The Political Whore

TBO.com’s transportation reporter Rich Shopes puts Pam Iorio ahead of the rest of her TBARTA board colleagues this morning in a story about her desire to get a Tampa-centric rail system in front of Hillsborough voters in 2010. From the article:

“I think the city is ready,” she said this week. “I think the people are ready.”

Some members of that regional authority, the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, or TBARTA, think Iorio is jumping the gun.

“We need the support of multiple counties to make this work,” Clearwater mayor and TBARTA board member Frank Hibbard said.

TBARTA has had a pretty unified front until now, and while this isn’t much of a crack in that facade, it is a crack. But Iorio has increasingly been strident about her desire for a USF-downtown-airport rail line going in front of the voters, given that it will take a decade to build if it is approved in 2010. That puts rail, at its earliest, in the year 2020.

A month ago I sat down with Iorio for a 35-minute interview and she talked about transit as part of her explanation of why she is so methodical (and slow) in her decisionmaking. Here’s that excerpt:

I think being methodical works well because that’s my style, so I can’t be anything different than that. When you bring people in, you don’t make rash decisions. I give the example of the discussion of mass transit. I started three years ago in the State of the City speech saying we need to focus on transit and our bus system is very poor. Well then that started a particular cycle of conversation. Then the next State of the City speech I upped it a little bit and starting talking about, now we have to have light rail and then I produced a white paper on rail and how we had to take the Tampa plan and dust it off and re-do and get the MPO going. So that’s what we did.

Now here we are in 2008, and I think it’s been a pretty methodical approach of introducing the topic, of showing an interest in the topic, getting the MPO engaged to redo their plan, working with the Partnership to get TBARTA. It’s been a methodical process over the past three years. So you can say, well, why not just declare that we need to have light rail and go for it? Because it doesn’t work that way. That’s not how communities get light rail. No one just goes for it. It’s got to be a community consensus. You’ve got to build a dialogue. You have to get to the pont where other elected officials feel comfortable stepping out and saying, Yeah I’ll support a referendum for that.

But they’re not going to get to that point overnight. It’s got to become part of the community debate and consciousness. Now, today, light rail is an acceptable conversation for anyone to have. We’re talking about going to referendum in 2010, and I’m trying to push for a starter line that’s going to be from USF to downtown to Westshore. So there’s an example of something that you start by planting the seed of what should be a community dialogue and you start by taking the steps and it begins to evolve.

It remains to be seen whether Hillsborough County commissioners, who generally seem disinterested in the TBARTA process, would vote to put a transit tax on the 2010 ballot for Iorio.

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By now you’ve probably heard the punditry talking about McCain’s latest crazy negative attack. Here it is:

• Fuck McCain for dragging Britney Spears into this.
• Is the NY Times jumping off the “Low-Road Express?”
• Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert preps his exit.
• Rep. Barney Frank attempts to decriminalize Marijuana. I’m sure the congress will get to that right after they impeach Bush and cut off funding for the war.
• Chris Angel wows them in Clearwater.
• Don’t know when to stop clicking? You’re not alone.
• The sordid tale of the renaming of Sarasota’s Ringling Bridge.
• Welcome back: Cheech & Chong.

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This is a new video from Good magazine that boils down the history of the planet (but mostly of oil and food prices) since the dawn of civilization — all in about four minutes.

• Bush signs the government’s big mortgage bailout bill.
• McCain suddenly remembers he’s a Republican, decides tax increases aren’t on the table after all.
• Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (R) sees his career slide further down the tubes.
• A whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.
• Oil prices drop 16% in July.
• New drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease stops the disease in its tracks … maybe.
• Ex basketball ref Tim Donaghy foul’s out for 15 months after rigging NBA games.
• Don’t hurt the robot’s feelings.

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Our sister paper, the Chicago Reader, is opening its archive of stories about hometown-boy-made-good Barack Obama as we enter the home stretch of Campaign 2008. Like this bit from an early profile of Obama, then running for the Illinois Senate:

… [A]fter three years of law practice and civic activism, Obama has decided to dive into electoral politics. He is running for the Illinois Senate, he says, because he wants to help create jobs and a decent future for those embittered youth. But when he met with some veteran politicians to tell them of his plans, the only jobs he says they wanted to talk about were theirs and his. Obama got all sorts of advice. Some of it perplexed him; most of it annoyed him. One African-American elected official suggested that Obama change his name, which he’d inherited from his late Kenyan father. Another told him to put a picture of his light-bronze, boyish face on all his campaign materials, “so people don’t see your name and think you’re some big dark guy.”

Obama, running to be the Democratic candidate for the 13th District on the south side, was also told–even by fellow progressives–that he might be too independent, that he should strike a few deals to assure his election. Another well-meaning adviser suggested never posing for photos with a glass in his hand–even if he wasn’t drinking alcohol.

“Now all of this may be good political advice,” Obama said, “but it’s all so superficial. I am surprised at how many elected officials–even the good ones–spend so much time talking about the mechanics of politics and not matters of substance. They have this poker chip mentality, this overriding interest in retaining their seats or in moving their careers forward, and the business and game of politics, the political horse race, is all they talk about. Even those who are on the same page as me on the issues never seem to want to talk about them. Politics is regarded as little more than a career.”

