The Pinellas School Board needed a strong man. Everybody else on the board was female. What? The women weren't competent to lead and needed a man to do it?
The times are changing. Benjamin's tactic failed.
Benjamin, 77, a four-term veteran of the board, was trounced by another woman who popped up on the scene, Janet R. Clark, in Tuesday's election.
Now, the unthinkable has happened. All seven seats on the Pinellas School Board are occupied by women.
Pardon me while I take a moment to cheer. And go ahead, call me a hypocrite, because I'd be incensed if a man cheered a male-dominated board.
I'm not at all surprised by Jane Gallucci's take on the effect of this female domination . Gallucci, the chairwoman of the Pinellas board, says men and women flat out look at things differently.
Women look at school board issues "more from a child's perspective," she says. She cites the issue of discipline.
"The women are always looking for an opportunity to redeem (the child)," she says. "A lot of the men I have worked with have been very black and white - "This is the policy, this is the rule, they didn't follow it, this is the consequence.' "
I speak in generalizations, I know, but Gallucci presents a picture that mimics the stereotypes of ordinary life. The men she's talking about come off like stern fathers, while the women behave like the moms and PTA leaders we are in our private lives. So a place on the school board is almost a natural progression for a woman.
And it fits the political order of things. Women are getting elected to school boards as they are to other offices, and rising high. Think of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Betty Castor, Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings, Secretary of State and former Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood, and Tampa's mayor, Pam Iorio.
Lee Benjamin may be rattled by it, but yes, we're everywhere.
Two women are running in November for superintendent of Pasco County schools.
In Hillsborough, one seat on the School Board will be settled in the November election. The race is between two women, and once it's over, only one man will be left on the board, Jack Lamb.
He sounds a little lonely.
"The days of the good old boy system are gone," Lamb said. "Now it may be the good old girl system."
I say, what's wrong with a little equal time?
Curiously, he complains that the dominance of women on the Hillsborough board robs it of diversity - a word hardly heard until it was taken up by minorities and women seeking entrance to places they had long been denied.
One of his board colleagues is not complaining. Carol Kurdell says the presence of a large number of women has increased collegiality and openness, qualities helpful for moving along a big, sluggish bureaucracy.
Some issues, though, are slower to change than others.
Pinellas' Jane Gallucci says she does her job knowing she has to be a strong leader but carry herself carefully. If she doesn't, she'll get called a b----.
As for Lee Benjamin, he lost his seat on the Pinellas board by more than 10,000 votes. He had a distinguished 50-year career in the schools, as a teacher, an administrator and then those last 14 years on the board. Some of his female colleagues were kind enough to take what he said about needing a man on the board as a joke. He says it was only half serious.
This appears to be the serious half: "Men that I've worked with seem to work in a more efficient manner. . . . instead of going around and around in discussions," he said when we talked Thursday.
You know the picture his words paint. Jabbering women. Wasting time. Unable to make important decisions on their own.
Somebody tell me: How many more women do we have to elect until thinking like this is finally, and thoroughly, finished?
