The Political Whore

Day two of the Sex & Politics news story line plays out with the revelation that a high-end New York stripper and a Tampa Bay area appellate court judge were, at a minimum, financially intertwined. 2nd District Court of Appeal Judge Thomas Stringer Sr. has mostly lawyered and PR’ed up about the details of his business deals with Christy Yamanaka, according to the story that Newschannel 8 reporter Steve Andrews broke last night:

Thomas E. Stringer Sr., who broke barriers as the first black circuit judge in Hillsborough County, and Christy Yamanaka, who dances at a famous New York strip club, met in 1995 at the old Malio’s restaurant on South Dale Mabry Highway.

Today, they are at odds over money.

Stringer, 63, now sits on the 2nd District Court of Appeal, reviewing the decisions of lower Florida courts. He won’t talk about why he and Yamanaka first struck up a friendship.

Stringer said he and Yamanaka, 47, were business partners in the purchase and sale of a house in Hawaii. He also acknowledges Yamanaka’s money went into his bank accounts, saying he opened the accounts in his name because she had terrible credit. Yamanaka’s contention he helped her hide money, though, is “not accurate,” he said

Stringer would not elaborate on why Yamanaka used his bank accounts.

The stripper told Newschannel 8 that the relationship was sexual as well as financial:

Yamanaka, in several interviews from New York by phone and e-mail, said she was born in Korea and lived in Japan. She moved to the United States with her family when she was 20. She attended college but did not graduate, she said.

She said she worked as a waitress in Japanese restaurants then, over the next 10 years, lived in Dallas, San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. In 1995, she said, after divorcing a Japanese national, she came to Tampa.

Yamanaka got a job dancing at 2001 Odyssey, she said. It was the first time she worked as a stripper.

One night, she said, as she was eating dinner alone at the bar of the old Malio’s, the judge sent her a drink. He said he could not recall how they made contact that night. Both said a friendship developed.

Yamanaka said the relationship eventually turned sexual. Stringer said the relationship was “personal” but he declined to elaborate.

Here is one of the photos that the cooperative Yamanaka supplied to Newschannel 8. (credit: tbo.com)

So let’s sum up what we know for sure, leaving aside the not-quite-disputed-but-not-totally-proved sexual allegations: Respected and intelligent local jurist hangs out at the No. 1 over-50 meat market in Tampa in the 1990s. (bad decision 1) He buys a hot looking stripper a drink. (bad decision 2) He stays in touch with her on and off over the years. (bad decision 3) She tips him off about an investment property in Hawaii where she lives, and he buys the house, shares access to a bank account with her and she lives there as a renter. (bad decisions, multiple)

Oh, and this from the St. Pete Times account this morning:

Since last spring, she has lived in a New York City apartment leased under Stringer’s name. He said he assisted her with the lease because of her bad credit and has had to pay the $1,600 monthly rent on two or three occasions.

“I was just helping a friend,” he said. But, he added, “I do not intend to renew the lease.”

You can hear Florida’s Judicial Qualifications Commission whirring up as I type.

Also, props to Andrews, who hit the lottery by having this story ready to go just as the biggest hooker-public official story broke out of New York with Elliot “Client 9″ Spitzer.

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The owner of the Green Iguana in Tampa tells the New Times‘ political writer Bob Norman that Gov. Charlie Crist used to frequent his bar in the 1990s and acted very, well, gay:

The story goes that the Florida governor frequented the Green Iguana, a bar in Tampa, back in the early 1990s when he was just starting his political career. He was less careful back then, people say, and during his partying at the Green Iguana, he was openly gay.

When I got Rick Calderoni, the bar’s well-known owner, on the phone, I expected him to stonewall me about it.

He didn’t.

Calderoni, who is gay, confirmed that Crist came into his bar quite often and that the two of them became friends.

Getting to the point, I asked him if he knew Crist to be gay.

“Yes,” he answered bluntly. “I just wish he would come out and admit it. That would be a great thing if he did.”

I asked Calderoni if he was certain that Crist is gay. He told me that Crist socialized with a gay clique of friends but conceded that he’d never actually seen Crist become intimate with another man.

