Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

For those that lost count, here is reason #298,921 - give or take - why your vote counts, from almost exactly two years ago:

With 219 more votes, Mary Gray Black edged out Gigi Arntzen to win a seat on the Largo City Commission on Tuesday.

For those just joining us, Mary Gray Black was the commissioner that called a meeting ultimately leading to a recommendation that Steve Stanton be fired from his role as city manager.

Black received 1,277 votes in that election. At the time of the election Largo had 44,517 registered voters. The total population of the city was roughly 72,000.

That means less than 3 percent of registered voters, and less than 2 percent of the city’s residents, put Mary Gray Black into the commissioner’s chair from which she decided a special meeting was necessary to debate Steve Stanton’s ability to do a job he’d be doing well for 14 years - a job for which he was rewarded with a raise just last year.

I guarantee that a large majority of those 1,277 voters are nodding their heads right now, fully aware and proud of the power of their vote.

Does this meeting not happen without Black? In light of Largo’s political lean and only two dissenting votes to the recommendation, I cannot guarantee that. Then again we in Hillsborough County know quite well the effect one crusading commissioner can have on a whole government institution.

And if your defense is, “I didn’t think she would ever do anything like this,” I can find proof of at least one Largo resident that did - a letter written to the Times by Janice Josiphine Carney almost exactly two years ago:

Mary Gray Black based her whole campaign on taking away any antidiscrimination protections for these people.

With her weapon being the Bible, who will she go after next?

We have an answer.

Possibly related posts (auto-generated)

• whither residence, or: can i still afford to live here? (2)
• where will the rays shine brightest? (8)
• pinellas, nation still treating symptoms (3)
• my, my, my, we are sensitive (7)
• moron largo (7)