Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

What now?

No more phone calls. No more handshakes. No more rubber chicken. Ex-candidate Phyllis Busansky knows all about losing.

By JOHN BARRY
Published December 10, 2006

TAMPA - The big war room is nearly stripped clean. Just a couple of white Formica desks and patches of office debris are left, no clue that this was where an army of people recently spent $1.5-million.

Few signs remain of a yearlong congressional campaign that brought the president and vice president into the battle. The only hint of spent heat is a photographic cardboard cutout that faces the wall. She can't get rid of it, but she hates to look at it.

Phyllis Busansky is tall. She drives a Mustang convertible, and her top-down hair makes her look taller. The cutout comes to her chin. She flips it over.

There he is, Gus Bilirakis, the Republican who beat Busansky on Nov. 7 and is now buying furniture in Washington, D.C. He's the newly elected representative of the 9th Congressional District, smiling at her in a dark suit.

Busansky can't say why she kept the cutout, can't say what she's going to do with it. It just hasn't gone away. Almost everything else has: the 400 volunteers, the phones she worked six hours a day, the piles of money that drove everything.

Long, emotional, exhilarating campaigns end just like that: no graceful retreat, no two weeks' notice. They're just over. One day she's working the phones; the next day they're taking out the phones.

The big question then becomes what to do on the Wednesday after the Tuesday.

You diet.

Busansky went on the South Beach Diet on Nov. 8 and lost 10 pounds of pizza and rubber chicken. She sticks to the salad menu at Michael's Grill, the restaurant directly below her campaign office in Carrollwood.

Bilirakis came by Michael's Grill once. He made a campaign stop at the restaurant in October, unaware that it was Busansky Ground Zero.

When he got there, all the close parking spaces had been taken by Busansky troops. She was waiting with a cheering throng. Bilirakis faced a death march.

His mother, waiting inside, called Busansky "pretty low-class."

It turned out to be the gentlest of put-downs by either side.

You get out of town.

Last July, Busansky was invited to Washington state to assist a health care coalition going through problems. She has traveled the country on similar missions since starting an indigent health care program in Hillsborough County in 1988, a model for the country. It was her major accomplishment as a county commissioner.

Busansky told the Washington state group that she was running for Congress. Couldn't possibly come until the race was over. Maybe she could fly out there in December, after she won.

Then she gave them another date, knowing she just might want to get out of town sooner.

On Nov. 10, she was on a plane headed west.

You get another job.

When Busansky clears out her war room, she will turn it into an office for a new consulting business. She and a couple of friends are extending the lease. "When one door closes, another opens."

You feel bad.

Busansky had worked a phone in her war room six hours a day for six months. Two aides sat across the table, dialing. She did the asking. And the asking. Candidates don't ask once. If they get a yes once, they ask twice. Or three times. In the big-ego world of politics, it's as humiliating an experience as you can find. "I can ask once," she says. "But to ask over and over again felt like begging."

She raised $200,000 each of the last two weeks of the race on those phones. She can recite the names of 75 percent of her 2,200 donors. It is harder, she says, to recite to them the reasons for her loss.

More than 96,000 people voted for her.

"That's the hardest part, the hopes of all these people. That's what you have to deal with."

Busansky keeps a handwritten letter on her desk. It's signed "Howard." No last name.

Howard writes that he was a candidate more than 50 years ago. He lost a tight runoff and never got over it. "I just went on my merry way, p----- off at the world," he tells her. "I could probably have gotten elected in the next two elections, but I was too bitter and stubborn.

"Don't be bitter."

You get a little bitter anyway.

In the most famous of TV assaults on Busansky, a plate of lobster sailed across the screen. A narrator sounded like Robin Leach on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He described, among other things, the fabulous office she had decorated twice at taxpayer expense. In fact, she did have her commission office repainted. During a county makeover of all the offices, she had asked for pink. She hated it. She chipped in $51 for tan.

Busansky could play rough, too. Her side issued a campaign commercial that implied Bilirakis didn't much care about seductions of congressional pages.

But Busansky hasn't quite gotten over a flier Bilirakis mailed to voters that said she advocated public nudity and would "corrupt the values" of Hillsborough County. He based the flier on her long-ago opposition to a failed attempt to prohibit thong swimsuits.

On election night, Busansky had prepared a victory speech. She was going to talk about her father, a schoolteacher. As a girl, she had traveled with him all over Connecticut as he fought for retired teachers whose pensions had been eaten up by inflation. After five years, the state passed a law tying pensions to the cost of living index.

"A small group of people can make things right," she planned to say.

She can remember only the broad outlines of the speech she did make. It was more about victory than loss. It celebrated the many Democrats who did win congressional seats. The 96,000 who voted for her could feel a part of a greater mission accomplished, she said.

She did not call to congratulate Gus Bilirakis.

Still hasn't.

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. John Barry can be reached at jbarry@sptimes.com or 727 892-2258.

[Last modified December 9, 2006, 20:36:14]