Promises, promises. In 25 years of watching and writing about politics, I've learned to be wary of what candidates promise to do if elected. For one thing, who can predict all the issues that are bound to come up two years from now? Or how unforeseen circumstances may constrain the grand visions that most candidates espouse?What matters more in a changing world, I've decided, is values.
Studying this year's candidates for Tampa mayor, I looked at their past records — choices they've already made, things they have actually done — and tried to glean something about their core values and preferences. Speculating about anyone's inner light, of course, can be tricky business, especially when the person in question is practiced in the art of self-packaging. But basing conclusions on the candidates' demonstrated decisions, instead of just their rhetoric or their latest standings in the polls, seemed a good way to begin.
I decided to concentrate on the serious candidates. Of the five who will appear on the March 4 ballot, wellness author Donald B. Ardell has offered what is perhaps the most refreshing tangent of any mayoral campaign. Ardell understands that the most important decisions we make about the quality of our communal lives come from within ourselves. His promise to work for a city that is "fit, functional and free" appeals to the values of any responsible, self-actualizing person. And yet, his tendency to fit almost every political question into that mantra limits his range. He makes a great guru, but he would not be an effective mayor.
Neither would Charlie Miranda, who despite his dedicated public service over three decades (including flashes of principled independence), seems a throwback to another era. Listening to Charlie is like listening to Yogi Berra: You know there's some brilliance in there; you're just not sure where it is. Relying on unvarnished charm and a lifetime's network of friends, Miranda has plenty of yard signs throughout the city. But he hasn't bothered to assemble any real platform about what he'd do as mayor. Presumably, he'd just wing it, as he has this campaign. One gets the feeling that Charlie, finally forced by term limits to retire as the longest-serving City Council member, decided oh, what the hell, I might as well throw my hat in the mayor's race once again. But I don't think he'll be all that unhappy if he gets passed over again. (If there's one of the five candidates whom I'd most enjoy lingering with over breakfast coffee, it's Miranda.)
That leaves three serious contenders: Bob Buckhorn, Pam Iorio and Frank Sanchez. When I accepted this job a month ago, one of the prospects that pleased me was the chance to write for a newspaper that would allow its editor to say, "Bob Buckhorn is an unctuous weenie." That was before I met him. Surprisingly, I don't think I had before, except in passing. All I knew was his buttoned-down, well-combed persona, and his talent for distinguishing himself above a mostly invisible City Council with his well-publicized public morality campaigns. (Lap dancers beware!)In person, Buckhorn is relaxed and humorous, even self-effacing. When I visited him last week in his campaign office on the edge of Ybor City, we sat in a grouping of white leather pimp-sofas and chairs, the kind you might see in the show window at Larmon's. Several quiet women busied themselves with campaign materials at a table outside his door, but there was none of the chaotic bustle I'd seen earlier at Frank Sanchez's headquarters, or the almost military precision I'd observed the day before at Pam Iorio's. Maybe the relative lack of activity was because 4:45 p.m. is not such a busy time of day.
Anyway, Buckhorn was not the least bit offended when I asked him about the negative opinions that at least a third of Tampa's voters hold toward him — that he's a craven opportunist, a calculating courtier of special interest groups, and a self-righteous blowhard. He smiled the smile of the truly serene and said, "I've heard it all before." (He also said he wouldn't lose a minute of sleep if he didn't win the mayor's race — a surprising admission, perhaps, from a man who seems to have spent most of his working life preparing for this campaign. "I've got a wonderful wife and a beautiful daughter, and they don't give two hoots whether Daddy's the mayor.")
Buckhorn said his political values are based first "on what is it I'm trying to raise my family to do. I'm a product of Catholic schools — I'm Irish-Catholic — and if there's been a consistency and pattern in my life it's been an unwillingness to shade ethical issues with gray areas. It's either fundamentally right or it's wrong."
His insistence on fighting "behaviors that are not in the best interests of the general population" — nude dancing clubs, after-hour raves and the like — stem from his conviction that a city's "quality of life" is an elected official's most important responsibility. Like former New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani, Buckhorn believes if you don't deal with the little annoyances of urban life, they will become big annoyances pretty quickly. He also believes that a well-ordered city is more attractive to new businesses because the creative workers of the 21st century don't want to live in a city that isn't nice.
