Why are our stamps adorned with kings and presidents?
That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.
—Howard Nemerov, 'Power to the People'
Picking our leaders is always tricky, and often disappointing. Like actors — or even poets — what they say and what they do vary unpleasantly, and attractive personalities may disguise nasty tendencies. But in St. Petersburg's mayoral race, as Bill Foster has pointed out, the choice seems clearer than usual; and not just because the St. Petersburg Times has recommended Bill Foster. Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio clarified our choice by appointing the openly gay Jane Castor as its new police chief. Everyone agrees that this is an earned, and logical, appointment.
In St. Pete, it's easy to see Kathleen Ford making a similar brilliant choice. But after what he's said about gays, can you really imagine Bill Foster doing the same thing? Bill Foster's likable, but in these upsetting times (You lie!), there's been a line drawn on St. Petersburg's beaches. Foster's alignment with some of the right wing's most troublesome policies makes him a retro candidate (which is why Republicans want to keep this "nonpartisa — but a mayor who's anti-gay and anti-evolution will put the wrong kind of searchlight on our city, at just the wrong time. Jay Leno will be looking desperately for jokes.
For 2009, Foster's out of touch. Kathleen Ford was at St. Pete's Gay Pride Parade this year (as were Scott Wagman and Jamie Bennett), shaking hands and talking to anyone who would listen. Foster was absent. Now that he's a candidate for mayor he's changed his tune: a short while ago he thought LGBT was McDonald's Sandwich of the Week, and suddenly he's chatting at Georgie's Alibi, the Kenwood gay bar in Kenwood. But that just shows he's no dummy: He wants those votes.
Nevertheless, against Ford he won't win the "no dummy" vote: Everyone who commented on the original ten-person race agreed that she was the smart one. The knock on Ford is that she's too "hard-edged" to get along with people (she disagrees with this assessment, as do many who know her — though the recent fracas about the John Bryan tragedy makes one wonder). Still, in the Times' recommendation of Foster, they pointed out that "At times, Foster has spoken in haste" (anti-gay), and even written "intemperate letters" (anti-evolution), and they don't seem to hold this against him, which makes this "hard-edge" critique seem a bit sexist. Foster's excesses, after all, have been in two of a city's most important areas: its educational system and the equal treatment of its citizens.
Also, I admire Obama enormously, but watching all his conciliatory efforts go down the tube, it occurs to me that we might need someone a bit more feisty these days.
Richard Florida's widely touted 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class had a telling subtitle: Why Cities Without Gays and Rock Bands are Losing the Economic and Development Race. His thesis is that the vibrant growing cities of today (Austin, Boston, Seattle, Minneapolis, etc.) are fueled by large influxes of a young "creative class," which include prominent numbers of gays, artists, actors, musicians, students, engineers, restaurateurs — a mix developing in St. Pete along Central Avenue, and in Kenwood and Gulfport. Young workers like the lively and open lifestyle of these environments, which influences the businesses that employ them. One of our biggest problems has been attracting large businesses to settle here. We've got the colleges (Eckerd, SPC, USF); now we need the right leaders.
If Ford is as smart as everyone agrees she is, she'll make herself available, fair and polite in her relationships with the council and others. Part of a mayor's job is dealing with fools gladly, or at least not badly.
Foster claims his beliefs won't affect his policies. But he also believes the world was built in six days: that's not a good sign. It could make him overly optimistic about the new stadium.
In sum, I worry about Foster in the same way I worried about Sarah Palin, who would be simpatico with him. She has her strengths, and her supporters, as does he; but their basic beliefs are out of synch with at least two major, and healthy, trends: the complete acceptance of gay citizens in our society, and the complete exclusion of organized religions from our political system.
In George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra (1898), Julius Caesar says, not unkindly, about his friend, Brittanicus: He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
—Although Peter is the Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, he points out that his opinions, like his poems, are his own, "and hardly read by anybody." Peter and Jeanne Meinke will appear at the Times Festival of Reading on October 24th, at 11:45 a.m.
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 7, 2009.