If Byrd flies north, would the mischief go with him?

MELONE E-mail: Click here Archive

In a perverse way, you've got to admire House Speaker Johnnie Byrd.

He really doesn't care what anyone thinks.

Call him ambitious. Call him scheming. Accuse him of operating out of nothing but unbridled self-interest.

The names are water off a duck's back, if Byrd is the duck.

He once said of himself and his political career, "I made a decision that I was either going to the top or (going to) get out."

To the top he went. Eight years after Byrd moved to Florida from Alabama, he was elected to the House in 1996, representing the lucky people of Plant City. Six years later, in 2002, he was elected speaker.

Since then, every month or so, we have been subjected to some act of pandering, self-promotion or questionable dealings, all to further his career.

Heaven help us, but Byrd wants to represent Florida in the U.S. Senate.

This is a man whom even Republican cohorts sometimes find disturbing, for the way he uses almost anything to his advantage. One of them has even called him a lunatic.

Last week, Byrd led the charge in the state House to overturn five years of court rulings and reinsert Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. If the religious right were in charge, the Senate wouldn't have been enough. They'd have beatified Johnnie right then and there.

Unhappily for the rest of us, Johnnie is stuck here, on terra firma, where he is capable of much mischief, as his past record has shown.

He sent thousands of publicly funded e-mails and mass mailings to get across his views on big issues, or to outshout people who disagreed with him.

He thought nothing of raising money to finance his own ambitions by seeking contributions from lobbyists while their bills were pending in the Legislature.

Without a trace of apology, he collared his House colleagues, one by one, to see whom he could count on in his Senate campaign.

And, while he never misses a moment to enthuse about small government, he created his own 13-person, $600,000 public relations staff. That's three times bigger than the governor's.

He hired a close friend, a Tampa lawyer, to oversee replacement of the House computer system. The lawyer, in turn, hired a client to do the work. There was no bidding for the $3-million project. Now there's a lawsuit pending. The company that had the job until Byrd stepped in is suing the state.

You know who will get rich when the suit is settled: the lawyers.

You know who will pay: you and me.

A candidate with a record like Byrd's ought to be in some trouble for all this. At the very least, he ought to have a hard time raising campaign money. People ought to see him for who he is and give their money to somebody else. So far, former U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum of Longwood and state Sen. Daniel Webster of Winter Garden are the other major Republican candidates.

But the luck is, perversely again, with Byrd. He raised more money in the last three months than either McCollum or Webster.

His message sells.

Last week, when he started his Senate campaign in Plant City, he said what you'd expect. Hillary Clinton is not a popular name in Plant City. Mention the United Nations or Ted Kennedy, and you'll get a groan.

So Johnnie played to the cheap seats and mentioned them all, and then he started talking about himself and the war on terror and President Bush. You can predict whom the crowd liked and whom they didn't.

Maybe that's what he'll do the rest of the campaign, drop a couple of names and phrases over and over and wait for the applause to rise and fall, while at all times ducking tricky questions about the trail he's left in the Legislature.

That's what the political trade calls "staying on message," and the scary part is, it works.

Scarier still, it may work for Johnnie Byrd.

- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or 813 226-3402.

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