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In the artificially restrained world of state politics, Nancy Argenziano is the bull in the china shop.
In her latest burst of truth-telling, Argenziano, a Republican senator from Dunnellon, called House speaker Johnnie Byrd "the biggest lunatic this state has ever seen."
Now her colleagues are on the attack. Their chests are puffed up with indignation at Argenziano's bluntness.
Why, I'm not sure. It might be because when she called Byrd a lunatic, she picked the wrong word.
Lunatic implies that Byrd, from Plant City, is crazy. There's nothing crazy about his methodical conduct, using the House as the vehicle to carry his ambition forward, to leap to the U.S. Senate. He announced his campaign for the Republican nomination last week.
On the other hand, lunatic might apply if it's true, as it seems to be, that Byrd honestly believes that any ordinary observer would fail to find his behavior transparent.
Live within your means, he tells the rest of government, and then he spends more than a half-million dollars in public money for his own PR machine.
When reporters ask him a question about contradictions like this one, Byrd replies by repeating the same phrases over and over, regardless of what he's been asked, or what his critics are saying.
Less taxes, he says in the simple-minded speak of hard-line Republican conservatives. Less government.
It is sweet music to the ears of Florida's big business executives. If Byrd gets any closer to some of them, he'll have to take them home to meet the family.
Already, some are kicking thousands into a committee that could promote Byrd's Senate campaign. Byrd has been perfectly happy to take money, $120,000 so far, from the businesses and lobbyists that the Legislature regulates.
Funny how Byrd's sloganeering includes nothing about playing the game ethically - like refusing to take advantage of his position in the middle of a special session to put his hand in the pockets of those who want his favor.
What he will do with the money is uncertain.
According to Florida Common Cause, which is critical of his fundraising, Byrd can't use more than a few thousand dollars from a state committee on a federal race. He might use it to run ads promoting himself on TV without urging viewers to specifically vote for him. Or it could simply be a declaration of his muscle, meant to send a message to other Republican candidates about what a big player he is.
Big indeed.
So far, Byrd has infuriated the state Senate, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, university presidents, local school officials. Nancy Argenziano, it turns out, isn't the only extremist in the Legislature.
She gets the rap that she is so off the wall at times that she is ineffective. We're in our third special session now, speaking of ineffective, over the medical malpractice dispute. Byrd thinks the Legislature has been wonderfully successful. So who's off the wall?
Argenziano said last week that she spoke up because people who aren't in Tallahassee don't understand how bad the political climate is. With Johnnie Byrd in charge of the House half of the show, who would be surprised?
She blasted members of the House for being dumb as potted plants over the malpractice issue. She accused them of following Byrd blindly.
Argenziano's real claim to fame occurred two years ago. She became so irate at a lobbyist for the nursing home industry that she had 25 pounds of cow manure gift wrapped and delivered to the lobbyist.
She was in the House then and made to pay for her brazenness. She was stripped of a committee chairmanship.
Now she's in the Senate. Byrd, as House Speaker, can't hurt her.
Argenziano can speak up all she wants, maybe even send a little manure his way - although it's an open question whether Byrd, so wrapped up in himself, would grasp her message.
- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or 813 226-3402.