The Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Party met briefly Wednesday night to re-nominate John Dingfelder to be their candidate for the District one County Commission race. The former Tampa City Councilman, who resigned a week ago from the council because of his failure to submit paperwork informing the supervisor of elections in sufficient time that he would be quitting to run for the commission, stepped down from being a candidate on Tuesday in order to avoid a potential lawsuit that would try to take him off the ballot.
State election laws allows the Democratic party to re-nominate him, and they did last night and were done in fifteen minutes.
But this being a Hillsborough Democratic party meeting, of course there was controversy. But not about DIngfelder.
Instead, a question asked by party member Mark Beiro to party chair Pat Kemp about the party's rent on their current office revealed that tensions inside the Hillsborough Democratic Executive Committee remain very real.
It happened as Kemp entertained questions after Dingfelder had been re-nominated by unanimous consent. First party member Al Davis talked about why the party wasn’t getting behind efforts at the Charter Review Board (which met Tuesday night and will again on July 12) about the issue of a County Mayor having veto power, which voters supported in 2008, should be allowed to exist (the vote on whether to have a County Mayor has never gone before voters- the two related issues had to broken up). The Charter Review Board doesn't want to accept the popular vote. Kemp said the issue is complicated (it is) and that's why in part the party hasn't weighed in on it.
Then Mark Beiro, former talk show host of 970 WFLA and a party member, asked Kemp about how much the party was paying per month to rent out their new headquarters.
“I’m not going to go into this now,” Kemp replied. She then added that “we haven’t violated any of the budget or anything”.
“I didn’t say you did, “ Beiro replied.
“We’re not going into that business”, Kemp answered, to some laughter and one person saying loudly, “It’s a legitimate question!”
Kemp then said the information wasn’t a secret but she wasn’t going to turn over the meeting to such a discussion.
This article appears in Jul 1-7, 2010.