Buckhorn is fully aware that his overt moralism has hurt him politically, possibly gaining him as many doubters and outright enemies as friends, but he said it doesn't bother him. "I can always get up, look in the mirror and know where I stand. I wasn't elected to mumble."
One may agree or disagree with Buckhorn about all this. What makes him a worthy candidate for mayor is his flat-out knowledge of the nuts and bolts of city government. Buckhorn was chief aide to former Mayor Sandy Freedman before getting himself elected to two four-year terms on the City Council. All that experience has made him an encyclopedia. As a distinctly un-buttoned-down friend of mine in Mayor Dick Greco's administration told me, "Bob is the only candidate who would hit the ground running. He's the only one who would know right away what needs to be done and how to do it."
On the council, Buckhorn has been the anti-Greco, voting against such big-ticket projects as a new taxpayer supported art museum, an expensive parking garage at the west end of Ybor City, and the Ybor trolley. Bob's all about the neighborhoods. Why, he asks, should city residents pay for downtown monuments when neighborhood streets are not freshly paved and abandoned houses are allowed to stand and fester?
"People go home at night to a neighborhood, not to a convention center," Buckhorn frequently says, although, when pressed, he acknowledges this has nothing to do with any decision he might be able to make as mayor. The downtown convention center is, after all, nearly 13 years old, and it would behoove any mayor to support it. Also, now that so many of Tampa's future revenues are committed to paying off projects he opposed, Buckhorn doesn't offer many details about what resources he could actually divert in the future to, say, fixing potholes.
Still, if you want your streets clean, your entertainment fully clothed (along with everyone else's) and your neighborhood associations to be the final arbiters of what's good for Tampa, then Buckhorn's your man.
Frank Sanchez is Buckhorn's opposite — less interested in the nagging imperfections that will always plague a city than he is with "positioning" Tampa to compete more effectively as a city of the world. Economically, Sanchez thinks more about investments than he does about spending. My own belief is that this is the sort of strategic orientation any rising business or city needs. (Pam Iorio has a similar orientation; more on her in a minute.)So what has Sanchez done?
Well, he got his first political seasoning working for former Gov. Bob Graham, a savvy and honorable mentor, as Florida politicians go. He then went to work for the powerful Miami law firm of Steel, Hector and Davis, was earning a six-figure salary and was almost a partner, he says, when he decided to get another post-graduate degree, this time from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. From there he started working with Roger Fisher, an internationally respected pioneer in the field of conflict resolution and negotiation. Later, Sanchez started his own consulting firm, still in frequent partnership with Fisher.
That led to a job as special assistant to President Clinton for Latin American affairs, then an appointment to be Assistant Secretary of Transportation, in charge of negotiating international airline agreements among other things.
When Clinton's second term was up, Frank finally came home; decided to postpone the rebuilding of his consulting business, and started to run for mayor.
What values might such a resume indicate? Obviously, Sanchez believes no conflict is so thorny that it can't be resolved. He and Fisher worked as private diplomatic consultants for three years, off and on, to settle a 55-year-old border dispute between Ecuador and Peru, which had killed 300 people in 1995. Citizens of each country had overwhelmingly opposed previous settlement attempts in public referenda, but Fisher's team finally fashioned a compromise that allowed both countries to save face.
Conflicts can be untangled, Sanchez says, if you help adversaries focus on their interests, rather than their positions. Anyone who despairs at the polarizing politics we see every day at every level of government would surely welcome a politician who knows how to do this.
Sanchez also says his decision to leave a high-paying legal career, and again to forgo rebuilding his consulting business, demonstrates his bedrock commitment to public service. I considered checking whether anyone at Steel, Hector would tell me if this was really true, or if Frank had just made a gentleman's exit. I settled for asking Frank who some of his consulting clients had been. His reply: Visa Latin America, American Airlines, JP Morgan Chase and Co., the Inter-American Development Bank, the Florida League of Cities, the Petroleum Corporation of Venezuela.
The problem with Sanchez is, while he has the most impressive resume of anyone who's ever run for Tampa mayor, he has no local record. After he effectively introduced himself to a broad range of people, including many smart and wealthy business people, his campaign has stumbled. The newspapers may not have been completely fair in harping over his supposed flip-flops on Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla — have we really become so sound-bite-addicted that there's no room for nuanced answers? — but a good mayor, a good negotiator, knows how to package his words so they won't be misunderstood.One of the talents that can make a good negotiator is the ability to bond with opposing interest groups. With this comes the risk of seeming unprincipled. With Sanchez, it's worse. There's a nagging suspicion that he's not reliable. Last summer, he told a luncheon meeting of gay and lesbian activists that he unequivocally supports domestic partnership benefits for city employees. (Remember slain police officer Lois Marrero?) In his published answer to an Equality Florida questionnaire, however, he hedges: Such a policy change "may be considered."
