Category: Tampa Bay

The old line about going to a fight and a hockey game breaking out seemed all too apropos the other day. In this case, amid the shrill display of a high-powered, political assault weapon, a decorous candidate forum kept threatening to break out.

It was the Tampa Bay Tiger Bay Club gathering for county commission candidates representing Districts 4 and 5. Also known this day as the Ronda Storms Show. No wonder Stacey Easterling was a no-show. When the whole world is a stage, no one wants to be a floorboard upon which this actor treads. Storms, the poster pol for the dysfunctional body that is the Board of County Commissioners, is that perversely transcendent.

The Storms Trooper caricature as the brashly insulting, avenging angel of Southeast Hillsborough County precedes her. And she lives down to it.

She attacked her opponent, Arlene Waldron, from the get-go, launching right from her opening remarks. No perfunctory thank you’s to the forum sponsor or the attendees. Just ready, fire, aim; much of it personal.

But here’s what’s most disconcerting. Because of her pugnacious personality, cheeky body language and insensitive soundbites on issues, Storms becomes the issue. Arguably, to the detriment of the “issue.”

She acknowledged as much.

“I know that happens,” she said afterwards, “but I can’t help it. I’m not desperate to be popular. I don’t know how to be different. Then I would come across as a fake.”

Like it or not, Storms represents a legitimate point of view, inflammatory, off-putting rhetoric notwithstanding. She’s not the only one, for example, who saw through the FAMU Law School charade. Nor the only one who thinks sophomorically sleazy programming isn’t proper fare for public access television. And she induced a put-up-or-shut-up response out of those soapboxing about building moratoriums.

She’s not liked — let alone endorsed — by mainstream newspapers, watchdog organizations or the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce. And she clearly doesn’t care. But she does represent a bona fide constituency. Sure, she panders to it, but that’s hardly a novel concept.

“I have been the woman I have promised my constituents I would be,” she’s prone — and proud — to say. Often.

Ironically, she’s one politician who keeps her word.

The contention — and not just by the Bill McBride campaign — that Gov. Jeb Bush is trying to sandbag McBride via attack ads to assure a Janet Reno primary continues to look like a credible — but ultimately unsuccessful — strategy.

Even Republican insiders will admit on background that Bush has alienated too many not to be at least theoretically vulnerable. But much less so, they say, if he’s juxtaposed to the Samsonite candidate in the red pick-up.

Moreover, this fall Bush will have to contend with cleverly placed constitutional amendments and weather a torrent of national fund-raising and big-name Democratic surrogates. It’s a given that the flow of money and non-Hollywood heavyweights would be far greater for McBride, the preferred candidate of the party establishment. Then there are the pay-back wild cards represented by the “we-wuz-robbed” and “disenfranchisement” crowd, as well as those anxious to send an economic or civil libertarian message to George via Jeb.

There’s also a gut feeling — and not just limited to the McBride campaign — that McBride’s late media push plus some last-minute, epiphany-like assessments of Reno’s candidacy, persona and health will prove determinative.

Granted, Reno still has — however eroding — good poll numbers, and McBride didn’t take full advantage of last week’s debate forum to effectively introduce himself to Floridians. But one state GOP official — with Tampa roots and connections within the Oval Office — still unequivocally predicts: “McBride all the way.”

And he’s hardly pleased about that prospect.

This much we know. Come Oct. 19 — barring a hurricane hit, a meltdown between the city and HART or the wrath of former Mayor Sandy Freedman — there will be electric streetcars running in Tampa for the first time in more than half a century. Ridership numbers and economic impact remain intriguing unknowns.

Amid all the familiar names, faces and ceremonial fanfare surrounding the debut of the TECO Line Streetcar System will be a certain city planner who will allow himself the briefest sigh of relief. After the respite, WilsonMiller, Inc. senior planner Michael English goes back behind the scenes to continue culling prospects for station ($100,000) and car ($250,000) naming rights and resume ubiquitous trouble-shooting. For more than a decade he’s been a key streetcar player, including efforts to help land an important federal grant and lobby for special assessments on private property in the areas served by the streetcars: downtown, the Channel District and Ybor City.

English, an affable, mass transit true believer, is a seven-time president of the Tampa and Ybor City Railway Society, the organization responsible for promoting the return of streetcars to Tampa. He’s also president of Tampa Historic Streetcar Inc., the nonprofit corporation that will manage the system.

“It was always intended to be a tourist and visitor-driven concept,” states English. “But this is not a toy. It can help accomplish subtle things. Encourage new residential development; help attract more people to downtown. But, then again, it’s not just an economic development tool. It’s effective transportation within the urban center.”

English, known in South Tampa circles as the civic conscience of the venerable Hyde Park Men’s Club, is also an urban anthropologist.

“One of the key principles of cultural anthropology is people’s behavior and how it’s representative of people’s values,” explains English. “I’ve always believed the streetcar can’t fail here. It still rests in the hearts of local people. Always has.”

