Opinion: Who is the real Frank Sanchez?

Frank Sanchez is fishing the mud flats with his late attack on Pam Iorio. Painting her as a tax-and-spender on drainage projects when Iorio was on the Hillsborough County Commission is hypocrisy coming from a guy who wants the same program enacted in the city of Tampa.

This is a cheap way for Sanchez to end what was otherwise a progressive Tampa mayoral campaign. It calls into question, once again, who he really is. On the one hand, Sanchez blames Iorio and other longtime local pols for not addressing stormwater earlier. He supports a fee for specific improvements, which Sanchez calls leadership. But then he spray paints the T-word across Iorio's head by implying she's a proponent of broader taxes.

Maybe Sanchez is trying to recover from his Gasparilla debacle by playing both sides on things that matter. When Bob Buckhorn tried to woo conservative voters by becoming the only mayoral candidate to oppose the drainage tax, Sanchez rightly let him have it. "That looks to me like finding a scapegoat," he said, "instead of finding a solution." Asked last month about the tax, Sanchez made a point of rebuking the office-holders in the race. "Why haven't we done something until now?"

It makes you wonder: Are we seeing the the real Frank, or runoff Frank, or a bobbing-head doll his consultants created? Sanchez said he's only asking "tough questions." Actually he's not. He's misrepresenting Iorio's record. There's a difference. And we're starting to see it in Frank Sanchez.

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