Life's been good to Ralph Hughes. More accurately, Hughes has worked hard to make sure that life would be good to him.
Hillsborough's highest profile conservative activist, anti-tax crusader and power broker owns a pre-cast concrete business that is the largest of its kind in the nation. The privately held Cast-Crete has annual sales of $150 million and "is very profitable," the company told Wall Street analysts earlier this year. After taxes and other costs, Cast-Crete is projected to make a $24-million profit.
But almost unknown is how actively Hughes' Cast-Crete has gotten into the turnaround business, buying up financially distressed companies and trying to make them into performers, thanks in large part to the talents of John Stanton, a Vietnam vet who runs Hughes' construction products companies and the new acquisitions.
The interrelated deals include:
• Taking over CyberCare Inc., a once troubled South Florida medical technology firm that was set to emerge from Bankruptcy Court this week.
• A proposed merger with EarthFirst Technologies, an alternative fuels business.
• U.S. Sustainable Technologies Inc., which is working on a biofuel gas from soybeans.
• Nanobac Pharmaceuticals Inc. and its investigation of nanobacteria to help produce alt-energy.
• A joint venture with Cofitral S.p.A of Milan, Italy, to build a $750-million alt-energy producing plant in that nation.
How ironic: The scourge of Tampa liberals is all up in the "green" energy movement.
Hughes is doing well enough to give $500,000 to Gov. Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future; to be building a brand-new waterfront home in the Westshore area of south Tampa on property that cost nearly $1 million; and to recently donate $1 million to his newly created political 527 committee, Let's Make the World a Better Place Because We Have Been Here.
Snappy name. How about an easy acronym for us scribes, Ralph?
The cool million is believed to be the biggest single political contribution in Florida politics. There isn't one bigger listed on the Florida Division of Elections' website, which covers the period from 1996 to the present.
So, the million-dollar question: What is he going to do with the newly endowed Let's Make the World? His incorporation papers, according to one report, say the committee's purpose is to "promote good government by attempting to influence the election of individuals to state and local office."
Exactly how, Hughes is not saying. He's declined to talk with the dailies about it, and he did not return phone calls for this story. But if I know Hughes, and if the sources I spoke with are correct, look for at least a large chunk of those reserves to be aimed at trying to defeat Taking Back Hillsborough's county mayor referendum.
Hughes vehemently opposes the referendum, and why shouldn't he? He has contributed money to six of the seven members of the current county commission and has strong sway with the status quo.
Shaking up the School Board: During my nine years as a political consultant, I probably met with 200 people who were running for office or wanted to start up a campaign. I got good at sizing them up pretty quickly and determining if they had a chance in hell of winning.
April Griffin has a chance. A good one.
Griffin is running for the School Board in Hillsborough County, which is at the front lines of the biggest issues in Florida: growth and education. When this Seminole Heights resident suggested we meet for a conversation at the new Starbucks in her neighborhood, frankly I was expecting just another "throw more money at education" liberal. I got a much more pragmatic candidate instead, one who'd have an ally in the School Board's only true maverick member, Susan Valdes.
Griffin points out that the school system must reform its spending and business practices, citing a 2002 critical audit done by accountants Ernst & Young that made recommendations to improve, among other unsexy items, recordkeeping, document storage and building maintenance. "To the best of my knowledge, not one of those recommendations has been followed," she said. (A district spokeswoman, however, said some of the recommendations have been implemented, such as improved recordkeeping, although she didn't have a complete list by deadline.) And when I cite Ralph Hughes' calculations that more tax money isn't needed to fix the school system's budget woes, that only a small percentage of the existing budget and its fat would have to be trimmed to come up with the $420-million shortfall in school construction funds it expects over the next five years, Griffin surprisingly says she can't argue with Hughes on that.
She comes across as a realistic critic of the school system, neither wild-eyed bomb thrower nor insider-supported status quo candidate. She talks about canvassing neighborhoods in her campaign and offers, "Do you know how many times I've heard the phrase 'good old boy system'" applied to Hillsborough schools?
Griffin's name is familiar to longtime Planet readers. In 2000, she landed a Best of the Bay award, getting kudos for founding the nonprofit Medical Resource Council after her mother passed. Griffin's mother had gone through a nightmare of a health care battle for insurance coverage that led to her being forced to divorce her husband in order to qualify for Medicaid. Griffin worked to get state legislation to fix the insurance problem, but it stalled in the partisan legislature after being introduced by a Tampa Democratic legislator.
Griffin, 37, is a Democrat as well, having served as the party's vice chairwoman, chairwoman of the Young Democrats and an office worker for Congressman Jim Davis. But the school board race is nonpartisan, so her campaign message is about issues not party. She says she would ask critical questions of the school administration, where she once worked in a temporary position in the public information office and as a substitute teacher.
Her race is crowded, but her main competitors would seem to be a pair of current school-system insiders: Dave Schmidt — who shows contributions from GOP mega-financier Lorena Jaeb and Republican consultants Ann Voss and April Schiff — and Ken Allen, whose supporters include several principals, school administrators and former school Superintendent Walter Sickles. Stephanie Desmarais Georgiades is also running. Griffin has raised more money than any of them.
The primary election is Sept. 5.
Political Whore can be reached by e-mail at wayne.garcia@weeklyplanet.com, by telephone at 813-739-4805 or on our blog at www.blurbex.com.
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2006.