The Political Whore

By George Niemann
PoHo contributor and R-LAND and UCAN activist

On Wednesday, Hillsborough’s Moral Courage Award became respectable again. The County Commission voted 7-0 to remove Ralph Hughes from the award’s name. It also agreed to not to assign any honorary name to this award, going forward.

I attended this week’s commission meeting to throw my 2 cents in when I saw that Commissioner Rose Ferlita had put the Moral Courage Award discussion on the agenda.

During public comment I thanked Ferlita for having the COURAGE to bring this disgraceful item out in the open. I told Commissioners Ken “Half-Truth” Hagan, Al Higginbotham, Kevin White and Jim Norman that they should be ashamed of themselves for putting the name of a convicted felon and alleged tax cheat on this award.

Don’t they realize that it’s not about repaying your financial backers by naming awards after them??? It’s about respecting what the award means to the people who win it. Many of these board members just don’t get it. Last year, when a previous award winner tearfully gave the award back to the commission after the Hughes renaming, Half-Truth Hagan took the award back from the woman and threw it in his wastebasket. They act like there are only two groups that exist in Hillsborough County, themselves and their developer money men. Citizens? who are they? Did they contribute the max to my campaign? No? Let them eat asphalt!!!!

Norman still thinks that having an award named after a convicted felon and alleged tax cheat is a great idea and he said so during the discussion. He thinks that Hughes was some type of hero because he fought for what he believed in. Fighting for what you believe in regardless of what others think might be admirable, but it’s the other things that Hughes was known for that made him less than respectable. He used his money and influence to strong-arm elected officials to favor business interests over public interest. His actions in that regard amounted to pure political patronage and, as such, were the worst examples of moral courage that I have ever seen. And Norman still wants to honor that? He will never get it.

Side Note: An interesting thing occurs when you address the board during public comment. The citizen-oriented commissioners look at you intently, focusing on what you have to say. Team Sprawl, on the other hand, shuffles their papers, looks at their watches, doodles on paper, twits on their blackberries, leans over to chat and joke with each other. They openly show their disdain for the average folks who weren’t heavy contributors to their campaigns.

Posted in Florida Politics, Politics, Tampa Bay Politics | Leave a comment