Ronda Storms thrashing of incumbent Property Appraiser Rob Turner Tuesday night presents potentially one of the most interesting races this November, where she will now take on former state Representative Bob Henriquez in a race that Hillsborough Democrats think they can win.
For Rob Turner, the election results were the climax of a humiliating sequence of events that ultimately cost him his job. That sequence burst into the public consciousness on May 21, when the Tampa Bay Times reported that he had fired the agency's Human Resources director after he admitted that he had exchanged porn texts and emails for a number of years with her, including after he was married.
By the end of that week then state Senator Storms was filing her paperwork to qualify for the race at the Supervisor of Elections office on Falkenberg Road, and Turner's 16-year career as a relatively low key executive would never be the same. A series of other negative reports about his job duties didn't help either.
Democrat Bob Henriquez qualified to run for property appraiser at virtually the same time as Storms did. Unlike Storms, he didn't scold Turner about his transgressions. Storms said as a woman Turner had disrespected all women in the county, and by the 70-30 percent margin she won by on Tuesday night, who's to argue otherwise?
However, Storms was one of the few socially conservative Republicans who did win in Hillsborough on primary night.
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2012.