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SHANNON TAN and LORRI HELFANDJean Halvorsen sides with three others - including an initial backer of the Largo human rights policy - to reject the sweeping ordinance.
LARGO - The vote could have gone either way.
In the days leading up to Tuesday night's meeting, three City Commission members said they supported a controversial human rights ordinance, and three said they opposed it.
The swing vote: Jean Halvorsen.
"I didn't even think about how I was going to vote until I heard everything last night," Halvorsen said Wednesday.
After about 45 people spoke for nearly five hours at Tuesday's public hearing, Halvorsen made her decision.
Her "no" vote was the difference in a 4-3 defeat of the proposal, which would have protected residents from discrimination based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression. It would have been the broadest human rights law in the Tampa Bay area.
Religious leaders spoke vehemently against it. But Pinellas County Commissioner Calvin Harris, Pinellas County School Board chairwoman Linda Lerner and Largo High School principal Barbara Thornton voiced their support, as did several people who identified themselves as transgender or gay.
Harris told the commissioners that they had control of where they wanted the community to go.
"It's better to have an ordinance that is too broad than not to have one at all," he said.
But those who voted against it said the city wasn't ready or didn't need such an ordinance.
For Halvorsen, she said, it came to down confusion in the community and the fact that several groups, such as the Chamber of Commerce, didn't have enough time to consider the idea or lodge objections to it.
Halvorsen said she knows several of the transgender people who attended the hearing, including Janet Chandler, who spoke in favor of the proposal.
"I was very strong in my feelings they are individuals and I didn't want them to be hurt," she said.
The lobbying leading up to the vote was intense. Halvorsen said an acquaintance tried to find out what her vote would be by going to her church, First United Methodist Church of Largo, and asking her minister about her beliefs.
"My own church believes in a certain way, but you don't do this on what your faith is," Halvorsen said. "In the eyes of God, everyone is equal and he loves everyone."
Religion, she said, didn't sway her vote. "I was not controlled by anybody but my insides, I guess," she said.
Commissioner Charlie Harper made no bones about the fact that he started the push for a citywide human rights ordinance - and, in the end, voted against it.
Harper, elected to the City Commission in March 2002, asked for the drafting and passage of such an ordinance after a fair housing survey showed substantial racial discrimination in Largo rentals, and after accusations of racial harassment in a city department.
At the time, he advocated an ordinance banning discrimination against all people, including homosexuals and transgender people, who are not protected by federal, state or county laws.
In April, Harper got support from Pat Burke, Pat Gerard, Jean Halvorsen and recent appointee Gay Gentry.
"I hate discrimination," Harper said. "It serves no useful purpose. It drives people to do things they would not normally do."
But over the past few months, his passion for the ordinance waned. Lack of Largo public support swayed him, he said.
"An awful lot of people discussed it with me," Harper said. "I had very few people that encouraged me to vote for the ordinance."
Harper insisted that he wasn't motivated by concerns about being re-elected.
"I couldn't care less. I don't do this for power or for glory. I do this to try to serve the people that I represent," he said.
He's not sure if Largo is ready for an ordinance of this type, he said. And would prefer that the issue be brought to a referendum.
Commissioner Harriet Crozier thinks it should have been dealt with on an internal level only. The commission has yet to act on a rights ordinance that would apply to city employees.
"From the very beginning, when I heard human rights, I thought that was the only thing we were working on. That's where we have the problems."
She would support a more extensive internal policy against harassment and discrimination, she said, if the language was all-inclusive. She doesn't like the idea of picking out special groups for protections.
"Every employee needs to know that we as a City Commission do not tolerate any form of discrimination. For some reason, our employees don't understand that."
Although the city has discussed benefits for domestic partners of city employees and revising an internal policy to include protections for gay and transgender individuals, it's unclear what will happen now.
"We need to go back now and heal the community," said Mayor Bob Jackson. "You had a 4-3 vote, which means you had a very divided community."
Pat Gerard, who voted for the ordinance, said she was disappointed but is glad for the conversations that resulted.
"The people of Largo almost don't care what the ordinance says," she said. "It's the issue that matters."
But Tuesday's meeting was a step backward, said commissioners Gentry and Burke.
"The city of Largo lost a huge opportunity to show that we're the city of progress. It will never be before us again," Burke said.
Antigay and antitransgender comments upset her more than the results, she said.
"I had to sit through some of the most outrageous statements in opposition that I could imagine. I actually felt I was in a time warp and I was back in the '50s."
Gentry also felt a trip back in time.
"Even after all of these years, you still heard the same arguments that you heard in the '60s. It was fascinating. Not happy fascinating, but fascinating."
Gentry said that both the vote and certain comments reveal truths about the city.
"I think the vote says something about Largo, and the people who spoke against it said something about Largo. It says that we're in an adolescent period," Gentry said.