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They've got our back

By ADAM C. SMITH
Published August 21, 2005

Is it time for Tampa Bay lawmakers to show some spine in Tallahassee? Are voters craving politicians who can realign the Capitol, who can get government off their backs?

Or does the latest quirk in Tampa Bay politics signify nothing besides an invitation for lame back puns?

All we can say for sure is that Tampa Bay has become a breeding ground for chiropractic candidates. More precisely, Pinellas County is Florida's mecca for chiropractor-politicians.

Two chiropractors - state Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Seminole, and state Rep. Frank Farkas, R-St. Petersburg, already serve. When the votes are counted in November 2006, Farkas may join Jones in the Senate while two more chiropractors from Pinellas could pick up state House seats.

That means a county in which roughly one in 2,200 adults is a chiropractor could wind up with a delegation in which one in three state legislators is a chiropractor.

And we're not even talking seriously yet about David Langheier, the Republican chiropractor from East Lake who's testing the waters to run for Mike Bilirakis' congressional seat.

"It's a weird coincidence. It's certainly not part of any plan," said political consultant Jack Hebert.

Hebert is becoming the Karl Rove of Florida's chiropractic trade. He is a much-sought-after Republican political consultant who also serves as the lead lobbyist and political strategist for the Florida Chiropractic Association.

A onetime legislative aide to Dennis Jones, Hebert has a stable of clients this year that includes Jones' son, chiropractor Rod Jones, running for state House in District 54 along the Pinellas beaches; Farkas, running for state Senate in District 16 in Pinellas and Hillsborough; and chiropractor Ken Peluso, running in state House District 48 in north Pinellas and part of Pasco.

"Our association does a great job of getting people involved on the grass-roots side, and that leads people to run for office," Farkas said of all the chiropractic political activity. "It's a compliment to Jack and the people in the association."

The Pinellas Chiropractic Society has a reputation as the most active branch of the Florida Chiropractic Association, which in turn is considered the most active chiropractic association in the country.

State licensing records show that Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties have more chiropractors than Pinellas, but activist chiropractors apparently consider Pinellas County America's biggest hotbed for politically powerful chiropractors.

Should anyone care?

"If there were three attorneys running, nobody would say anything. If there were three Realtors running, nobody would say anything," said Peluso, a Palm Harbor fire commissioner and past president of the Pinellas Chiropractic Society.

"There really is no chiropractic agenda," Peluso said.

Tell that to the Florida State University faculty and alumni who raised enough fuss early this year to kill a legislative initiative to spend millions of state dollars on what would have been the nation's first public chiropractic school at FSU. The future leader of that school, almost everyone in Tallahassee assumed, would be Sen. Jones, the former president of the Florida Chiropractic Association.

Jones, noting that nearly 40 legislators are lawyers, said he's thrilled to see more representatives of the health care industry participate in the process. He says he only wishes he could get more podiatrists, hospital administrators and other facets of the industry into the Legislature.

Chiropractors are keenly interested in what services are covered by insurance and what services they are permitted to perform. Fairly or not, chiropractors, who often work closely with personal injury lawyers, are pegged as sympathetic to trial lawyers - the bitter adversaries of much of the medical community. In Tallahassee, chiropractors and doctors also often butt heads over turf.

Which helps explain why the powerful Florida Medical Association is taking a big interest in the state Senate District 16 Republican primary, where Farkas and state Rep. Kim Berfield are vying to succeed state Sen. Jim Sebesta.

"If elected, (Farkas) would join Sen. Jones as the second chiropractor serving in the Florida Senate. This would be a very bad thing for the physicians of Florida," Dr. David Becker of Florida Medical Association's political action committee wrote in a recent newsletter. "The chiropractors and their allies in the trial bar are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to advance their agenda. Do you want another chiropractor in the Florida Senate dictating health care policy for the state of Florida?"

The FMA was particularly upset with Farkas and Jones for sponsoring legislation that would have eliminated doctors' ability to "go bare" and carry no medical malpractice insurance.

Chiropractors have their own internal rifts. The Florida Chiropractic Association actually helped state Rep. Joe Negron unseat state Rep. Art Argenio of Palm Beach County in 2000 in a primary.

Argenio, a chiropractor known to treat people in his Capitol office (Jones and Farkas occasionally treat chiropractic patients at the Capitol's clinic), was viewed as "not in tune with the health care goals of the mainstream professionals," according to Jones.

Jones is the dean of chiropractic politicos, and he spoke of the proud tradition of Pinellas chiropractors in politics. Chiropractor Mel Dinsmore served as mayor of Pinellas Park from 1963 to 1974. Jones noted that chiropractor J.C. Benefield was active in St. Petersburg politics in the 1960s, but the senator apparently had done little checking on the 1965 mayoral candidate. Benefield was convicted of attempting to bribe a judge.

Republican chiropractors from Polk County and DeSoto County ran unsuccessfully for the Legislature in 2002 and 2004. All three Pinellas chiropractors running in 2006 are widely viewed as strong candidates with good prospects for winning.

With some neck-and-neck races looming, Pinellas may wind up with the legislative delegation best equipped to give state government an adjustment.

Adam C. Smith can be reached at 727 893-8241 or adam@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 19, 2005, 18:01:03]