Florida House Speaker-designate state Rep. Johnnie Byrd doesn't get around much anymore.
Beyond his Plant City hometown and the dark places where legislators and lobbyists meet, Byrd is virtually unknown. Yet the Republican attorney will soon be one of the state's most powerful pols.
So it was with some anticipation that political junkies from all over Pinellas County traveled to St. Petersburg June 12 to hear Byrd in person, many for the first time.
Reaction was split. If you'll need something from the Legislature in the next two years, Byrd was charming, even statesman-like. If, on the other hand, you could care less and wouldn't mind seeing our state Capitol relocated to somewhere in Alabama (Byrd's birth state), then you had to wonder how this guy persuaded enough colleagues to give him a job called speaker.
To his credit, Byrd went light on the I'm-just-a-country lawyer-from-Plant City shtick.
But somebody has pumped poor Byrd so full of bromides from trickle-down economist Arthur Laffer that he doesn't appear to have any cranial space left for an original thought of his own.
Government bad, Byrd said, business good. Ever hear of Enron, Mr. Speaker-to-Be?
Tax cuts are almost as sacred as the Bible, added Byrd. Representative, you may want to get familiar with the term "budget deficit" by next year.
When audience members weren't stifling a laugh, some tried to get Byrd to answer a question with something more profound than rote memorized from an old Rush Limbaugh show.
Former St. Petersburg City Councilwoman Connie Kone — a registered Republican, last time we checked — attempted twice to get Byrd to explain why the tax-funded private schools he and other conservatives swoon over aren't subjected to the same student testing as the public ones they like to run down.
After Byrd's second evasion, Kone shook her head, gave up and sat down. "They don't have to take the FCAT or anything," Kone was heard to mutter.
—Francis X. Gilpin
This article appears in Jun 19-25, 2002.