This brings us to Pam Iorio, whom most people know nowadays as the Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor who kept Tampa from being the same laughingstock that other large Florida counties became in the 2000 and 2002 elections.
Iorio has a well-deserved reputation for efficiency, integrity and — guess what — courage.
Tampa newcomers may not remember that Iorio also spent eight years on the Hillsborough County Commission before getting elected to the supervisor's office in 1992. On the commission, Iorio voted on hundreds of issues, both large and small, including the direct oversight of $1.3-billion a year in taxpayers' money.
One of the most controversial decisions Iorio made was to be an early supporter of expanding the county's human rights ordinance to include sexual orientation. In 1989, she was one of only two commissioners (the other was Jan Platt) to support it. In 1991 she was part of a 4-3 majority to approve the new ordinance, after the largest and most contentious public hearing in Hillsborough history. (Full disclosure: Yes, I'm gay. Discount my bias if you wish, but I'm trying to make a larger point here.)
Iorio never wavered on the principle behind her decision, despite the near-certainty of a voter backlash. (A year later, Tampa voters repealed a similar ordinance; it has since been reinstated.)
"I have always fought against discrimination in every aspect of my public and private life," Iorio said at a recent candidates' forum. (Looking forward, Iorio supports giving gay and lesbian city employees the same rights and benefits as any other employee. No hedging.)
Also on the commission, Iorio was one of the architects of Hillsborough County's indigent health care plan, which not only offered preventive health care for the first time to thousands of poor people, but also helped to stabilize Tampa General Hospital's finances. She persuaded the commission to hire its first federal lobbyist, who successfully sped up the improvement of Interstate 4 between Tampa and the Polk County line, where dozens of deaths had occurred because of inadequate design.
On zoning issues, Iorio was a moderate, sometimes favoring individual property rights over the objections of neighborhood groups. But on larger matters of land-use planning, she was an early supporter of mixed-use, high-density development along major transportation corridors — a practical strategy that any true environmentalist knows will preserve more natural open space, as well as save on public infrastructure costs.
As chair of the county's transportation planning agency, Iorio urged other officials to take immediate steps that would make mass transit commuting more feasible in the distant future. She understood the synergy between transportation planning and land-use: "If you lay the groundwork for a light-rail corridor now, then land-use decisions can be made to support it in the future. The two go hand-in-hand. But because we don't have a long-range transit plan [now] with any specificity, we don't have the land-use plan to support it."
One of her last acts as commissioner was to support a successful $20-million bond referendum to establish and improve county parks. (City leaders declined to join in, though perhaps they wish now they had.) Voters will raise their own taxes if elected leaders clearly explain the need and show they can be counted on to spend the money as intended, she believes.
Iorio's late entry into the mayor's race — last spring she decided she couldn't both run the 2002 election and run for mayor; then she re-entered the race in late November — means she has not had time to lay out lots of specific plans for what she'd do as mayor. Nor have her opponents had much time to pick apart any weaknesses.
But she rejects any suggestion that she is merely a technocrat, an operations person, without the long-range vision of a candidate like Sanchez, who touts his ability to make Tampa a more prosperous center of international trade.
"I do have a vision, of a vibrant downtown with people living in it, with a thriving cultural arts district, of our poorest areas being lifted up with new businesses and jobs. I see a Tampa where every neighborhood has quality of life. That's a vision. It's not the same vision as someone else's. But it's a vision. And I have the ability to take us there."
My own conclusion is that Sanchez has more upside potential than the other candidates. He's smart; he's earnest in all the right ways. And I like the idea of a Tampa native spreading his wings in the wider world, then coming home to share what he's learned. But because of his unknowns, he's also the biggest risk.Iorio, on the other hand, is a proven leader whose intelligence, foresight and, yes, courage, would unquestionably make us proud in the mayor's office.
Sorry, Frank, but at this point, I think I'm voting for Pam.
Editor Jim Harper can be reached at jim.harper@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 163.
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2003.