Even the best politician has an Achilles' heel.
The mayors in Tampa and St. Petersburg, Pam Iorio and Rick Baker, are no exception, despite strong records in changing their cities' political structures for the better and high profiles as possible future candidates for Florida governor.
Baker is a Christian Republican who practices a very visible brand of compassionate conservatism, cutting tax rates while encouraging downtown skyscrapers and forging a unique alliance with the public school system.
He was the first mayor in the city able to win precincts in both the racially mixed, economically poorer neighborhoods south of Central Avenue and the whiter, more well-off communities to the north and west of downtown. Before Baker, St. Pete politics had a clear dividing line along Central. Today, that political split is gone.
But Baker's shortcoming has proven to be the same one that was a drag on previous administrations — the police department and crime.
Baker is right to point out that the crime rate has dropped over the past 15 years, including a healthy decline from 2004 to 2005, the last full years for which data is available. But crime dropped all over the nation during that time, and St. Pete's drop did not keep pace with other comparable cities. In a 1990 comparison of five major Florida cities, St. Petersburg's crime rate per capita was the lowest. By 2005, it was the second highest, surpassing Tampa and Miami.
Neighborhood leaders complain about rampant drug dealing and prostitution in some neighborhoods. Outside of those areas, property crimes such as car smash-and-grabs give residents the impression that crime is worse than it statistically is. A chronic shortage of police officers (the number of sworn officers on duty in 2006 was at a six-year low), and an abrupt reassignment of community police officers — liaisons to the neighborhood groups — combine to make Baker's ear seem even more tin than ever on the issue of crime.
While he hasn't taken steps to try to strengthen his Achilles' heel, Iorio is using her re-election campaign to take a whack at hers — the "vision thing."
Iorio, a low-key Democrat who is more technocrat than party functionary, has been quietly criticized for lots of things, none of which makes her vulnerable to a challenge. Developers and builders dislike that it took forever to get approvals from the city. They also didn't like the new stormwater impact fee designed to pay for much-needed drainage improvements. Political operatives and lobbyists accustomed to unfettered access to the previous mayor, Dick Greco, bemoan Iorio's distance from Tampa's traditional power structure. She shook up City Hall employees, getting rid of some powerful bureaucrats who had been around since the days of Mayor Bob Martinez in the 1980s.
None of that has hurt her. But her lack of a grand vision for Tampa has not only limited her legacy but hurt the city's chances to compete.
Iorio is changing that. Her first-term agenda was "modest" and "bread-and-butter," in the words of the St. Petersburg Times. (The less charitable might substitute "unambitious" and "mediocre.") According to the re-election message she released last week, in a second term she would build on those basics, including successfully redeveloping selected neighborhoods and downtown, and add the big legacy piece to her agenda: transportation.
"We bear a responsibility to the public to build a transportation system that works for today, tomorrow and the next generations," Iorio said. "An investment in mass transit is critical."
That translates to — gasp! — new and/or higher taxes to pay for roads, buses and trains. It's a strong signal for her to send in a county that is increasingly anti-tax Republican and has consistently refused to fund forward-thinking transportation improvements for more than 15 years.
Iorio said a new regional transportation "plan should include a much-improved bus system, the construction of bus shelters, circulator systems in highly urbanized areas such as downtown and Westshore, and some form of rail service that links major employment centers and counties."
Iorio is trying to strengthen her "heel." Let's see if Baker follows suit.
This article appears in Jan 10-16, 2007.