The Political Whore

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: Winning a mayoral forum or debate is not the most meaningful thing in a campaign. The myriad gatherings of the 10 mayoral candidates in St. Petersburg that have already occurred and are yet to occur likely won’t alter the Sept. 1 primary outcome one iota.

Why?

Because such forums are a place that can only do a candidate harm. Stumble, or stumble badly, and the media coverage can magnify it into major damage. “Win” such a debate and not only will the MSM mostly not declare you the winner, but you have only “won” in front of a few hundred people, at most.

The way campaigns are really won are through spending campaign contributions on direct mail, television and radio advertising and through a concerted grass-roots voter contact effort.

So that brings me to reporting the “results” of Monday night’s mayoral forum held by the St. Pete Pride organizers at the King of Peace MCC. The “winners”?

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Writing in HuffPo recently, Bob Ostertag insists it is:

It’s just plain sad what the gay and lesbian movement has come to. November 4 was so extraordinary, so magical. The whole world seemed to come together. Except for gays and lesbians in California. We were supposed to feel crushed over Proposition 8. And now the whole scenario is gearing up to repeat itself on January 20: the whole world will celebrate the inauguration of the first black American president and the end of the George Bush insanity – the whole world except gays and lesbians who will be protesting Rick Warren’s presence at the inaugural.

How is it that queers became the odd ones out at such a momentous turning point in history? By pushing an agenda of stupid issues like gay marriage.

“Gay marriage” turns the real issues of equal rights for sexual minorities upside down and paints us into a reactionary little corner of our own making.

Given the setback of Amendment 2 in Florida that is fresh in everyone’s minds here, it is a reasonable question to ask if the GLBT community has made a tactical or political mistake in pushing for the right to marry just as heterosexuals can. So I asked a few well-known Tampa Bay gay activists or politicos their thoughts and here is what I have received back so far:

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Budget-cutting in St. Petersburg prompted by property tax reform appears to have claimed the city’s 30-year-old anti-discrimination law.

Mayor Rick Baker’s proposed budget eliminates six jobs in the Community Affairs Department that investigated and upheld anti-discrimination laws in the city, leaving especially in doubt a human-rights ordinance that protected people in the GLBT community.

Without investigators or supervisors to check out the 200-300 discrimination cases filed annually, the city will stop taking complaints on Sept. 30. A memo to St. Petersburg City Council members said the move would save “several hundred thousand dollars” a year.

Along with the staffing cuts, the city is looking to repeal the human rights ordinance so it can shift the responsibility for anti-discrimination enforcement to Pinellas County government. Council members last week approved a partial repeal of the law. A final vote and public hearing is set for July 19.

Deputy Mayor Tish Elston said the move is designed to try to provide a smooth transition of those complaints to county government without anyone falling “between the cracks.”

But the change leaves in some doubt how the GLBT community may fare, since prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is covered by the city ordinance but not by the county’s anti-discrimination law.

“We certainly support a more efficient government that results in savings to the taxpayers,” said Jim Pease, the president of the Tampa Bay chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans. “But we don’t want the City of St. Petersburg to forget that they need to ensure that the civil rights of its citizens are protected and that enforcement is a function of government that should not diminish when economic times become challenging.”

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