So how can he be sure Crist is gay?

“The way he acted,” Calderoni said.

How did he act?

Calderoni laughed and said, “Very feminine.”

Norman admits this remains circumstantial evidence of Crist’s sexuality.

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New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer is only the latest in a long line of politicians undone by their sexual urges (or demons), including many in Tampa Bay. My former political partner Mary Repper once described it to me as a “rich history of lust in politics.” Here’s a partial list of the juiciest stories of the bunch:

• Gary Hart was busted by two enterprising Miami Herald reporters in May 1987 during his presidential primary campaign after the reporters staked out his D.C. apartment and observed Donna Rice leaving one evening. It didn’t help that he had dared the media to put to rest rumors of his marital infidelity by saying, “”Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.”
  (for the serious journalism junkies out there, here is in the inside account by the Herald of how it got the story, in part 1 and part 2.)
• Circuit Judge Gasper Ficarrotta sees his judicial career in Tampa come to an end after it is discovered that he was having an ongoing affair with one of his bailiffs — in his own chambers. They broke up and bailiff Tara Pisano (at the urging of her attorney) wrote a journal about the affair, which later become public during a courthouse corruption probe: “He used his office like it was his private apartment. He had a couch, a blanket, another blanket that folded into a pillow, two small pillows, a radio boom box, many candles, a TV/VCR combo, a microwave, a small refrigerator, a coffee maker, eating utensils, snacks, cold drinks, beer, wine, piña colada, margarita mix, all the comforts of a home. He wanted to have sex on his couch, in the dark, in the light, with candles burning, in his desk chair, in his hearing room, in his closet, on the floor, sitting, standing…. The sexual encounters in his judicial office were countless.”
• Pinellas Circuit Judge Charles Cope was busted in California in 2001, trying to break into a hotel room to hook up with a woman he met while at a judicial conference. The details of his two days of public intoxication and damned-near stalking of the woman and her mother can be found in the Supreme Court of Florida’s condemnation of his actions (download .pdf here.)

Bill Clinton. Wilbur Mills. Jim McGreevey. Larry Craig. Mark Foley. There’s so many more that even the unlimited space of the Internet prohibits listing them all.

Who’s your favorite? And is wanting sex really so bad, or is it the way they wanted sex?

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Down goes Spitzer!

• Hillary: You can be my wingman any time. Obama: Bullshit, you can be mine.
• How hard is it to release a tax return?
• Fingers crossed: Karl Rove tells a group of college students that he expects to be indicted by the end of the year.
• Three shot, two dead in Camelot.
• Down goes Ooze and Schmooze!
• Can anyone define “natural selection” for me?
• Welcome home Warrick Dunn.
• SXSW is all a Twitter.

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Not only does “spring ahead” suck, it might be bad for your health, too.

• Fresh off winning Wyoming, Obama dances with Ole’ Miss.
• Now Hillary, about that experience …
• Florida and Michigan Dems planning to mail it in?
• Without Walls Lakeland has a buyer … and it’s Without Walls Lakeland.
• A new website lets citizens rate the performance of individual police officers. The cops, naturally, are furious.
• The latest front in the war on drugs: Itty-bitty plastic bags.
• Welcome to Facebook, what’s your blood type?
• Sir Paul signs a huge deal, finally delivering his old mates to iTunes.

(Photo Credit: Bimsboy)

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McCain on the plane: Temper, temper

Crocodile Tears Dept.: “It’s sad, because clearly she’s a bright and intelligent person.”

Ashlee sings in Ybor for only 10 minutes — and that’s a problem because…?

Disappearing signs of Irvine

So will he really show up here?

