Saturday morning's 90-minute live radio debate broadcast from WTMP AM 1150 radio in Tampa had a little bit of everything, including a phone in appearance by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who called in and endorsed Thomas Scott for mayor, just days ahead of Tuesday's election.
After a few awkward seconds, Jackson said "Tom Scott is my friend of long standing…You have to vote in Tampa to determine your plight." He then mentioned the threat of unions being stripped of their collective bargaining rights, and also referenced the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination 43 years ago, and people being killed for the right to vote in the 1960's. "Tampa, don't miss this moment," he said. "Tom Scott is the man, if we vote our numbers and not our fears, if we vote our hopes and not our doubts, Tom can become the next mayor of Tampa. Brothers and sisters, please don't miss this moment." In all, the call lasted about seventy seconds.
Afterwards, Bob Buckhorn, who is hoping to take a solid share of the black vote, joked about the set-up, saying "My mom's going to call up any minute," as Scott's campaign manager, Ella Coffee, had ran into the WTMP studio's to tell the engineer to the clear the phone calls on the line to make way for the Reverend Jackson to come on.
All five candidates were present at the debate (in which this reporter participated as a panelist), though Dick Greco left about halfway through the live broadcast.
WTMP's programming is geared towards a black audience, and several of the questions posed to the candidates were about issues affecting the black community. None was more topical that a question that came regarding Attorney General Pam Bondi's push to tighten Florida’s standards for restoring civil rights to felons after they completed their sentences. In a move that shocked civil rights activists in the state, Bondi on Thursday said she wanted to investigate repealing the state's limited automatic restoration of rights for felons, which disproportionately affects the African-American community.
Bob Buckhorn, Ed Turanchik and Thomas Scott all said Bondi was wrong. Rose Ferlita, the only registered Republican in the race, said she wasn't sure of the details but said she looked at the issue the same way she does redistricting. "I've been a pharmacist in a rehab center for 30 years. So when you talk of rehabilitating, or serving time, you have paid your dues," suggesting that she supports the system that Charlie Crist implemented in 2007 that allowed for a quicker form of automatic restoration for those who have paid their debts to society.
The candidates were later asked by one of the hosts, Jarvis El-Amin, that in the light of the most recent shooting of a police officer in St. Petersburg by a black teenager, what could they do to improve relations between the police and some parts of the black community?
Ed Turanchik, who has talked about this during the campaign, said "resources" needed to be put back into establishing better relations between the two groups. "If people in the community don't feel comfortable with the police, that means crime is going to go rampant – not rampant, but it's going to be harder to fight it."
Bob Buckhorn said that the Sandy Freedman administration (of which he worked in) "more so than any other administration, helped to bridge the gap between the Police department and our communities of color." He said working on establishing good relations between police and the community needs to be worked on "every day," not once every few months or just as election season rolls around.
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2011.