All seven seats on the Tampa City Council (as well as the mayor’s office) are up for grabs this spring, and fundraising is already heating up. City Councilman Shawn Harrison, who is jumping out of his district seat and into a citywide race against former Weekly Planet arts critic Mary Mulhern, says he raised more than $20K in a two-week period as he formally kicked off his campaign.
Harrison, who was introduced at his kick-off by former Mayor Dick Greco, says he has $125K in hand and expects to reach $200K total. That puts Mulhern in very familiar territory, running against a well-financed opponent. Mulhern was outraised nearly 8-to-1 in her County Commission loss to Rose Ferlita this year.
Harrison, who has hired the West Palm Beach consultant, Public Concepts, favored by state Sens. Tom Lee and Ken Pruitt, said money â specifically, the public’s money â will be at the forefront of his campaign:
My platform is just going to be fiscal conservatism. Iâm going to stick with the tax reduction, streamlining the burgeoning bureaucracy that weâve seen develop over the past four years. Iâm going to work on economic development. Those sort of issues are going to be huge in this election.
Disclosures all over the place: Mulhern used to work with me here at CL. Harrison used to be a client of mine when I was a political consultant, and my former business partner, Colleen Mackin, is involved in his campaign.
This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2006.
