gary santti, james rowell, ken anthony, and brad swanson are invisible
Who are these people? and does it really matter? If they don’t do something after seeing this, it won’t matter one little bit. Josh Hallett put it best:
…announcing a candidacy and not having a web site is like opening a restaurant and not having any food on opening night.
There may be a big guava turnover in the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners this year. Five of the seven seats are up for grabs. In trying to get some information on the candidates for the HCBOCC, I used Google to find everyone running.
Google “Hillsborough county commission” candidate: The first seven results bring you to media news sites. In that eighth spot is a candidate. Unfortunately that candidate is running for US Congress!
The first county campaign site we find is Brian Blair’s from 2004. After 10 pages of results, there are ZERO current candidates listed. So we went to the local party websites.
It was fairly easy to find the Hillsborough County Republican Party site, which lists eight candidates running for HCBOCC. It was a bit more difficult to find the Hillsborough County Democrats. They list only two. Between the two parties’ directories, they link to ONE campaign website, Deborah Cope’s (DEM).
Wow. Of eleven people registered to run for a commission seat, the county parties have given us only one website. But at least we most of the names now. Googling those should get us right to their campaign websites, right? Wrong.
According to the HCRP, Santti, Anthony, Swanson (each mentioned in the title), Al Higginbotham, and Julieann Goggans are all running for HCBOCC. As are incumbents Jim Norman and Mark Sharpe. None of these have working websites. Higginbotham may one day use current deadspace vote4al.com (see the whois). The other Republican listed is Rose Ferlita, who you can find easily at roseferlita.com
Not listed on the HCDEC site is democrat James Rowell (also mentioned in the title), but the only way you would know that is if you checked with the Supervisor of Elections, who reports everyone that has filed. Deborah Cope is a democrat with an impossible to find website (title=Home) unless you saw the link from the HCDEC. The only googlable democrat was Kevin White.
Not to leave out independents, Jean Batronie has filed to run for District 5. Her website was close to impossible to find, because it’s a yahoo group.
So, for 12 candidates (that we know of) running for the HCBOCC, only two have easily found websites (one of which is actually geared toward the campaign), one has a website in hiding, one has a website reserved, one has a yahoo group, and seven candidates currently have NO WEB PRESENCE (that I could find) at all.
We’re hungry for change, but the restaurant has no food.
Tags: election '06, hc bocc, online, tampa
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February 1st, 2006 at 8:59 pm
So which one of Tampa’s bloggers is going to run for the County Commission so we can show those other jokers how to do it?
February 2nd, 2006 at 8:58 am
I’d much rather be an advisor or aide…
August 7th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Gary Santii left a door hanger at my house, himself, I believe. I liked what he said about cleaning up the Bay, but only have a P.O. box for contributions to follow up with him. How ’bout a phone number Gary?