Pragmatic progress or utopian vision, it’s back on track Oct. 19.

There’s no denying that “Flags Along The Bayshore: Tampa Remembers 9-11” will be a sight for the ages: a patriotic ribbon of red, white and blue waving freely from Gandy Boulevard to Platt Street. It will be an impressively graphic reminder that we haven’t forgotten those who died Sept. 11. Nor what it is that is worth fighting for: our democratic way of life.

But where does that leave Sept. 10? That’s the date of the primary, an opportunity to actually participate in the process we all agree — and decree — is worth fighting for.

For the record, the first primary of 2000 drew 17.09 percent of registered voters. And that, mind you, was an improvement over ’98, when 13.05 percent of registered voters cast ballots.

“Flag-waving is wonderful,” says Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio, “but the greatest act of patriotism is voting. We can remember Sept. 11 by voting Sept. 10.”

Let’s really roll.

A fortnight ago Mayor Dick Greco was ground zero in a raging, geopolitical firestorm over his furtive foray to Cuba. His press conference, an emotional, meandering mix of sentiment, philosophy, rationales and travelogue outtakes, didn’t satisfy most of the media. Very little does.

Explaining a trip to Cuba and a meeting with Fidel Castro — given all the political nuances– is inherently dicey, especially if you’re wont to wear your emotions on your sleeve.

Here’s one columnist’s take on why the mayor did it. The reasons are as multi-faceted as the mayor himself.

* Curiosity: The mayor has long been, well, smitten. You don’t grow up in Ybor City — of Italian and Spanish descent — without an acute sense of Cubans and their homeland. Vestiges of the grandeur that once was had to be seen first-hand. Intimations of mortality only added to the sense of exigency.

Moreover, increasing numbers of Americans of influence and standing, including some in the mayor’s own circle of acquaintances, had gone. A number are Anglos. After a while, the well-intentioned, informative, second-hand accounts were becoming gnawing reminders of where the mayor himself had never been.

“I don’t hate anyone,” says Greco. “But I understand why anyone would hate Castro. I’ve seen what they left. It was gorgeous

We can’t possibly know what it’s like to lose a loved one in a tragic, violent way unless we’ve walked in a survivor’s shoes. Would we seek revenge as much as justice? Is the horrifically unforgettable also forgivable? We can’t know, and we can’t judge.

But we can salute Bruce Murakami for the compassion he showed in asking a judge for leniency in the case of the young man convicted of the manslaughter deaths of his wife and daughter. Murakami’s family was snuffed out in a fiery accident caused by a 19-year-old drag racer.

The judge heeded Murakami’s plea for mercy and gave Justin Cabezas house arrest and probation instead of jailing him for up to 30 years. In addition, both Murakami and Cabezas, now 23, will be part of a community-service dialogue with teenagers on the consequences of drag racing.

Moreover, another life wasn’t claimed by the tragic accident. Murakami says Cabezas now has the opportunity to make something of himself. If he, indeed, does, that will be the legacy of uncommon compassion shown under the most trying and tragic of circumstances.

When last we checked, the United States was still a country of laws, which is good. But where there are laws, of course, there must be lawyers, which somehow seems less good.

The incongruity is nothing new. Attorney jokes predate the Magna Carta.

Maybe it’s the perception that the adversary system is too much about winners and losers and too little about right and wrong. “Taken to the cleaners” has always been more about law suits than dry cleaning.

Perhaps it’s because a lawyer must represent, say, a John Walker Lindh or an Alejandro Avila. Maybe it has something to do with medical malpractice nightmares. Or counselors whispering Fifth Amendment advice to their corporate clients. Or barristers clogging up the system on behalf of the fat blaming fast food or the disabled demanding lap-dance access. And you can still make a pretty good case that there’s a basis for “the best defense money can buy.”

Perception, of course, is reality. It is also selective.

It also has been reinforced by that out-of-context, “kill all the lawyers” quote from Henry VI, which seems so supportive of lawyer stereotypes and drastic reform.

To the Florida Bar, however, enough is enough, including Shakespearean quotes. To Tod Aronovitz, its new president, such tales and perceptions, full of sound and fury and lawyer jokes, signify nothing but cheap shots. That’s why the Bar has embarked on a $750,000 public relations campaign to combat the stereotypes and shore up the legal image.

Locally, there’s no one better positioned to address the campaign than Tampa personal injury attorney Rod Brooker. In a previous incarnation Brooker was a prominent public relations practitioner. Before making a mid-career change, he had been the well-regarded managing director of PR for the late advertising icon, Louis Benito.

Brooker doesn’t mind weighing in on the issue. And, yes, he has sent — per Aronowitz’s request — an extra $45 PR-campaign-contribution along with his $265 annual Florida Bar dues.

