TAMPA — One of the arguments local boosters used for wanting to
turn Tampa inside out and upside down to host the Republican
National Convention next week is all the great media “exposure”
Tampa will get out of the event. The reasoning goes that TV viewers
and visitors will see how comprehensively swell Tampa is and
re-locate their businesses here.
Well, I guess it’s clear enough that no corporate research
department is aware yet that Florida has no personal income tax,
that the cost of living here is lower than in California or New
York, or that it doesn’t snow here in the winter (except for one
January day in 1977). But you have to wonder about that media
exposure, which has begun already.
The Daily Beast, an excitable left newsletter, started
the exposure parade Monday with an attack piece under the
headline: “Tampa: Seedy Host of Republican Coming-Out Party.”
The subhead was equally as charming “A mobbed-up past, a surplus of
strippers: Tampa’s got it all.”
Well, isn’t that special? I could hear them hyperventilating at
the Chamber from my home office. Sure enough, mobster Santo
Trafficante, Jr. spent time in Tampa, as well as in Miami and
Havana (before El Jefe Maximo took that island over). But he died
in 1987. Tampa indeed has a couple of long-established strip joints
on Dale Mabry Highway, well away from the convention site. But the
city is hardly the “strip club capital of the United States,” as
the DB writer, one Lloyd Grove, claims. (On what authority he never
says — personal research?)
Grove sums up: “It’s [Tampa] a counterintuitive locale for the
buttoned-down Mormon and his wholesome Midwestern running mate to
introduce themselves officially to the country — a steamy swamp of
a city with a rich history of sinners succumbing to so many
temptations.”
My, oh my! Can I hear an, “Amen”?! What Grove, who seems to have
researched his summing up of Tampa between his mid-morning arrival
at TIA and happy hour, isn’t aware of is that the biggest
demographic in Tampa and Hillsborough County today is re-located
Midwesterners. I’ve described Tampa culturally as Peoria with palm
trees. In addition to those strip joints, we have schools,
churches, and scout troops. Paul Ryan will feel right at home
here.
Grove is certainly right that Tampa is sweltering this time of
year. Heat indexes in August (not to mention much of June, July,
and September) are routinely in triple digits. It’s NOT a dry heat.
Chamber types who prattle on about Tampa’s wonderful weather
usually forget to add that they’re talking about October through
April. Summer in Central Florida is not for sissies.
In attempting to account for Grove’s groin-shot, the only
reasonable explanations I could come up with are that his ex-wives
and their lawyers live in Tampa, or that on arrival here he spent
too much time outside in the heat. If it’s the latter, and he plans
to be here through the 30th, he’d better pace himself.
Coverage of Tampa during the convention will not all be like
this. But some will. We’re entitled to wonder if local boosters
will ever learn that media types will not just print their PR
releases. Save for the sweltering summer heat, Tampa is a good
place to live and do business. But this won’t stop some jaded and
over-heated scribblers from describing the place as a cross between
Dog Patch and Gomorrah.
