STAND-UP GAL: A Mary Mulhern campaign sign in Tampa. Credit: Phil Bardi

STAND-UP GAL: A Mary Mulhern campaign sign in Tampa. Credit: Phil Bardi

When I first registered to vote, I was confident in my political beliefs, which were not so casually liberal as my mother's but not so aggressively anti-Republican as my father's. I liked Clinton, so even though I had mixed feelings about the candidates who ran after him, I voted with the Democrats anyway in the 2000, '02 and '04 elections. It was these same elections that led to my tremendous frustration with, and eventual indifference toward, politics. I changed my voter I.D. status to "No Party Affiliation" because I could no longer comfortably commit and because I'd decided that party affiliation was not as important as the individual candidates and the issues that each represented.

So I approached this race as unbiased as a lapsed Democrat can be. I'd met Mary Mulhern briefly and exchanged a few e-mails with her when she was a freelance arts writer for this newspaper, but I didn't feel any obligatory loyalty to her; and though my dad vehemently insisted I hate Rose Ferlita, I wasn't inclined to distrust her because I knew nothing about her other than her relation to the Ferlita Bakery (now the Ybor City Museum).

With Kathy Castor leaving her Hillsborough County Commission seat to make a bid for Congress, these two small business owners took advantage of the opportunity to run a fair, incumbent-free race.

Mulhern met me at Bean There, an independently-owned coffee shop in South Tampa; Ferlita at her own Seminole Heights pharmacy, Rose Drugs. Mulhern was accompanied by her 6-year-old son, Miles, who was off from school that day, while Ferlita's infamous cocker spaniel Murray ran circles around us during much of the interview.

Both agreed that the Hillsborough County Commission, as it stands, is dysfunctional. For Ferlita, the No. 1 issue is public safety — safer homes, streets and neighborhoods. Growth management is secondary, but despite having received a good chunk of campaign contributions from developers, she maintains that she will not be influenced or lobbied. "If someone wants a puppet on the commission, that's not me. I can't go in there with anyone thinking they're gonna tell me how to vote."

For Mulhern, the most crucial issue is "runaway growth, and how it affects our roads, schools, environment and overall quality of life." She wants to see responsible growth decisions — an emphasis on sustainable, energy-efficient building and more support of mass transit, including light rail and an expanded bus system.

My choice: Ferlita has more political experience and really seems to believe in her own integrity as a politician. But throughout writing this, I couldn't get my mind off the developers who've loaded up her campaign fund. Integrity or not, contributors expect a return on their donation. If a candidate doesn't pay attention to those expectations, chances are the money won't be there for future campaigns. And her emphasis on public safety seems calculated simply to play on voters' fears. The environment, unchecked development and the epidemic spread of monopolizing corporations are the issues that most concern me, and Mulhern seems like a candidate who will take them on. In this race, the nod goes to Mary Mulhern.


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Elections 2006

This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2006.