entire interview in a podcast at cltampa.com/politicalwhore. In the next few weeks, I'll feature similar one-on-ones with the other candidates as we get closer to the Sept. 1 primary election in St. Petersburg. Last week's podcast interview: Kathleen Ford. Next up: Jamie Bennett.
This article appears in Mar 11-17, 2009.