The Political Whore

It must feel kinda shitty these days to be a past winner of the Hillsborough County Moral Courage Award now that county commissioners have renamed it to honor their campaign sugar daddy, the power broker who defined the term pro-growth.

That’s right. Hillsborough’s top award for civic activism has been renamed for the late Ralph Hughes, a pardoned ex-felon who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars he made in the precast concrete construction business to influence political campaigns in Tampa Bay. It will hereafter be called the Ralph Hughes Moral Courage Award.

Hughes died earlier this year at the age of 77.

The award’s new name has shocked and angered level-headed folks in Hillsborough — among them some past winners of the Moral Courage Award.

Cam Oberting, for example, who won the first one, in 1992.

“Hughes used his money and power to get his way,” Oberting said in the Tampa Tribune coverage of the renaming debate. “He gave big campaign contributions, paid for commissioners’ meals. … But to public officials or candidates who disliked him, he intimidated those that didn’t agree with him.”

That doesn’t sound like moral courage as much as hardball politicking and influence-buying. All five who voted to rename the award received beaucoup bucks from Hughes: Jim Norman (who floated the cockamamie idea), Ken Hagan, Kevin White, Brian Blair and Al Higginbotham. Mark Sharpe and Rose Ferlita voted against the renaming.

There’s another good point about the renaming made by this year’s winner, Dave Brown of Sun City Center.

“You’ll have to decide whether that’s an award you want to accept,” Brown said in the St. Petersburg Times. “Next year’s recipient, I think, will have a moral decision to make.”

We’ll make it easier for those folks. Given that the Hillsborough County Commission has ceded the moral authority to dispense the Moral Courage Award, Creative Loafing will take the baton.

I got the OK from the higher-ups here to give Moral Courage Awards annually, starting this December, for people in Tampa Bay who demonstrate, in the words of the county’s award, “exceptional ethical behavior and the moral courage to challenge the actions of government.”

It makes sense to have an independent arbiter for this award anyway; there is something that is, on its face, wrong about a government deciding who best challenges it. Wouldn’t the person who really raised the most hell, who had the most courage in the face of an intransigent government, also have possibly earned the enmity of that government?

Here are the rules:

• Anyone who is not in government or paid to undertake the actions they are being nominated for is eligible. Civic groups or other nonprofits are eligible as well.
• Nominees must live in Hillsborough or Pinellas County.
• The nominee must agree to be nominated.
• Nominees must have shown courage and morality in working to change our community for the better, against great odds or opposition, or against pigheaded government officials.
• Anyone that Ralph Hughes disliked or fought politically against gets bonus points from us.
• In deciding the award recipients annually, Creative Loafing will consult past winners, experts in morality and civic engagement and a bipartisan group of people involved in public affairs matters. We will highlight these civic winners in one of our December issues annually.
• To make a nomination, send an e-mail to wayne.garcia@creativeloafing.com with the nominee’s name, address and telephone number; a short biographical paragraph about the nominee; and why you think the nominee has exhibited great civic moral courage in Tampa Bay in 2008. Include your name, address and telephone number as well, please.
• The deadline for entries is midnight, Oct. 31.

Oh, and we promise never, ever to name the award after anyone, whether alive or dead or somewhere in between.

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