On the day after conservative Republicans completed their takeover of Hillsborough County government:Brian Blair woke up groggy, trying to check his voicemail on a dead cell phone. He did not get to bed at the Hyatt downtown until well after 5 a.m. while watching late returns that showed him squeaking out a victory against Bob Buckhorn.
Ralph Hughes, one of the longtime architects of the emergence of Hillsborough conservatism, arrived early at his desk at Florida Cast-Crete, a pre-stressed concrete manufacturer, and reflected on how more and more Floridians are becoming fiscally and socially conservative.
At the Hillsborough Democratic Party offices, no one was answering the telephone.
The conservative revolution was complete.
President Bush won Hillsborough County. Favorite daughter Betty Castor lost a bid for the U.S. Senate. Republicans swept four county commission seats on the ballot, giving them a 5-2 margin.
A crushing day for the Democrats. Absolutely crushing.
"We have got to take a hard look at how we are going to compete in the rural areas," said state Rep. Bob Henriquez, consistently one of the few local Democratic bright spots. "We're getting massacred out there. For the Democratic Party, we've got to take a step back and look at where we are. Just when we thought things couldn't get any worse … ."
A far cry from the optimistic assessment of local Dem chief Janee Murphy in 2003, when she told the St. Pete Times' Ernest Hooper: "Tell people we're back in the game."
There was a time, back before 1994, that Democrats owned this county. Now-Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio sat on the County Commission, along with liberals like Phyllis Busansky and Ed Turanchik (before he became a developer, yes, he was a Sierra Club liberal). Joe Chillura was there (before he switched parties to become a Republican), as well as Sylvia Rodriguez Kimbell.
It was the Golden Age of Hillsborough County Commission Democratic politics, starting in about 1988 and lasting for eight years. In 1990, Democrats controlled the County Commission by a 6-1 margin. Taxes were raised for a progressive plan providing health care for indigents and the working poor. Gay and lesbian rights were openly debated and, to some degree, granted.
Imagine a local politician trying that today?
Only two Democrats remain in office countywide: Pat Frank, who jumped from County Commission to Clerk of Circuit Court, and Julianne Holt at Public Defender. The Sheriff's Office flipped from Democrat to Republican.
What about the next generation? The best hope, Bob Buckhorn, lost a very close race to Christian conservative former pro wrestler Brian Blair. Denise Layne lost a county commission bid to former three-time loser Republican Mark Sharpe. Layne has now lost twice herself, once as a Republican and now as a Democrat. I can predict with 100-percent certainty that if she wants to run next time as a Libertarian, she can complete the hat trick.
Blair won his race in traditionally conservative areas like eastern Hillsborough, Lutz, Keystone and Sun City Center, where he spent time on Tuesday greeting voters at the polling places. He won it by brutally attacking Buckhorn on some key conservative issues, mailing and phoning voters to tell them that Buckhorn voted to approve a porno business near a school (with no mention that the vote was encouraged by city attorneys) and alleging that Buckhorn would raise taxes. Last-minute independent calls went a step further, accusing Buckhorn of being a sexual harasser. (Buckhorn, for his part, took the high road and didn't attack Blair's vulnerability on an old assault allegation that the newspapers printed two years ago during his first campaign. You remember what Leo Durocher said about where nice guys finish?)
Blair won it by having almost no in-depth newspaper coverage of his candidacy. Trib columnist Steve Otto wrote that the race was "as dull as a zoning meeting." Sure, every race is dull if reporters don't cover it and produce probing stories. I just love the media hypocrisy: a race is dull until the two candidates start attacking each other, then the papers can trot out stories on how they have "gone negative" and editorial writers can bemoan the "tone" that the campaign has taken.
Why, for instance, was there so little coverage during the campaign about how Blair's strong Christianity informed his views and bolstered his candidacy? Blair wears his faith on his sleeve and is a devout born-again, a member of the powerful Idlewild Baptist Church (he joins fellow Idlewild member Ken Hagan on the board) who makes sure to say a prayer of thanks before engaging you in a lunch meeting. The county's social conservatives were wild about him. Local newspaper coverage of that key aspect of Blair? A Lexis-Nexis search for "Brian Blair" and "Christian" turns up one sentence in April in the Tribune about Blair being a "born-again Christian," and a similarly tiny mention in an unrelated Times story relating that Blair attends Idlewild.
Blair's win mirrors the path taken by conservative strategists such as Hughes and Sam Rashid in completing their dominance of local politics in the past decade. Develop strong-willed candidates who don't mind hard work spreading the word about their unshakeable principles and beliefs. Develop grassroots networks, using anything from church groups, business organizations, home schoolers or Second Amendment supporters to coalesce around these conservative candidates. Put into place networks of people willing to make independent expenditures to support those candidates and attack the opposition. Finally, understand that even though the County Commission deals with issues that aren't wildly partisan (there are no Democratic or Republican potholes, as Democratic Rep. Henriquez points out), that doesn't mean that the public views it as a nonpartisan race. Be consistent in pushing labels like "liberal" and "tax and spender" in defining your opponent.
So what can we expect from the "new" County Commission?
By most accounts, little will change. The departures of Jan Platt and Frank will certainly make the board less cantankerous. But on fundamental issues of growth, taxes and the size of government, the new board isn't that different from the old board.
Don't look for any new taxes or higher impact fees to be considered under this board's watch. As Blair said throughout his campaign, "We haven't got a tax problem in this county, we've got a spending problem."
Now, however, county commissioners can go forward with implementing a remaining set of recommendations from Florida TaxWatch in 1999 and 2002, moves strongly supported by folks like Hughes. TaxWatch calls for consolidating $70 million worth of duplicated services across county government. It urges commissioners to reconsider their decision against more managed competition for government service. (Read that as more privatization, meaning fewer government jobs, and unions will balk at that.) TaxWatch also called for an incentive-based productivity awards initiative similar to the state's Davis Awards that could save $20 million a year here.
Perhaps more controversial, TaxWatch calls for competitive bidding for the $5 million in public grants to community-based nonprofit charities. Given the right's feelings about such groups in the arts and left-leaning social services, that could be the hottest battle of all.
Errata: I neglected last week to mention one of my final campaigns that I am most proud of, for Democratic Pinellas County Commissioner Kenneth T. Welch. Ken won handily, as he should have.
This article appears in Nov 10-16, 2004.