No matter which point on the political spectrum you occupy, if you live in Tampa's District 6 you can now collectively celebrate something really special: the fact that it will be a while before you get any more of those nasty campaign mailers that have been recently constituting half of your trash.
Although, if you supported traffic engineer and mother of five Jackie Toledo's campaign, we do have some less positive news to report: It was Toledo's opponent, jeweler Guido Maniscalco, who pulled off a last-minute win by a teensy two-point margin even though he lost the three-candidate primary to her by 17 points earlier in March.
While early returns showed a lead for Toledo shortly after polls closed Tuesday, Maniscalco wound up pulling off a narrow win. Even Maniscalco was surprised, given the early returns.
“We won this election today," he said. "If you looked at all the absentees that were mailed in, and all the early vote, we were behind.”
He said he attributes the success of his campaign to a few things — including mailers from a third party PAC that supported Toledo, some of which even attacked his family members.
“I think the negative mailers actually helped us win," he said. "I don't think people liked that. Without those negative mailers, I think it would have been a different turnout tonight, but there you go.”
Toledo also said she thinks her campaign would have been better off if there had never been any nasty third party attacks on her opponent.
"It certainly didn't help me," she said at her election night watch party at Fodder & Shine in Seminole Heights. "It hurt me. So whoever's behind it, we'll find out.”
Toledo also said she's also definitely not a fan of how local media covered the race.
“You blamed me for everything," she told a couple of reporters. "But, you know, that's what your job is.”
Political observers speculated that the local Republican and Democratic parties (which backed Toledo and Maniscalco, respectively) placed such high stakes on the race because they're trying to enrich their candidate bench years down the road. Toledo didn't say whether that was the case, but she did say it was too soon to tell when her next run would be.
“It's like asking a mom, 'Are you going to have another baby soon?'" she said. "I've energized everyone that's here tonight, that supports me. I want to make them proud. So I will probably run again and I just don't know for what.”
Maniscalco, meanwhile, will get sworn in early in April.
As for the rest of us, we get to enjoy months, maybe years, of an absence of petty political squabbling.
Just kidding.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2015.