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From Roger, who commented on one of our Fix It Now posts about suburban sprawl:

 You guys are idealists. And that’s fine. You believe in living near the heart-of-the-city for its own sake, for the energy, and the easy commute. And that’s cool. But most people aren’t like that. They’re pragmatists. They respond to incentives, not ideals. Some of the neighborhoods just north & east of downtown Tampa look like places you’d find in Johannesburg or off-the-resort Jamaica. That’s not a racist statement, but an observation anybody could make driving around that part of town on a Sunday afternoon – burnt out graffiti covered homes, roofs made of rusted tin & plywood, gang members openly displaying their colors on street corners. You won’t find a lot of idealistic middle-class people moving into those neighborhoods simply for the sake of promoting racial diversity or helping to put the kibosh on sprawl. They need to be properly incentivized to move into those neighborhoods – better standard of living, clean & safe streets, a few entertainment options, and most of all, it must be affordable & make sense to them.

A tip o’ the digital hat to Roger, and read his entire comment here.

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New feature time: I’m going to point out great conversations that occur on our comments, as well as the comment of the week. You win nothing except your 15 minutes of fame.

This week, the best conversation occurred in response to my latest post about the doings of Sen. Ronda Storms, and an anti-city law that would limit the finances of urban redevelopment districts, between Chris, Chris W, Bill Peak and Can’t We All Just Get Along. Here’s a sample:

1. Chris W Says:
   March 5th, 2008 at 6:07 pm eMaybe it’s time for Tampa and points west to form West Hillsborough County and leave the rest of it to the social conservatives so they can form their own inbred utopia.
2. Chris Says:
   March 5th, 2008 at 6:42 pm eLOL Chris W

   I grew up on the “west side” and to me anything east of US 301 was foreign territory.

   However, many younger, up and coming families have moved into Brandon, FIshhawk, etc in recent years (b/c of jobs and waning affordbility of home in Tampa proper)…give them some time to stay and get acclimated (unless the market drives them right back out first), and you might see a “moderation” across the county in a few years.

   And Tampa, the city, could stand to do a better job of moving itself out of the bubble for which it has viewed the world for years…Wayne was right in the aritcle, there’s 3x as many unincorported residents than city denizens…that’s a political fight the city lost 2 decades ago and will never get back.

3. BillPeak Says:
   March 5th, 2008 at 7:11 pm eOf course Help me Ronda would want to renew the city-county wars, these kooks thrive on dissension and the “us against them” attitude that is killing our county. Ronda and her master Hughes simply would never let the city and the county unite and heal towards the common goal of making the area a better place to live…”them gays is wiked”. In the united world of ideas and creativity they’d be lost and insignificant. They are only head honchos when they can mis-inform, play dirty politics, and buy off politicians….i.e. make things shitty for the rest of us.

   Without the “us and them” theatrics these losers would be exposed as the short-sighted cowards they really are.

4. Can’t We all Just Get Along Says:
   March 6th, 2008 at 1:11 pm eBill, I don’t disagree with your vew ont the policy issues.

   However, it’s not like the City of Tampa is brimming with gracious comraderie as well.

   The fact is the County - by nature of the role of local governments and by electoral facts - will always politically and fiscally hold the upper hand.

   That puts the city in a position of “suck it up and deal with it if you want to accomplish anything” that it frankly has never embraced, nor gotten past the denial that it is no longer top dog.

   And at the end of the day, perhaps the BOCC is representing their constituents well. Have you ever asked residents in the unincorporated county what defines their quality of life?

   If it comes down to 3 county residents opposed to mass transit versus one city resident in pro, you know how that vote is always going to go.

   And the more shrill you get calling those residents names like hillbilly, rube, ignorant, etc., the more they will glady exert that 3:1 power they have to strike you down in opposition.

Read the entire exchange here.

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Earlier this week I spoke to Tampa Bay state legislators about the start of the 60-day lawmaking session and their view of the work ahead, and I got two very different viewpoints to the question of the impact of the as-high-as $ 4 billion shortfall we face:

“It’s a bad year to be an incumbent. Florida people are still mad…. You’re an incumbent, and they’re ready for change. The economy being what it is doesn’t help that. It’s horrible year to run as an incumbent. You’re there, and times are bad, so you’re guilty.” — Rep. Ed Hooper, R-Clearwater

“I don’t think that is going to overshadow all the good things about Florida. Look outside right now in this state; the sun is shining. It is a beautiful day. We are not at war on our own home ground. We should be very thankful that we should have what we have.” — Rep. Faye Culp, R-South Tampa

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