He sees an obvious irony. “We lawyers are advocates; it’s our duty to do the best job we can for our clients,” Brooker explains. “When someone is mangled in a car accident, my only duty is to recover as much money as we can. In the course of events, it’s going to upset others, including the other driver, but I’m just doing the best job for my client.”

But yet, he acknowledges, “We don’t do a very good job of explaining what we do to the public.”

So any campaign, he says, would need to be heavy on statistics, such as the dollars and hours associated with pro bono work. “I think you probably start with the macro story of the good things Florida lawyers do in the aggregate,” says Brooker. “The good works of the Florida Bar

No one can possibly know what it’s like to lose a loved one in a tragic, violent way unless you’ve walked in a survivor’s shoes. Would we seek revenge as much as justice? Is the horrifically unforgettable also forgivable? We can’t know, and we can’t judge.

But we can salute Bruce Murakami for the compassion he showed in asking a judge for leniency in the case of the young man convicted of the manslaughter deaths of his wife and daughter. Murakami’s family was snuffed out in a fiery accident caused by a 19-year-old drag-racer.

The judge heeded Murakami’s plea for mercy and gave Justin Cabezas house arrest and probation instead of jailing him for up to 30 years. In addition, both Murakami and Cabezas, now 23, will be part of a community service dialogue with teenagers on the consequences of drag racing.

Moreover, another life wasn’t claimed by the tragic accident. Murakami says Cabezas now has the opportunity to make something of himself. If he does, that will be the legacy of uncommon compassionate shown under the most trying and tragic of circumstances.

S t. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler is to be commended for his piece illuminating the challenges and ironies in Pinellas County’s “controlled choice” program for its public schools. That’s the scheme by which the county hopes to retain a legal level of integration by convincing parents to choose a school other than the closest one.

Lots of luck.

This far removed from the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, the issue is no longer “separate but equal.” School boards have it within their wherewithal to ensure that, irrespective of neighborhood, comparable educational facilities, curricula and level of instruction are available. No one is revisiting Plessy v. Ferguson just because school boards can’t influence socio-economic and cultural factors beyond their purview.

What this is now about is the one politically incorrect stand that remains acceptable to the liberal educational establishment: Too many black children in a school is not compatible with a good learning environment. This should, of course, be insulting. That’s why no one will actually utter those otherwise racist words, but that’s the reason the “neighborhood school” concept is now oxymoronic.

* Upshot & snapshot: While in town for something called the Assistance Plus Summit, Gov. Jeb Bush found time to submit himself to the Q&A crucible of the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club in St. Petersburg. The likely upshot of his opening remarks on testing and reading and subsequent answers to education-related queries was this: precious few converts. From the mechanism and interpretation of controversial FCAT results to the debatable rate of increase in school spending.

What the governor did do, however, was remind attendees that it’s not just the ultimate connection and tons of money that makes him so formidable for re-election. Nor is it a dry sense of humor that can defuse antipathy toward the St. Petersburg Times .

Only Daryl Jones can touch Bush as a smooth talking, good-looking, bridge-to-his-agenda, fast-on-his-feet, wonkish-set-of-statistics-at-the-ready presence. But Jones, of course, will not be the Democratic Party’s nominee. At least for governor.

Before doing some drive-by sound bites for the electronic media, Bush posed for a formal photo. It was the traditional shot with the winner of that day’s “Fang & Claw Award,” which goes to the member who asks the toughest question. None, surprisingly, were about capital punishment or a certain Florida Supreme Court appointee. The winner was Darryl Rouson of the NAACP’s St. Petersburg chapter.

Rouson predictably asked Bush if he would appoint a black person to the Pinellas School Board to replace the recently deceased Tom Todd. Bush was predictably, politely — and appropriately — non-committal.

As for the fortuitous photo-op, expect to see the arm-in-arm, smiley-faced Bush-Rouson shot again along the don’t-concede-the-minority-vote part of the campaign trail. As one decidedly non-Bush supporter muttered: “The man is blest.”

*Tough on Terrorists? Jeb Bush took an editorial haymaker from Wayne Smith last week in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel . Smith, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington and former top U.S. diplomat in Havana, took the governor to task over the nomination of Raoul Cantero to the Florida Supreme Court.

Smith didn’t criticize Cantero for representing Orlando Bosch, who is, pointed out Smith, “linked by the Justice Department to over 30 acts of sabotage and violence, including the downing of a Cubana airliner in 1976 with the loss of over 73 innocent lives.” He faulted Cantero for being an “advocate and supporter of Orlando Bosch” and calling Bosch “a patriot.”

“Do Floridians really want a justice on their Supreme Court who cannot distinguish an act of patriotism from an act of terrorism?” rhetorically asked Smith. America’s man in Havana under President Jimmy Carter then lobbed this one over the Bush bow: “According to President Bush’s own definition, anyone who harbors a terrorist or supports a terrorist is a terrorist.

“President Bush had said that one cannot pick and choose one’s terrorist friends,” added Smith, “but that is precisely what has happened in the state of Florida