The race for the Republican nomination for sheriff in Pinellas County gets more interesting by the day.
Bob Gualtieri, 50, is the incumbent, sort of. He was named by Governor Rick Scott to succeed Jim Coats last November when the then sheriff retired, and has served off and on in the department for 30 years.
But he's being challenged by former Sheriff Everett Rice, 67, who previously led the department for 16 years (1988-2004). Rice then served one term in Tallahassee as a state representative before working as an attorney in Barry Cohen's office.
Rice has always enjoyed a solid reputation, but that appears to be changing after a recent series of stories in the Tampa Bay Times has depicted him as moving alarmingly to the extreme right, an image he rejected as false at today's Tiger Bay Club forum, which also featured independent (and erratic) candidate Greg Pound, and the lone Democrat in the race, Scott Swope, who won't be on the ballot until November. Swope is a former deputy sheriff in the department who has been a practicing attorney for the past 14 years.
This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2012.