News
In holiday seasons prior, I would run into Bob Buckhorn at a yearly Christmas party and without fail find myself awed at his fashion sense. In particular, his pants.
Trust me, these were no ordinary pants. These pants were a plaid so plaid that had a chameleon run across his cuff, it might have died trying to blend in. If the guest list had included John Daly, the golfer legendary for (among other things) the loudness of his trousers, no doubt he would have raised a glass to those pants.
Back then, Buckhorn was still a scrappy contender to be Tampa's mayor, looking at serious competition. Those pants were so brash, so Irish, so determined not to be dismissed, so Buckhorn.
So I figured this Christmas the pants would be back for a victory lap, since Buckhorn finally won the job I think he has wanted since he first set toe to Tampa turf. But there he was at the party with his wife and daughters, modestly dressed, not a patch of freakishly festive plaid in sight.
Tampa has its troubles, but you have to love that it is also the kind of town where you can ask a politician about his pants without offending. Buckhorn explained he had several events more official to attend that day. "That's the down side to being the mayor," he said. "It's not every day I have a plaid pants day."
He did not say that was the only down side to being mayor, but it was implied. Ask him how it's going so far, how he likes the job of running the city, and he will say without a hint of sarcasm: "Every day that goes by, my only regret is it's one less day I get to be mayor."
So how is it going? Not bad, according to a recent St. Petersburg Times/Bay News 9 survey in which two-thirds of residents polled said he's doing an average or better job since he took the reins in April, with 39 percent going with good or excellent. About a quarter were still making up their minds, because it's that kind of town, too.
Buckhorn turns out to be no Xerox of his predecessor, the popular Pam Iorio, though he invokes her name with high praise, particularly for her smart and steady financial stewardship through the worst of bad economic times. He proceeds apace with his own focus: attracting jobs, being an inviting and business-friendly city and successfully hosting the biggest political party ever to hit these parts, next fall's Republican National Convention.
It will be interesting to see if, no matter what his mayoral legacy turns out to be, Buckhorn will always carry that tiny footnote, that detail that will not die, that Mitt Romney moment. For Romney, it's the one about how the Republican presidential candidate once took the family dog, Seamus, on a 12-hour car trip in a dog carrier strapped to the roof of a station wagon.
For Buckhorn, it's his long-ago battle as a city councilman against the scourge of strip clubs and the lap dances therein, the one that got him called a Boy Scout and worse. "I had to own it," he says now, though clearly he'd rather talk about the state of the city of which he is, finally, mayor.
How much does he love his job? "I don't want to go to Washington, D.C.," he says, putting that to rest. "If I die today, I die a happy man."
And those holiday trousers? No more need for those eye-catching pants, now that he's safely ensconced in office?
No, he says. Those pants are still him, ready to party the next time around.
Loading...
