Beckner vs. Blair: will the Killer B lose his job?
November 5, 2008 at 2:52 am by Wayne GarciaAt nearly 2 a.m., it still wasn’t clear, owing to another massive screwup by Hillsborough Supervisor Buddy Johnson that saw elections returns trickle out of his office when almost everyone else in the state had the job done.
Kevin Beckner was ahead by nearly 18,000 votes with 312 out of 323 precincts reporting. Republican pro wrestling veteran Brian Blair had run behind from the first returns, a surprise given the fact that the absentee ballots were among the first counted and they run heavily toward to the GOP. Beckner and his troops had set up a party at Gaspar’s Grotto in Ybor City, hoping to celebrate a win. They settled for watching Barack Obama’s victory speech and then huddling around a few laptops trying to figure out why the county race wasn’t settled yet. Beckner ended up leaving after 1 a.m. without a conclusion to his quest.
The race between the progressive Beckner and social conservative Blair dramatically illustrates the split that exists in Hillsborough County, shown in this map from the elections office; Beckner’s winning precincts are in blue, Blair’s in red and the outstanding precincts shown in grey:
