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Even if candidates can deliver, should they?
© St. Petersburg Times I spent the early part of New Year's Eve perusing the Web sites of the candidates for mayor of Tampa, talk about having a good time. Bob Buckhorn's site seems to say, "It's all about me." Witness myriad photos of Bob in rooms with fake wood paneling, at picnics and parties and rallies, and the kind of tome-like resume you write when you can't say something really good, like "Winner, Pulitzer Prize, 1998." If Bob wanted to convince me he's all over this town, he did so. He gets around, and that's good. But, strangely, although it's all about him, I was left with this question: Who is he? Mirandaformayor.com, on the other hand, is short and sweet. It seems to say, "You all know me already. If you like what you see, vote for me." Charlie will even give you a ride to the polls. Frank Sanchez has the slickest-looking site. It uses all the current buzzwords and phrases -- like creating "a powerful new brand identity for Tampa." Now, this is just the kind of thing we love in Official Tampa: How can we make ourselves look good rather than actually be good? At least Sanchez goes as far as to use the word "exciting" as an adjective he'd apply to Tampa. How? Unclear. Eliminate the 6-foot lap dance rule? No, actually that's one of the positions set forth by wellness guru Don Ardell, who as mayor would make Tampa America's fittest city. To that end he would personally work out in a different neighborhood every day, lay sidewalks wherever there are none, add bike lanes, jogging and walking trails. He'd also promote a civic philosophy based on fun. Now here's a guy with a plan. No surprise, Buckhorn and Sanchez set Tampa in a race for high-tech against places like Silicon Valley and Research Triangle Park in Raleigh-Durham. Buckhorn even notes in one of his multitudinous lists of "facts" that the "13-county area surrounding Tampa Bay, also known as Silicon Bay," is home to X-number of tech corporations. Silicon Bay? The footnote reveals the source: the Tampa Bay Partnership. I just got back from Raleigh-Durham. It's home to Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, two of the nation's top schools. Emphasis on the word "top." That's what attracts the high-tech companies. And, do you like traffic? North Dale Mabry and Bruce B. Downs are nothing, nothing, compared with the traffic in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill. The sprawl? Huge residential complexes are being carved out of the forests helter-skelter. And the economy isn't so great there right now, either. There must be some other way to grow the economy that's more suited to Tampa. International commerce, Sanchez says. We've got a port, after all, and it can be used for more than cruise ships. We've got an airport. We've got a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual population. To me, this makes sense. International trade would bring good jobs for people who live here -- rather than trying to attract brain trusts from places that are, frankly, more progressive and intellectual than we are. Can Sanchez deliver? I have no idea. "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood," Ardell quotes Daniel Hudson Burnham. That may be what's happening here now. No one I know seems very excited about this election. Things are so blah, in fact, that we're expecting one more candidate to announce at the late date of Monday, but she had better have something good to say. It's not as though there's nothing to talk about. On New Year's Day, as on all big holidays, Tampa buses stopped running. How do people get to work in the malls, the restaurants, the hotels? I do not consider a city a real city if you have to drive around it in a car. We need a workable mass transit system, for one thing, and we need it now. I might vote for a candidate who has a clear plan for making that happen. -- Sandra Thompson is a writer living in Tampa. She can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com . City Life appears on Saturday.
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