Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Politics

Among lawyers, a phantom candidate

By Times Staff
Published September 2, 2006

As usual, some candidates fared better than others in the Hillsborough Bar Association's judicial preference poll released this week. But only one candidate, Chris DeBock, failed to collect a single "high" approval vote.

DeBock couldn't be reached Friday, so no word on whether he filled out the survey.

Elusive on the campaign trail, DeBock has not attended candidate forums or spent any money on signs and campaign literature.

He got the lowest marks of the four candidates in Group 32; of the 95 lawyers who said they knew him, 6 percent approved and almost 93 percent did not.

On the other hand, 276 lawyers said they did not have personal knowledge of DeBock. That may be because he hasn't practiced law in Tampa in more than a year.

sign language: Six years ago, lawyer Jesse Dominguez drew some heat after he was caught on video removing Hillsborough state attorney candidate Bill Jennings' signs from the corner of Kennedy Boulevard and Armenia Avenue and throwing them in a Dumpster.

Now, Dominguez is running for circuit judge. His campaign signs tout his "honesty, integrity (and) service."

Dominguez said voters can trust the message. Yes, he was a supporter of then-state attorney candidate Mark Ober and, yes, he took down the signs. But he maintains that Jennings didn't have permission to post the signs, and that Dominguez was asked by the property owner to take them down.

No ethics complaint or criminal charge was ever filed against him. He has a clean Florida Bar record.

"At the time that that happened, I was up for a judgeship," Dominguez said. "The (Judicial Nominating Commission) went through all this stuff, and I got nominated. There were nine people who scrutinized the hell out of it."

He didn't get appointed. As a candidate, he said, some of his signs have been removed or vandalized.

"Other people have told me that they've had the same problems," he said. "I think it just happens."

a firm by any other name: City Attorney David Smith got some giggles at a Tampa City Council meeting Thursday when he introduced a new assistant city attorney.

Robin McKinney, he said, "spent two years at Gray Robinson, but had nothing to do with public contract procurement."

The council chambers burst into laughter.

The selection of Gray Robinson as the legal counsel for the Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority resulted in an investigation by Gov. Jeb Bush after reports that David Hendrix, a partner in the firm, met with John Beck, a lobbyist for the authority, and the authority's executive director, Ralph Mervine, in the weeks before the contract was awarded.

The meetings may have violated the state's Sunshine Law, which requires that government agencies conduct public business in the open. A selection committee recommended Ruden McCloskey for the contract, but the authority's board ignored that recommendation and went with Gray Robinson instead.

Times staff writers Colleen Jenkins and Janet Zink contributed to this report.

[Last modified September 4, 2006, 07:02:54]