As we know, Mayor Bob Buckhorn doesn’t always see eye to eye with the county. The fact that it has exercised a de facto veto over Tampa-friendly, transit referenda speaks for itself. But when the County Commission voted to leave that Confederate monument outside the old County Courthouse, the mayor pulled no rhetorical punches. “There is no honor in treason, and there is no valor in enslaving people because of their race,” he declared. “That statue represents the worst of humanity, not the Tampa that we aspire to be.”
To Buckhorn, this had to be the equivalent of spiking the football. This is a gut issue, and it’s his back yard. The world, he fears, won’t view this as a controversial Hillsborough County monument, but as a monumental black eye on the image of Tampa.