"What I do for a living may not be very reputable, but I am. In this town, I'm the leper with the most fingers."
—Private Investigator J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson), in The Two Jakes
Yeah, that's pretty much how I felt during much of my eight-year journey in Florida politics. The leper with the most fingers. And let me tell you, it wasn't easy keeping those remaining fingers.Let me digress. I spent the first 13 years of my working life as a newspaper reporter and editor. Your conventional newspaperman. A journalist. Got the college degree to prove it.
From Gainesville to Tampa Bay, I worked at some of the best newspapers in Florida. I did time at both the Doyle Harvill-dominated hungry newsroom of the late-'80s Tampa Tribune and reported in the bureau limbo of Clearwater at the St. Petersburg Times. I covered the Church of Scientology, local politics, city and county governments, commercial real estate, business, and health care. I wrote music reviews and feature stories. I did investigative projects of all types. I ran a small (but national award-winning) business publication and its online site at the birth of online journalism (that was less than 10 years ago, for those too young to remember.)
But in 1995, I grew tired of daily print journalism and the then-emerging flaws that have so visibly blossomed today with Jayson Blair and Dan Rather. After reporting on politics for years, I decided to get off the bench and into the game. I became … a political consultant.
Oh, it was glamorous. If you can call working the longest imaginable hours glamorous. Or taking calls from clients at all hours, hearing that they forgot to mention their bankruptcy case or that niggling problem with an old arrest they conveniently didn't volunteer, even though we always asked our clients about their backgrounds. Clients who couldn't stay on message. Who didn't listen. Who didn't get it.
"One thing I've learned about the truth: a little bit of it goes a long way."
—J.J. "Jake" Gittes
Oh, there were good clients, and I helped elect a lot of folks who I think did (and in some cases, continue to do) a lot of good for our community. Shawn Harrison. Rose Ferlita. Clearwater Mayor Brian Aungst. Frank Hibbard (who replaced the horrible Ed Hart, whom I also helped elect). Ed Turanchik. Mary Brennan. Calvin Harris. David Fischer. Ken Welch. Sheriff Everett Rice. Soon-to-be-Sheriffs Jim Coats and David Gee. A whole bench full of excellent judges, including George Greer, Claudia Isom, Lauren Laughlin, Marion Fleming, Linda Allan and Linda Babb. There are far too many others to mention here, so apologies to those I've left out. (For a slightly dated list of campaigns my firm handled over the past two decades, go to http://repper.com/ campaigns-elections.html.)
You see, I've been through the meat grinder and lived to tell about it. Hell, I even ran the meat grinder at times, I have to admit. I've represented liberal Democrats and the most conservative Republicans imaginable. Most recently, I finished a gig heading up House Speaker Johnnie Byrd's unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign. I've worked for Big Sugar, Zephyrhills Spring Water, Neighborly Care Network and the Philadelphia Phillies, among other corporate clients.
The point here is that I've been around. I've taken stands in political matters. Sometimes controversial stands. Sometimes contradictory stands on behalf of different clients. (Just this year, for instance, I represented Judge Greer, who ruled that Terri Schiavo's feeding tube should be removed, and Speaker Byrd, who pushed through a law that allowed Gov. Jeb Bush to act unconstitutionally and keep Schiavo alive.)
My friends from my daily newspaper days would say to me, "How can you work for that person?" I said then, and I say now, that I went into political consulting with no set ideological bent, agenda, pretensions or dreams of changing the world. I was, from day one, a political whore, a gun for hire, a button man working to communicate messages from disparate candidates and different campaigns.
Right or wrong, it was business, not personal, as Sonny Corleone so aptly put it.
For those who would attempt to categorize my personal political beliefs based on my client list, or something I said on behalf of a client, I say, "Good luck." You're probably wrong in your assessment. My personal political beliefs are far too strong and far too nonpartisan to fit into any category or stereotype. By and large, none of my clients fit neatly into my set of personal political beliefs, nor did the things I said on their behalf come close to how I really personally felt.
Which brings me back to the leper quote. The movie stank (it was the sequel to the brilliant L.A. film noir Chinatown), but the sentiment is valid. I always kept my reputation intact in politics, even if I was working for some unsavory characters. But I missed writing. I missed the freedom to say what I think, and not what my client thinks. I found less and less to like about what I was doing in politics. The campaigns got uglier.
So I quit. Given the wacky nature of Florida politics, I decided I'd rather go back to the sidelines and throw stones again.
I ran my final three races last week (Hillsborough and Pinellas sheriff candidates David Gee and Jim Coats, and Pinellas/ Pasco judicial candidate Jack Day), and have turned in my crossed bandoleros. The good people at the Weekly Planet are going to be kind enough to bring my firsthand knowledge of the sins of daily journalism, the state of civic affairs and the destructive nature of modern politics to you every week in "Political Whore."
I'll also write about hope for our community, strong leaders for our future, and the good things that go unnoticed but shouldn't. An alternative voice to the status quo from someone who helped build the status quo.
Just imagine the irony.
"Yeah, how many of those guys in office owe everything to me. I made them. Yeah, I made 'em, just like a — like a tailor makes a suit of clothes. I take a nobody, see? Teach him what to say. Get my boys to bring the voters out. And then count the votes over and over again till they added up right and he was elected."
—Edward G. Robinson, Key Largo
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2004.