But Viera’s win means Democrats throughout the Tampa Bay area will continue to have an ally on the council, and on boards in agencies across the region, given that council members serve on the board of every local intergovernmental agency, including Hillsborough Area Regional Transit and Tampa Bay Water.
As the region looks to tackle climate change and fighting gridlock, Democrats will likely have an advocate in Viera.
Yet it’s also an awkward time for Democrats in Hillsborough County.
Going into the Dec. 6 runoff, at a meeting of the Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Committee, a power struggle among party activists and leadership came to a head on the night they were to be voting on a new chair, as noted at Floridapolitics.com. Ahead of the vote, current chair Ione Townshend reportedly barred nonpartisan elected officials (like city council members) from voting, which hadn’t been done before.
Those denied a vote were livid.
“I was there fighting for my right to vote. … I’m part of a party that’s supposed to be fighting against voter suppression,” Hillsborough County School Board member April Griffin told the Tampa Bay Times’s William March.
The move compelled several members to walk out of the meeting.
Some had seen the voting restriction as a deliberate attempt to block Alan Clendenin from becoming chair. Clendenin had been a possible candidate to replace current chair Allison Tant, who is leaving, but he would have had to be elected local chair in order to run. It appeared that progressives like Susan Smith, who heads the state party’s progressive caucus, wanted to challenge Clendenin, who is more moderate, March noted. Smith and others have long called for local and state parties to move away from moderates and toward bold candidates like Sanders. Clendenin said “activists” took over the process.
But even if the party’s split vexes victory-hungry Democrats, Tuesday’s win can at least be reassuring that sometimes unity is possible.
This article appears in Dec 1-8, 2016.