Voter apathy sweeps district
A City Council member says poor turnout in North Tampa derailed him.
By BILL COATS
Published March 11, 2007
TAMPA - J. Edwin Benton, college professor and New Tampa resident, teaches a course on political behavior and public opinion. Benton sees in his New Tampa neighbors the prototypes of likely voters: educated, affluent, holding white-collar jobs.
Yet they don't vote.
Theories abound.
Some think it's complacency. Some, like Benton, blame a mobile population. Some even cite the lack of visual signs of the political process in the manicured communities there.
Whatever the cause, it has been a chronic frustration for the area's political leaders, particularly Shawn Harrison. The second-term City Council member lost a bid for a citywide seat last week, which could be blamed in part on poor turnout in his home North Tampa district.
Two men competing in a runoff to replace Harrison in the North Tampa seat now ponder how to turn out votes in an area where 91 percent of the electorate stayed home Tuesday.
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Since his loss, Harrison has studied the numbers.
He ran for a citywide seat and outspent his opponent, Mary Mulhern, 6-1. But in her end of the city, South Tampa, 21 percent of voters turned out, giving her an edge of 1,364 votes there. Harrison's support in North Tampa was more lopsided than Mulhern's in South Tampa, but turnout was less than half. The district includes diverse income neighborhoods as well as the upscale developments of New Tampa.
"If North Tampa turns out at 15 percent, I win by a huge margin," Harrison said.
"That man has been an advocate for us," said a disgusted Jim Mennie, a nursery owner and treasurer of the New Tampa Republican Club. "I'm not sure we deserve an advocate because we don't vote."
For years, Harrison has lectured his New Tampa neighbors about voter apathy.
"There is nothing, I am convinced, that anyone can do or say that will make the average voter in New Tampa understand that they are part of the city and they should be active," Harrison said last week.
He said the low turnout can leave city leaders with the following conclusion about New Tampa: "We can let them twist in the wind and they're not going to do anything about it."
Lack of roots
Frank Margarella is facing Joseph Caetano for North Tampa's District 7 seat in a March 27 runoff. He agrees with Harrison that one problem is a lack of burning issues.
"Life's pretty good in New Tampa," Harrison said. "You don't have crime problems, comparatively speaking. You don't have infrastructure problems. You have traffic, but in the big scheme of things, traffic isn't a big problem."
Also, nearly all New Tampa's communities have sign rules and employees authorized to snatch up wayward signs, which deters the posting of political signs.
"No one even knew when the election was," said Lynn Chernin, an Arbor Greene mother who is politically active.
And a major piece of New Tampa was never annexed into the city. Chernin thinks that causes confusion about who can vote.
But Benton, the University of South Florida professor, has fingered a top culprit.
"I have to attribute it to the high mobility of the people in the area," Benton said.
In his 13 years in Tampa Palms, New Tampa has filled up with huge, master-planned developments. Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, once a virtual drag strip, has clogged with commuters.
Benton also has seen upwardly mobile neighbors move in because of a job promotion, and move out because of another. They stay long enough to get settled with schools, churches, health care and shopping - but not long enough to get interested in local political issues.
"Many of these people don't put down roots," Benton said.
Adds Harrison, "I'll wager that the average New Tampa person has lived within the city limits for less than five years."
Numbers from the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser's Office tend to confirm this. Last year, 9 percent of the county's dwellings changed owners. But in New Tampa, it was 15 percent. In part of Harrison's district southwest of USF, the turnover was 20 percent.
Silk suit, blue collars
That may partly explain why a belt of communities at the south end of the district voted even less than New Tampa. Voter turnout in New Tampa alone was 11 percent. In the rest of District 7, it was 8 percent.
Harrison said those diverse neighborhoods, stretching from Forest Hills on the west to the Temple Terrace city limits on the east, traditionally have outvoted New Tampa.
An even bigger surprise was that every precinct outside New Tampa was won by Charlie Perkins, a candidate who shunned publicity and spent only $3,814 on his campaign.
Outside the limelight, Perkins walked door to door in blue-collar neighborhoods. He often wore a black silk, three-piece suit to persuade people who peeked at him through their windows to go ahead and open the door.
Perkins said most didn't know about the election, and the rest were discouraged by the belief that the race boiled down to Caetano and Margarella, a pair of businessmen from New Tampa.
"The contacts that I have in those neighborhoods really, really hate the fact that New Tampa represents them," Perkins said.
Perkins grew up in the southern neighborhoods. He told voters their communities had been shortchanged while New Tampa got attention.
"He knew the neighborhood," said Margarella. "He knew what buttons to push, and he pushed them."
Perkins never campaigned in New Tampa, and that cost him. He finished a close third behind Margarella.
Moving the date
Now the two New Tampa candidates will seek votes in neighborhoods where Perkins has riled up indignation against New Tampa. Each man met with Perkins on Thursday, requesting his endorsement. Perkins, 31, said he would soon choose the one with the best plan for reducing crime.
Caetano plans to campaign door to door, as Perkins did.
"We'll be walking and talking," he said.
Both candidates also talked to Harrison about poor voter turnout. And all three have a plan. They propose to move city elections to the same November dates as general elections.
Benton, the USF professor, said general elections draw 50 to 65 percent of the voters to the polls, thanks to state and national issues, network news coverage and party politics.
He said nonpartisan elections like Tampa's generally draw fewer voters out, as Harrison knows so well.
"After a November election," he said, "they don't want to be bothered with politics much."
Bill Coats can be reached at 813 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com.