The Political Whore

The late Ralph Hughes, shown with state Sen. Ronda Storms in 2006 at a Plant City Republican event.

The Tampa Tribune is reporting that a new court filing by the Internal Revenue Service has more than quadrupled the amount of money it says it is owed by the estate of the late Ralph Hughes, a powerful anti-tax power broker in Hillsborough County.

From the Trib story:

Before he died last year, conservative powerbroker Ralph Hughes fraudulently took millions of dollars of his companies’ assets, leaving the businesses insolvent and owing nearly $300 million to the IRS, the federal government says in a new court filing.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

From TBO.com:

Hillsborough County commissioners will discuss dropping conservative activist Ralph Hughes’ name from the county’s Moral Courage Award on Wednesday.

Commissioner Rose Ferlita put the controversial issue on the agenda for discussion weeks after the federal government said Hughes died owing $69 million in unpaid taxes.

Ferlita told the Tribune on Tuesday that Hughes’ son Shea has sent a letter to the commissioners asking that his father’s name be removed from the award.

UPDATE: County commissioners did just that. The vote this morning was unanimous.

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor, “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.

Three Republicans continue The Suck.

Ralph Hughes died owing more than $60 million in back taxes.

Brian Blair beat the shit out of his teenage sons on Father’s Day.

Mark Sanford cheated on his wife.

None of this surprises me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Elaine Silvestrini over at the Tampa Tribune has a great story to go with all the Brian Blair news today: One of Blair’s benefactors, the late Ralph Hughes, a top Money Man and power broker in Hillsborough County politics and business, died owing millions of dollars to the Internal Revenue Service.

From her story:

The agency has filed a claim with Hughes’ family trust seeking more than $69 million in unpaid income and business taxes and interest for the years 2003 to 2007.

Hughes’ beneficiaries – his widow and two of his three children – are contesting the IRS claim, arguing Hughes paid millions in taxes.

After Hughes died at age 77 on June 27, 2008, Hillsborough County commissioners voted to rename the county’s Moral Courage Award for him. The decision was controversial, with detractors accusing commissioners of repaying their benefactor and injecting politics into what was supposed to be a nonpartisan award.

And the newspaper war continues.

The Tampa Tribune has “suspended” its summer internship program in a cost-saving move. Managing Editor Duke Maas told internship seekers in this e-mail (obtained by Romenekso):

Read the rest of this entry »

The renaming of the Hillsborough County Moral Courage Award in honor of power broker Ralph Hughes claimed another victim today: 1996 winner Eileen Hart gave back her award in an emotional moment at the start of this morning’s county commission meeting.

This from the tbo.com coverage:

Eileen Hart wiped tears from her eyes minutes after she gave back her Moral Courage Award at today’s Hillsborough County Commission meeting.

Two weeks ago, the commission voted to rename the award, which is given to citizens who challenge government, for controversial political activist Ralph Hughes. When Hart, who won the award in 1996, learned Hughes was a conservative power broker who helped finance commissioners’ political campaigns, the award lost its meaning, she said.

“It’s pathetic that they would name an award for a person when it’s a nonpartisan award,” Hart said outside the commission chambers. “It should have nothing to do” with politics.

Now, that took moral courage!

Hart is now a contender for our own Moral Courage Award, which CL took over after the county sullied it beyond repair. Here are the details on how you can nominate someone for their moral courage.

In the course of researching a story on the opponents to the upcoming Elected County Mayor referendum I ran across the burning question: with opponent Ralph Hughes having passed away earlier this month, what happens to all that money in his PAC, Let’s Make the World a Better Place Because We Have Been Here? Is it available still to fight against the referendum or support his usual slate of candidates?

The answer seems to be no. Earlier this year, in January, the remaining dollars in the PAC’s bank accounts — more than 700,000 of them — were spent, leaving less than $8,000 in the PAC that was originally endowed with a $1 million check from Hughes’ Cast-Crete company. The vast majority of the money went back to Cast-Crete, listed as a “prorata return of contribution.” The rest went to state and federal income taxes and accountants.