Tampabay: Beneath Bush-Gore are real fireworks

Oooooooooo! Forget the Bush-Gore stuff. The real action Tuesday was a forum including Pinellas County's two candidates for tax collector and two candidates for supervisor of elections. The room was not filled with a whole lotta love.

Tax collector and elections supervisor! You know, it is hard to see those contests as hotbeds of ill will, compared to, say, India versus Pakistan. Yet the four of them up on the dais seethed.

The Suncoast Tiger Bay Club made each one sit beside his or her opponent. This was much more fun than watching Survivor. There were four candidates for the state House also at the head table, Boy Scouts by comparison.

The candidates for county tax collector spoke first. The incumbent, W. Fred Petty, is being challenged by one of his former employees, Diane Nelson. Both are Republicans. There is no Democrat in the race, so Democrats also get to vote in their Sept. 5 primary.

Petty once was the hired help himself. He ran in 1992 against his boss, O. Sanford Jasper, who had served since 1960. It was a nasty race. Petty won, promising to serve only two terms. Now he is running for his third.

To boil down their answers Tuesday: Nelson said she can do better. "It's about service," she said helpfully. She doesn't like Petty's automated telephone system (actually, I don't either). Petty replied he has a proven track record. They squabbled about exactly how much Nelson knows, with her figuring it was more than he figured it was.

Still, it was patty-cake compared to the candidates for elections supervisor, incumbent Deborah Clark and challenger Pat Baker. They are both Republicans. The primary winner faces a write-in candidate in November.

Most of the audience questions were fired at Baker. Did she engineer the entry of the write-in candidate? His presence means the Republican primary stays closed. No Democrats can vote. The theory is, an all-Republican vote helps Baker, a party committeewoman.

Baker (who, it should be noted, wore a baker's hat for the whole event -- get it? Baker's hat? Get it?) admitted that she at least jokingly asked one Democrat to run. But she had nothing to do with the guy who eventually signed up to run. Got that, too?

Besides, Baker said, Democrats would be able to vote if they had managed to scratch up a candidate: "Get stronger and stop whining." Ooooh!

Oh, yeah, as for who would be a better elections supervisor: Baker cited her experience as a company owner, a teacher and a coach. Clark answered that she has overseen more than 400 elections, which, come to think of it, might count as experience. Clark wrapped it up by invoking the names of the past two supervisors, Charles Kaniss and Dottie Ruggles, who died of cancer earlier this year.

Baker's finish was weird: She said while at the elections office recently, she saw Clark wagging a finger at an employee, grabbing her shoulders, shoving her out of her office and slamming the door. (Baker continued to wear a baker's hat while reciting this.) Clark said she didn't remember such a thing.

Compared to all this, the four candidates for District 54 in the state House -- John Carassas, Dan Curran, Tony DiMatteo and Dave Miller -- were gentlemen, although none had time to delve too deeply into actual fact. Asked to name something on which they disagreed with the current Legislature, not one knew of anything. Perhaps some cuer should have stage-whispered: Abolishing the Board of Regents?

Curran said it was wrong for Florida to be spending $5,000 per student versus $30,000 per inmate, although the solution was unclear. (Maybe, switch places?) Miller actually said, "I think the Legislature is doing a good job." DiMatteo had the guts to call the state's sales-tax holiday "foolish." Curran summed up the voters' choice: "which of four slices of white bread they want to butter." But at least they all played nice.

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