Longtime political activist Pat Kemp is once again in the running for a Hillsborough County Commission seat.
She's running for the seat Commissioner Kevin Beckner is occupying, but will leave next year due to term limits. The lawyer and former Hillsborough Democratic Party chair brings years of activism on numerous progressive causes to the table. In a written statement sent out to reporters Monday, she said she wants to focus on easing the county's notorious traffic by pushing for more public transportation options.
“Tampa Bay is not attracting the top jobs, in part, due to our lack of transit options," she said. "People don’t know that many of our road expansions are now costing significantly more than bus or rail alternatives. We need to fund a robust transit system.”
But she's not the only one in the race talking about transit.
Kemp, who strikes this reporter as Leslie Knope-ish, faces candidate Brian Willis in an August 2016 primary. Willis who works for Connect Tampa Bay, a nonprofit dealing exclusively with solving the Tampa Bay area's deficiency when it comes to ways of getting around that aren't a car. Willis announced last week.
It's unclear who will be in the running on the Republican side, but a couple names floating around are ultra-conservative former commissioners/State Senators Jim Norman and Ronda Storms.
Should that happen, the general will likely be a battle royale between the two local parties for the countywide seat. Beckner, who is running for clerk of the court, has been one of two Democrats on the commission, and provided a sane perspective on issues at a time when Tea Party politics were dominant. To have someone like Storms or Norman on the board versus Kemp or Willis would steer those conversations that take place on the panel in a completely different direction, especially when it comes to transit and fair treatment of gays and lesbians.
Kemp, who just barely lost against Republican incumbent Commissioner Al Higginbotham last year, thinks she can beat 'em pretty handily. After all, she was out-raised dramatically by a well-known incumbent and lost by just half a percent.
Whoever does make it past the primary, the big question is whether the primary race itself will be divisive or a drain on resources that might be better spent on defeating someone like Storms or Norman.
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2015.