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Thursday, November 13, 2008
Gang wars in Hillsborough
Posted by Kelly Cornelius on Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 6:01 AM
While they don't run the streets, the Gang of Five Four do run our county. Known for their environmental attacks, sprawl creation and developer-friendly wide stance, the Gang of Five has recently controled the Hillsborough County Commission. That is until it's weakest link was picked off Tuesday by a citizen army fighting for a respectable candidate.
Kevin Beckner has beaten the incumbent Brian Blair!
The gang of 5 consisted of Blair, Norman, White, Higginbotham and Hagan. The board itself has seven members so while it still seems as if the gang will have a majority, the message sent on election day is certain to get through to even the dullest members remaining. The power of an unhappy constituency can still be greater than the dollars of special interest. Beckner and his troops have proven that.
Two other gang members were up for re-election but Hagan had only a questionable write in and the other, Al Higginbotham had unknown Pete Gifford to contend with. Gifford had almost no campaign contributions only $4,340 to Higginbotham's $160,000+ yet he still garnered 30% of the vote without doing much of anything. That should send the message that if someone campaigned in earnest that Higginbotham is vulnerable.
While the war on this gang will probably continue, I have a feeling Beckner's win might just sway a few of the gang votes in the direction of the community instead of over-developers in the near future. It might also convince them to take citizens a little more seriously instead of just disregarding those citizens willing to get involved. Just a hunch.
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And those of you in East Hillsborough think that Old Al has your best interests at heart, think again. If you are not in favor of continued sprawl, rethink your support of Al - "I drive out there all the time". He's in as deep as Blair was with the developers.
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We have now entered the New Era. What is the New Era? We have reached the point where citizens are starting to pay attention and keeping score with Hillsborough commissioners. The Gang of 5 consistently favored developer interests over citizen interests. A grass roots movement was born, as a result. Can you imagine an incumbent with a strong political machine behind him, plenty of money and powerbroker support, losing by over 10 % points? Unlikely, but it happened. That's because average people reached a threshold that was similar to the movie, Network - "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore. They crossed party lines and threw the bum out!! Blair was a developer's dream and a citizen's nightmare!!! This grass roots movement will continue through the next election cycle. The Gang of 4 that remains are nervous about it. They are caught between a rock and a hard place. They don't want to upset their financial backers (developers), but they saw what happened to Blair when he openly pushed for development interests while, at the same time, ignoring the citizen base. The Gang of 4 has already started backing off overt developer support. Watch what happens now, going forward. Some of them are quickly going to miraculously turn into Citizen Champions between now and 2010. If they don't demonstrably cross over to favoring the citizen base and abandon their ties to the development lobby, they will end up walking the green mile like Blair just did. Everyone, we must keep the pressure on them, as well as, keep track of how they vote when it comes to land use and growth management. If they choose other masters and not the citizen base, there will be more grass roots masacres.
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