The age-old question "What if they held an election and nobody came?" has finally been answered, if last Tuesday's primaries are any indication. Voter turnout in the state neared record lows; in Pinellas and Hillsborough, they set records for the lowest percentage of registered voters to participate in a primary.
By the numbers: Only 77,372 people voted in the primary in Pinellas, just 12 percent of the registered voters. It was worse in Hillsborough (isn't it always?), where 65,981 people cast ballots, only 1 in 10 of those who were registered to vote.
I'm not proud to say I was among those 9 out of 10 who didn't vote. There were extenuating circumstances, but no excuse. As I talked to other friends, fellow political junkies, I ran across a surprising number who didn't vote either. The most common reason given: Nobody good on the ballot.
More like very few good choices on the ballot in either county. And no exciting races. And little to no television coverage of the campaigns. And a presidential battle that is sucking all of the oxygen out of the political-attention room.
Circumstances, but not an excuse.
But even if we didn't vote en masse, there are a few lessons that we should take away from the primary balloting:
Pinellas Democrats are self-destructive. Quietly, behind the scenes in last week's elections, there was a coup among Pinellas Democrats. The victim was party chairwoman Toni Molinaro, who was generally credited with increasing the local party's coffers and keeping in-fighting to a minimum.
Molinaro was defeated in an election for precinct committeewoman in her south St. Petersburg neighborhood. The winner was Blanche L. Ganey (described in news accounts as a church administrator and Obama supporter) by a vote of 88-40. In order to remain as chairwoman at the party's December reorganizational meeting, Molinaro had to be an elected precinct committeewoman.
At least partially behind the backdoor ouster of Molinaro was the man she replaced in 2006, former St. Pete mayoral candidate Ed Helm.
"I'm looking for new leadership," Helm said in an interview with Creative Loafing last week.
The Pinellas Democratic Executive Committee for years has been among the most contentious and controversial DECs in the state, with wild swings from faction to faction. Helm's five-month term was among the wildest. There were accusations that his wife's PAC had violated election laws, and his own endorsement of some Democrats over others drew the attention and censure of the state party, which withheld money from the Pinellas organization.
When she beat him out for the job, Molinaro told the St. Petersburg Times, "He alienates people, and he alienates good people."
Looks like payback is a bitch.
Taking advantage of a little-known state law requiring that local political parties disband and reorganize every presidential election year, Helm and his band of stalwart progressives recruited candidates to run for precinct positions. Not that Helm can take all the credit; the Barack Obama campaign has also been working hard to fill those precinct committeemen and committeewomen slots as part of its election strategy. The campaign had sent out at least two e-mails to local supporters alerting them to the signup procedure.
Nothing in the Obama effort, however, seemed to target Molinaro.
Helm said his dissatisfaction with Molinaro is because she didn't recruit a full slate of Democratic challengers for the offices that were on this year's ballot and because of a drop in precinct leaders in the party, from 350 during his term to less than 200 today. "We still aren't doing what a good party does, recruiting good candidates and running those candidates," Helm said.
Molinaro could not be reached for comment.
Democrats who work behind the scenes bemoaned the ouster.
"I've never seen anybody work so hard and get so much done and accomplish so much," consultant Mitch Kates said. "If that is truly what happened, then it shows how their personal agendas are ahead of the party. That's somebody's personal agenda, and it's sad."
That leaves the Pinellas Democrats again on the verge of factionalism, just as their greatest chance for a Democratic president in eight years comes barreling toward them.
The Times has more clout in Tampa than at home. Or, probably more accurately, the St. Petersburg daily is more in sync with its Tampa readers than with the folks who read it in Pinellas. The newspaper's editorial recommendations were pretty near useless in Pinellas races, as the Times' candidates went down to defeat in eight out of 12 local races for County Commission, school board, Florida House and judge.
In Hillsborough County, however, the paper's choices were near-perfect in predicting the outcome of the races. Only one Times-recommended candidate lost, an outgunned Tom Aderhold against incumbent Ken Hagan.
Especially glaring is how the Times' judicial picks did: In Pinellas, both lost; in Hillsborough, all five won.
Now, before I start hearing from Times-men or anyone else, I get it that editorial endorsements aren't predictions of who will win or the work of some kind of electoral tout sheet. They are the people the newspaper feels would do the best job if elected, (largely) regardless of their ability to get elected. Still, a whole lot of politicians and political observers use the success of the editorial page as a gauge of how much clout the newspaper carries. That, in turn, impacts how politicians behave and whether they believe they can ignore future editorial slap-downs.
For many Pinellas Republican politicians, Times editorials have been of little concern for years. The lack of editorial impact was especially clear in the race between Neil Brickfield and Jane Gallucci for Pinellas County Commission. The Times recommended Gallucci — who is very close to powerful Commissioner Susan Latvala and was slightly better funded than Brickfield — and even wrote a negative editorial about how Brickfield was conducting his campaign and attacking Gallucci. But Brickfield, as vice chairman of the Republican Party, did his grassroots homework and beat Gallucci by more than 1,600 votes.
(Just for comparison, the Tampa Tribune editorial endorsements missed in only two races where they and the Times endorsed. But the papers' track records can't really be compared because the Tribune didn't endorse in any Pinellas-only races.)
The color of your skin matters. Former St. Pete City Councilwoman Rene Flowers edged out environmentalist Darden Rice in the Democratic primary for the Pinellas County Commission. Rice lost by 250 votes in a race that many thought was turning her way and in which she had a money advantage.
Flowers perhaps gave a preview of the power of the African-American vote for Obama in November with her performance south of Central Avenue in St. Petersburg. Flowers swept those precincts by huge margins — 212-102, 224-35, 178-52 and 222-36 in just four of the precincts in the south end of the city. More importantly, the black vote turned out; as high as 28 percent in one precinct, and generally around a 20 percent turnout south of Central Avenue vs. a countywide turnout of just 13 percent.
Flowers also swept large parts of Clearwater, Pinellas Park and Palm Harbor, although why is not exactly clear.
Now I'm not saying that Flowers' only appeal was her skin color; she had good name recognition from her terms on the City Council, and Rice didn't attack her record or try hard to drag Flowers down. But if that kind of excitement among black voters holds for Obama, you have to think he will be unstoppable.
Some perennial candidates should give up. Joe Redner lost his eighth race. He should end his dream of becoming an elected official and instead put his energies and money into creating an activist think tank that trains candidates and does research on how to push smart growth.
Warren Dawson, a local civil rights pioneer who has lost more races than I can remember, should just hang it up, period, after losing to incumbent state Rep. Betty Reed. There is no candidate with a better resume or worse interpersonal skills, leaving most people who meet him shaking their heads and feeling insulted.
Brian Blair has a real chance of getting beat. Running against a well-funded and (in some political circles) popular GOP incumbent like the controversial Blair is never easy. Throw in an anti-gay marriage referendum that could drive his voters to the polls and you have a tough nut to crack.
But Democrat Kevin Beckner, who beat two others in the primary, could just have a shot at it.
Beckner received 15,098 votes from all over Hillsborough County in a three-way primary race; Blair had just one opponent and did only marginally better, garnering 16,565 votes.
The challenge for both campaigns in the general election will be to turn out their voters. Beckner has the advantage of having Barack Obama at the top of his ticket, which may just cancel out the religious right voters who will surely vote yes on Amendment 2 and yes for Blair.
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2008.