Who could ever replace state Rep. Frank Farkas in the St. Petersburg-centered district he has held for the past eight years?
Well, given his ethically challenged performance, just about anyone. You could start at any local homeless shelter and find somebody who would understand (unlike Farkas) that, as a lawmaker, you should not accept expensive freebie junkets from the gambling industry.
The race to replace Farkas is widely viewed as this year's most important legislative election. Gerrymandering has eliminated competition in Florida politics, leaving only 10 or 11 competitive legislative seats statewide. House District 52 is the tightest of the bunch.
Once this race gets to be Democrat vs. Republican in the general election, expect a ton of party and special interest money to come flying in. It will get very ugly. For now, the primaries in the two parties have their own insider intrigue:
The Democrats: Liz McCallum's campaign office is just off Fourth Street N., in a dark-wood-paneled office suite where her staff puts together yard signs and an intern spends the day telephoning voters.
McCallum ran in this district in 2004, coming within about 3,800 votes of Farkas. She started running for the 2006 elections almost immediately afterward. She seemed a natural fit in a district that the Florida Democratic Party considers its best shot at stealing a seat from Republicans.
McCallum, 37, cut her teeth in California politics, working as a consultant in campaigns and initiatives. She worked extensively to get more women appointed to public positions in that state, helping found the California Coalition of Women. She is avowedly progressive.
But some Democrats never did quite take a shine to McCallum. She rubbed them the wrong way, was too abrasive, they said. And so one day in March, Bill Heller got a telephone call from Betty Castor.
Heller is a legend in the powerful circles of downtown St. Petersburg. The former 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper was CEO and Dean of the University of South Florida's St. Pete campus, helping turn it into a four-year, nearly stand-alone operation. He is chairman of the board of Bayfront Health System's board of trustees.
Heller, 70, said Castor asked him if he had ever considered running for public office and would he run for the District 52 seat. He said yes.
Heller would have some help that most candidates don't have in a primary election. The Florida Democratic Party had hired a local consultant to help all its House candidates. It selected Kevin King, who had represented Chris Eaton, a candidate who was running against McCallum before dropping out earlier this year.
King is actively assisting Heller's campaign. Still, McCallum said she doesn't "feel like I'm at a disadvantage at all. I know the voters. My name ID is higher."
Heller faces his own challenges inside the party. Pinellas Democratic Chairman Ed Helm has a Liz McCallum bumper sticker on his car, Heller said. McCallum is viewed (rightly or wrongly) as part of a pro-Helm group of hard-line progressives in the Democratic primary (the others are House District 53 candidate Charlie Gerdes and Norm Roche, who wants to unseat incumbent Democratic County Commissioner Calvin Harris).
McCallum denied being part of any pro-Helm bloc but does agree with the party chairman on at least one thing: "I refuse to get in bed with the Republicans." Her strongest attack on Heller is that the lifelong educator has given thousands of dollars to Republican candidates (including one in this race, Angelo Cappelli). Heller responds, "I can't say I haven't done that. I have voted for people who I thought would get the job done, regardless of party."
THe Republicans: At 36, Angelo Cappelli has all the look of a rising star in the Republican Party. A Yale education. Fordham law school. Time on Wall Street. He grew up in St. Pete, knows just about everybody who is anybody, and is connected to the powerful Sembler company by marriage.
All that has helped him raise more than $136,000, an astounding amount for a first-time politician.
He acknowledges that District 52 is his party's top priority, also. That fact is part of his platform. "St. Petersburg is the fourth-largest city in the state of Florida," Cappelli said in his one-room campaign headquarters in the Cocoanut Grove center. "If I don't win [in the general election], the fourth-largest city won't have a representative in the majority party in the House."
Cappelli is a fiscal conservative, but takes a reasoned stance on social issues, saying that the biggest mistake his party made in the past two years was to intervene in the Terri Schiavo death.
Cappelli faces a capable — if less funded — opponent in the primary, Ross Johnson, who will spend about $45,000 in the election. Johnson's trying to make up the difference in grassroots, by walking door to door. (Cappelli is canvassing neighborhoods as well.)
The 53-year-old real estate consultant said he has three decades of business experience to Cappelli's one. Johnson's platform is strongly centered on personal responsibility; he argues, for instance, that government doesn't owe citizens an expensive and quick fix to repair hurricane damage except in cases where lives are threatened, that residents have a responsibility to prepare to be without power and water for a week or two.
Johnson also wants to see "financial literacy" taught in schools, so that the next generation starts to re-learn the value of money and how to grow wealth. He sums up his race with Cappelli this way: "I tend to be more outspoken because I hate political correctness. He tends to speak more like a politician."
Disclosure: The Political Whore worked in Margo Fischer's unsuccessful 1998 campaign against Frank Farkas. Political Whore can be reached by e-mail at wayne.garcia@weeklyplanet.com, by telephone at 813-739-4805 or on our blog at www.blurbex.com.
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 5, 2006.