Hope for PinellasWhile Hillsborough Democrats are mired in a brutal intra-party war, Pinellas County Democrats for the first time in modern history may actually have found a leader who has transcended such petty problems.Consider these two e-mails from Democratic political consultants in Pinellas County about Chairwoman Carrie Wadlinger, who has been in office less than eight months:
"Love Carrie. First time I feel confident in our party chair in a loooonnnnnggggg time," wrote Peter Schorsch of PS Creative.
"The Pinellas Democratic Party is a million times better off with Carrie in charge," wrote Kevin King, a consultant working on St. Petersburg City Councilman Rick Kriseman's Florida House campaign. "Beside all the tangible improvements she has helped make possible, she is one of the most thoughtful, hardworking, honest people I've had a chance to work with during my short time in politics.
Wadlinger, elected chairwoman in November 2004 after losing a race for Pinellas Clerk of the Court, is a former businesswoman from Cleveland who has brought new energy, organizational skills and urgency to the Pinellas Democrats. It is a group that needed it. Unlike their counterparts in Hillsborough who can remember being in power, Pinellas Democrats have been wandering in the desert for so long that being in the majority is not a realistic discussion point.
Wadlinger has overseen the creation of a new website for the local party and an extensive renovation of party headquarters. She also mustered volunteers to work in small municipal elections this spring, a new effort for Pinellas Democrats. The party under her watch has a bank balance of $25,000, an amount she wants to double or triple by the end of the year.
But even Wadlinger acknowledges that it is not always fun and games at the local party level.
"I don't want to say that there's never some discord," she said. "There has to be; we're talking about political parties and a whole lot of people who have strong opinions about how things should be run."
But those who have seen her work, including some Republicans who prefer not to put their admiration on the record, talk about how she has mixed her ability to listen to lots of disparate groups with a certain amount of headstrong resolve to improve the party.
That is new for a local party that has not had consistent leadership for years. Its vice chairman resigned in 2001 after a political opponent plastered cars at his church and a Democratic meeting with handbills about his arrest on prostitution solicitation charges. It lost an interim chairman in 2000 when he decided he could not spend months defending his election strategy and budget to a membership that wasn't on board with it. The interim chairman's professional career: Crisis resolution and marriage counseling. And one former party chairman was criticized after he publicly backed a Republican for mayor of St. Petersburg.
So, given some of Wadlinger's predecessors, maybe she doesn't have to shine too brightly to look like a diamond. But she has done well recruiting candidates and will see her county be the most hotly contested turf for Florida House campaigns in 2006.
As for Hillsborough's problems?
"I have heard that there's some little grumbling going on over in Hillsborough," Wadlinger said without passing any judgment. In the end, she said, being chairman of a local party is a tough unpaid position. "It's not easy. We don't have easy jobs."
This article appears in Jul 20-26, 2005.