The roster of guests that gathered at Mary Ann Stiles' Hyde Park law offices on Jan. 5 was — by political standards — A-list: Republicans and Democrats alike, elected officials alongside business leaders.
Folks like former Democratic state Education Commissioner Betty Castor, former Tampa Tribune business editor Harry Costello, Republican political consultant Mark Proctor, former state Supreme Court Justice Fred Karl, La Gaceta publisher Patrick Manteiga, Bob Graham's former chief of staff L. Garry Smith, and former Republican County Commissioner Dottie Berger McKinnon, to name a few.
They came to hear — and in some cases to sign onto — Stiles' pitch to let voters decide whether to create a single elected official at the top of county government, commonly called county mayor.
Stiles has been well known to readers of the business section of the newspaper for years for her mastery of the state's workers compensation system. She personally revamped state laws on the subject on more than one occasion.
But now she finds herself at the head of a potentially powerful movement, one that would bring greater Tampa in line with the other urban counties in Florida that have already created a strong-executive form of government.
"I have lived here my entire life," Stiles said a week later in those same offices, "and I don't like the way our county is going."
Stiles undertook the petition drive — some would call it a quixotic tilting at windmills — after resigning as the lobbyist of the Tampa bus system when County Commissioners Ronda Storms and Brian Blair proved openly hostile to the transit agency's future and the county's involvement in it. She vowed change and created a political action committee, Taking Back Hillsborough County. She and others insist that Hillsborough is falling behind because it has an outdated system of government — seven individuals on the county commission, none of whom has enough power to set a direct course to fix transportation, economic and other problems.
"That is our problem," Stiles said, "that is why we're not moving forward. We don't have one person running this thing. You can't run a government like this by committee."
She faces obstacles. Her committee must gather 45,000 signatures in the next six months to get on the 2006 ballot. The ballot language must pass a high standard in dealing with just one specific, single change (so it will create a county executive but not, for instance, expand the size of the county commission as well). Her group must raise an estimated $500,000 to run a successful political campaign. It must educate voters that this is not consolidation and won't do away with city government.
And it must convince enough voters to pass the change. Similar proposals have died on the vine, as voters were suspicious of placing too much power in one person's hands. Then there's divide between Tampa's progressive politics and the Republicanism of the rural and suburban county voters. On top of that, throw in the growing power of social conservatives, who will likely think this movement is aimed at lessening their influence.
Stiles said the initiative is not aimed at any particular individuals (like Storms or Blair) or designed to further the careers of herself (she vows not to run) or Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio.
"This is just purely for the people," she said.
Similar proposals for a county mayor have died on the vine because voters were suspicious of placing too much power in one person's hands.
Tampa City Council maneuverings: Technically, there is only one person signed up for the 2007 Tampa city elections so far, and that is perennial wanna-win-but-can't candidate Joe Robinson. The real intrigue remains off the official radar screen, as far too many big names are jockeying for far too few open seats. Rumors of who is in and who is out in which seats have flown for the past seven or eight months.
In the past week, the rumor mill got even wilder.
Let's start in District 6, the West Tampa-centered seat now held by Mary Alvarez, who is term-limited. Unsuccessful mayoral candidate Frank Sanchez had set his sights on that seat, but now another unsuccessful mayoral candidate — and former city councilman — Charlie Miranda is viewed as ready to run there. That led to lots of whispering at Democratic icon Skippy Garcia's recent funeral that Sanchez was backing out of that seat in the face of a tough challenge from Miranda. Sanchez said this week that he won't make any decisions about his future until April.
Pinellas Democratic in-fighting: The rumor mill was also churning over in Pinellas County last week as Democratic activists and one political blog reported that Democratic Chairwoman Carrie Wadlinger had quit her post.
Not true, Wadlinger says. She did have some heated words with a handful of Democratic Executive Committee members after last week's DEC meeting over her frustration about "disruption, disorderly conduct and in-fighting" being caused, in her opinion, by unsuccessful St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Ed Helm and his followers. Wadlinger said she lost her cool and said, in frustration, that if things kept up the way they were she would resign.
Those who oppose her leadership snapped up those words, citing a DEC by-law that says if a chairwoman quits even verbally it can't be withdrawn. They began spreading the word that she was gone.
Wadlinger says of her critics, "They're not that lucky."
I got you, babe: The Fort Myers News-Press' political reporter, Betty Parker, is from the old-fashioned school of shoe leather and straight-forward reporting. While she doesn't break a lot of statewide stories, she does know everything going on down in one of Florida's fastest growing, and most Republican, regions.
So we pass along this great story from Parker regarding Connie Mack IV, the son of the former U.S. Senator and a member of Congress. There is a growing controversy about whether Mack, a pro-family conservative, really lived/lives in his congressional district at any time. Mack was a state representative from Fort Lauderdale when the Fort Myers congressional seat opened. He bought a condo in Fort Myers to establish residency, but his now-ex-wife has said in court documents that they family didn't live there.
Parker wrote that court "filings refer to the condo Mack bought in south Lee County as 'a small political stake in the sand' and 'a vacation residence.'"
Juicier is the news later in the article that Cornelius McGillicuddy IV (his real name), great-grandson of the Philadelphia Athletics baseball legend, is seeing U.S. Rep. Mary Bono of California. Yes, the widow of pop star and congressman Sonny Bono. You can find the story at www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060112/NEWS01/601120402/1075
Political Whore can be reached by e-mail at wayne.garcia@weeklyplanet.com or by telephone at 813-739-4805.
This article appears in Jan 18-24, 2006.