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Once again, Buckhorn rolls with the punches
© St. Petersburg Times Bob Buckhorn landed in Tampa by accident. It was the result of the first big disappointment in his adult life. He had dreams of being a Navy pilot. Everything was going just grand when doctors in Pensacola, where he was stationed, diagnosed him with an eye disease. It earned him a discharge. Civilian doctors later concluded the diagnosis was wrong, but it was too late. This happened 21 years ago. Buckhorn had one friend in Florida, a fraternity brother in Tampa. So Tampa is where he went. He tells the story that he had all of $300 in his pocket. His first job, he likes to say, was hustling butter for Land O'Lakes. He was a sales representative for the company. Ambition is wonderful to behold. It took Buckhorn just four years to go from butter salesman to executive assistant to then-mayor Sandy Freedman. I tell you these things because it shows that Buckhorn is no stranger to crushing disappointment, and that his disappointments have not held him back. He stands up just fine, thank you, after the knock-down punch. Tuesday night he took another one of those punches. He had dreams of being mayor since the days he worked for Freedman. He had been campaigning for three years, day and night for the last year and a half. He read up on Rudy Giuliani. He hired the best consultants. If working longer and harder than anybody else qualified you for victory, Buckhorn would be plotting a runoff strategy now. Instead, he came in third. Much has been made of his last-minute negative ads, but the criticism overlooks the nature of the rest of his campaign. It was evident Tuesday night at Buckhorn's election party at the West Shore Doubletree hotel. There was hardly a famous face in the room, or a powerful name (although Freedman did make a brief appearance.) The room was a healthy mix of Anglos, blacks and Latins, and hardly a one of them was dressed to kill. These were neighborhood people, a crowd straight out of a textbook, if there is such a thing, about how to run a grass-roots campaign. When the numbers were in, and his loss evident, he told them that he wanted them to keep working, to volunteer for either Frank Sanchez or Pam Iorio. The campaign wasn't about him, Buckhorn said. It was the process that mattered. The process included a seemingly endless series of candidate forums. At event after event, Buckhorn was the only candidate who gave concrete, detailed answers. After eight years of working for Freedman and another eight as a member of City Council, he certainly knew his stuff, and you'd have thought this would have helped him. It didn't. I don't understand this, any more than I understand why Buckhorn failed to attract big money, big name support. This was how Frank Sanchez was drawn into the race. The big money, the big names, wanted Anybody But Buckhorn. What was wrong with him? It was said of him that he was too calculating, too political, crafting every opinion he had to help his campaign. A friend of Buckhorn's brought me up short on this point Tuesday night. Didn't Iorio do the same thing, this man asked. Didn't Sanchez? Yes, and yes, of course. So what does this mean? Did we (I include myself) judge Buckhorn by a different yardstick? Yes, perhaps. Buckhorn has contended that if people don't like him, it's because he was, as a member of City Council, forced to take positions some people were bound to find fault with. The word for this is baggage. Iorio, as that most nonpartisan creature, the supervisor of elections, and Sanchez, a businessman, had none of it. So they get to run. Buckhorn gets to stay home. Life isn't fair. Politics sure isn't either. If you want to know just how unfair it is, just ask him. -- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com
or (813) 226-3402.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
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Times columns today From the Times Metro desk |
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