Was Change Or Apathy In The Air?

By TOM JACKSON The Tampa Tribune

Published: Apr 10, 2008

Any conclusion emerging from an election that saw voters in four Pasco County cities avoiding the polls in droves may be limited to this: Congratulations, winners. You're on your own.

Newcomers swept out incumbents in Port Richey and took advantage of open seats in New Port Richey and Zephyrhills, suggesting change, as well as oak pollen, was in the air. But turnouts of just 30, 12 and 8 percent argue against the notion that the freshly elected are bodysurfing on the wave of a mandate.

Even Dade City - host to the election with the best plot, most intriguing characters and the potential for a seismic outcome - only roused participation by an anemic 23 percent.

Happily, those who bothered did the right thing, overwhelmingly rejecting the paranoia, conspiracy-mongering and rancor that followed Camille Hernandez into City Hall two years ago. Jim Shive and Robert Avila, both closely linked to Hernandez, absorbed one-sided thumpings.

How Not To Succeed In Politics

Returning incumbent Steve Van Gorden and picking Curtis Beebe to fill Hutch Brock's voluntary vacancy, voters in the town of boutiques reaffirmed their exquisite taste, manifesting a preference for clear-eyed grownups.

For their part, Shive and Avila - a former city employee and a technology troubleshooter, respectively - seemed willfully committed to losing. Both constructed patently dreadful campaigns characterized by suspicion, ill-will and secrecy.

Shive, fired by former city manager Harold Sample after 27 years on the job, ran on a litany of complaints, hoping to tap in to a dissatisfaction with city operations that, evidence now indicates, extends only to a tight circle of the self-deluded.

Boldly brandishing a crippling confusion about the concept of "public office," Avila scrupulously avoided public inspection. He declined audiences with local media and, claiming a prior commitment, spurned the season's only candidates' forum.

Avila's written excuse for missing the latter included and was undercut by complaints (also filed by an absent Shive) about the forum's format, in which disinterested panelists, two journalists and a Saint Leo University student posed questions to the candidates, apparently with insidious intent.

Promises To Keep

Hernandez was on the hook to go oh-for-three but for the narrow re-election of commission fixture and Hernandez sympathizer Eunice Penix.

At that, Penix's survival owes more to the fatal flaws in opponent Mike Agnello, a tavern owner arrested in August for failure to forward sales taxes to the state, than to her ambitions for the city over the next four years. Asked at last month's candidates forum to describe her top priorities for another term - scarcely a gotcha question - Penix fumbled for coherence before essentially coming up empty.

On the plus side, Penix returns to office unburdened by campaign promises. The same cannot be said for Van Gorden and Beebe, avowed advocates for leadership, thrift, efficiency, opportunity, cooperation, tradition and renewal, not to mention openness and accessibility.

Worthy targets, all. Hitting them consistently would restore future Dade City elections to the ranks of the uneventful.

Columnist Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.