The Reader has been writing stories about Obama since that profile in 1995, and you can find them here.

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Some of that old GOP desperation is starting to set into the campaign rhetoric. Two instances in the blogosphere today.

First, GOP Forida Chairman Jim Greer told a hyuk-hyukking crowd of Panhandle sycophants that his son once asked him what the difference between a Republican and a Democrat was:

“Republicans get up and go to work,” Greer said he told the boy. “Democrats get up and go down to the mailbox to get their checks.”

Yeah, that’s fresh and original, Jimbo. The Tallahassee Democrat account of Greer’s old welfare saw points out that the crowd “guffawed” in “a chorus of assent.”

I know lots of Democrats who are out busting their ass in this economy, and plenty of Republicans, too. Last I saw, the national unemployment stats weren’t cross-tabbed by party registration, but maybe that is good idea, right Jim? The reality is that after 10 years of Republican governors and leadership in the House and Senate, Florida consistently is at or near the top of Bad-News Economic Statistics lists these days.

In the second instance, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp blasted the media (what’s new there?) and seemed to chucklingly long for the day when journalism goes belly up because it is so biased. In a speech to some Miami business owners, Kottkamp said:

… the press exaggerates the state’s economic problems because its own business is in trouble.

“Print media is really archaic,” Kottkamp told the board of the Beacon Council, Miami-Dade’s nonprofit business recruitment agency. “They’re laying off people. Their view of the world is pretty skewed.”

He got called on his comments by a Miami Herald exec in the audience and quickly dissembled:

Kottkamp quickly backtracked, saying he was just advising the print media to look to the future online.

“My message is not that I don’t like you,” he said. “I love you.”

An interesting theory: the media is making Florida’s economy seem worse than it is because we’re all personally affected by the layoffs and cutbacks and it makes us dour and negative.

Any thoughts on that? Or should I spend the rest of the day linking to unemployment stats, housing starts, avg incomes, spending power, consumer confidence, etc.?

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Here’s a sneak peak of the movie everyone (especially angry conservatives looking to score political points) will be talking about this fall. Presenting the first trailer for Oliver Stone’s W.

• Bush to leave behind a $482 billion deficit — and that doesn’t include “the full cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential $50 billion cost of another economic stimulus package, or the possibility of steeper losses in tax revenues if individual income or corporate profits decline.”
• You know the nation is in trouble when the Justice Department is guilty of repeatedly breaking the law.
• “Nuclear weapons are so 20th century.”
• McCain has part of his face removed; Obama’s hip hurts.
• Obama narrows the veep list … maybe.
• BlackLight’s not just for your Jimi Hendrix posters anymore.
• Amy Winehouse leaves the hospital, Kelsey Grammer checks in.
• Helpful tips for hallucinating the natural way.

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As I wrote about last week, former Tampa Tribune foreign correspondent Tim Collie was laid off from his job at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a victim of the industry and new Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell’s plans to remake newspapers in his own image. Here’s a shot smuggled out to me of Collie’s desk after he was shown the door, a makeshift shrine to his work and awards:

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Janet Zink points out in a good story in this weekend’s St. Pete Times that Democrats lead Republicans in fundraising in two “significant” races in Tampa, that of the supervisor of elections and a South Tampa-based House seat. She writes:

Democratic challengers outraised Republican incumbents in the scramble for campaign funds in two significant Hillsborough County races.

Phyllis Busansky, who’s running for supervisor of elections, raised $48,000 in the past three months, according to a report filed with the county.

Buddy Johnson, the current supervisor, raised only $11,300.

Political novice Yolie Capin pulled in more than $17,000 and loaned her campaign $5,000. GOP State Rep. Faye Culp, who’s trying to win a fourth term in her District 57 House seat, raised $4,542.

The Elections Office race is clearly significant. We could quibble over whether House 57 is or isn’t, but I’m more interested in the larger picture; those are the only two contested races where Democrats lead Republicans in fundraising in Hillsborough County. The local GOP still has a tremendous fundraising advantage over the Democrats. The top four candidates in terms of cash on hand are Republicans: Ken Hagan, $172,894.26;  Brian Blair, $144,853.69; Doug Belden, $144,767.01; and Al Higginbotham, $89,461.90.

In contrast, the three highest county-level Democratic campaigns in terms of money left in the bank at this point are: Phyllis Busansky, $69,468.39;  Kevin Beckner, $61,930.82; and Joe Redner, $4,480.24.

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Sure, it seems like the McCain campaign is already desperate and fading. But remember, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than smart.

• T-minus 100 days and counting.
• Gallup puts Obama up nine.
• Study shows Obama treated more harshly than McCain in the press. (Press = McCain’s base.)
• McCain mucks up This Week; Obama takes on David Brooks on Meet The Press.
• Businesses see the cash-saving light. Soon, you will too.
• Boneing up: Cosmo’s top 20 sex tips of all time.
• Shia LaBeouf wrecks his truck, gets arrested for DUI.
• The Dark Knight keeps up the record-setting pace.

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The hammer is dropping at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and one name on the list sticks out for me, my former colleague at the Tampa Tribune, Tim Collie. (h/t to The Daily Pulp)

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