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© St. Petersburg Times, published September 8, 2002
For weeks, Hillsborough Commissioner Ronda Storms has been accusing her Republican opponent, Arlene Waldron, of waffling on the issues to suit the bent of her audience.
Not so, says Waldron, who claims Storms is misrepresenting her sometimes nuanced positions.
For instance, she says she supports Storms' opposition to lewd programming on public access television. But she doesn't want to cut funding for the station as Storms does. She would rather promote it better to attract better shows.
Waldron says Storms has been using that stance to call her a waffler.
But on a recent survey conducted by Bell Shoals Baptist Church, Waldron was asked the question directly: Do you think taxes should be used to fund public access TV?"
Waldron's response: No.
She again said her answer was a nuanced one not reflected in the survey results summary. She said a communications tax on cable bills -- which she says is more of a fee -- pays for the station, which is fine with her. Property taxes are not and should not be used, she said, a point she said she made on her written answer to the survey.
"They're under the impression that it's property taxes that are paying for it, and they're not," Waldron said.
Along with some of the predictable questions about abortion and school prayer, the church also asked candidates whether they think it's "improper for airport security to 'profile' Middle Eastern men for security searches."
Of the county commission candidates who responded, and many candidates did not, most said no. (In case the double negative is confusing, that means they think profiling is okay.) They include District 2 candidates Ken Hagan, Denise "Dee" Layne and Denise Lasher, District 3 candidate Jacqeline Knight, District 5 candidate Stacey Easterling and District 7 candidate Brian Blair. Waldron didn't answer that question, and Storms said she was undecided, as did District 5 candidate Jim Norman.
Norman's camp dropped its nastiest mail piece of the campaign so far on Saturday. It's titled Web of Deceit, and it assembles excerpts from Easterling's least flattering press clippings.
Inside it pictures an Easterling stand-in looking into a mirror with former President Bill Clinton staring back.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most deceitful of all?" the caption reads.
It highlights campaign contributors who allegedly have business dealings before the commission, which Easterling pledged not to take to contrast herself with Norman. The Times could not confirm whether the dozen names listed have had dealings with the board. Easterling said most did not.
"Am I going to turn down everybody in the county who could feasibly have business with the board?" she asks.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the flier links her to Sam Rashid, the businessman and activist who is one of her biggest campaign backers. It includes a newspaper photograph of Rashid.
"This is a classic defense mechanism," said Easterling, a former prosecutor. "When a defendant gets caught and is in court, what's the first thing they do? Blame the victim."
Hagan's mailers are bashing his opponents over a $1-billion tax increase proposed by the Committee of 99, which was assigned three years ago to recommend solutions to the county's transportation problems. But his contentions are wobbly.
One of Hagan's opponents, Layne, wasn't on the committee.
Another opponent, Lasher, says she voted against the committee's proposals. The third opponent, Jim Davison, did vote for the taxes. But he said two weeks ago that he was "duped" by the county's transportation experts into believing no existing revenues were available.
One mailer, which calls Lasher "one of the first political activists to endorse" the taxes, is attributed to "Carl D. Rivett, independent of any candidate." Rivett is a contributor to Hagan's campaign.
"My opponents believe in more regulatory burdens," one of the Hagan mailers asserts. Asked at a campaign event for the basis of that, Hagan replied, "Higher taxes, more government spending, larger government equates to greater regulatory burden." Lasher has published her own version of candidate resumes in the race. It gives Layne credit for an endorsement by the Sierra Club, but overlooks two others: the St. Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune.
-- Bill Coats contributed to this report. Got a tip? Contact Bill Varian at (813) 226-3387 or varian@sptimes.com.