Call it political envy. Call it racism. Call it stereotyping. Call it the truth.
No matter what angle you take on the latest allegations against Hillsborough County Commission Kevin White — that he accepted thousands of dollars in campaign contributions with the promise that he would vote for land deals for the swindler who arranged them — you have to acknowledge that rumors of White’s darker side of politics have swirled for years. Maybe it was the expensive suits he wore. Or the sexual harassment complaint he faces. Or his ties to the late GOP power broker Ralph Hughes.
Giving White more than the benefit of the doubt and putting rumors aside as rumors, however, this is a very tough bit of bad PR for him to defend against. A convicted swindler, Matthew Cox, agrees to cooperate with the feds to get a break on his sentence and gives up White. He says he funneled lots of money to White (not illegal) and later reimbursed some of the straw contributors out of his own money (possibly without White’s knowledge and, as the Kuhn case illustrates, probably not even illegal). Cox was on the lam on federal charges before he could ever put a zoning case in front of White, so there was no quid pro quo that can be proven. Cox certainly didn’t wear a wire at that time.
The only issue raised in the story that could end up in legal troubles for White is the allegation that Cox gave him $7,000 in cash after one election. How do you prove that happened? Cash?? Unless White were dumb enough (allegedly) to accept the money and put it into his personal checking account.
White is reckless about his fundraising. He provided the lead to my “Money Men” investigation about local power brokers when, while giving me an interview for a campaign story, we were interrupted by an associate of Tampa lawyer and lobbyist Steve Anderson, who handed White an envelope bearing a check from one of Anderson’s corporate clients. There aren’t too many politicians out there who will knowingly schedule the delivery of a campaign check from a lobbyist at the same time and place they are giving a media interview. At best, it’s chutzpah. At worst, stupidity.
If Kevin White is dirty, he should go to jail. And God knows there is enough smoke out there to believe that there must be a fire. But if (and it’s a big if) he is innocent of crimes, he is certainly guilty of taking money from just about anybody out there with a greasy reputation and an agenda to pursue that isn’t always in the public interest. For a former cop, White certainly has no radar whatsoever about the motives of the people who are funding his races.
Or, more likely, he just chooses to ignore it.
