Mitch Perry
At an elaborate ceremony he acknowledged seemed as much a church revival as a political event, Bob Buckhorn was sworn in to his second term as Tampa’s mayor Wednesday.
Buckhorn took office again with most people understanding that if things go his way, he won’t be be mayor four years from now. Instead, he would be settling in to his first legislative session as Florida’s governor. Buckhorn acknowledged those ambitions briefly near the end of his 20-minute inaugural address.
“Because of what we’ve done for the last four years, we have earned the opportunity to define our future,” he said, a sentence with more than one interpretation.
“If we think globally, and not just regionally, that we can be the city that we can create; if we care less about who’s a Democrat, and who’s a Republican, we can begin to reshape this state,” he said to audience cheers. “It’s time for that foolishness to end. We deserve better, and this state deserves better, and this is a story that we can pass on to our children to write.”
Such centrism is what Buckhorn has said will get a Democrat elected to statewide office in Florida. His call for bipartisanship didn’t go down well with all Democrats, though. One local Democratic Party member of note was overheard at the following city council meeting to say, “Do you think Adam Putnam would say something like that?” Putnam, Florida’s Agriculture commissioner, is strongly anticipated to be a candidate for the 2018 nomination for governor as well.
The mayor gave praise to his city council, which sat behind him on stage at the Tampa Convention Center. He reserved his last mention to the newest council member, Guido Maniscalco, who received a huge round of applause. Buckhorn described Maniscalco’s family history as a “quintessential Tampa story,” mentioning how Maniscalco’s Italian father, Giuseppe, cast his first vote ever for his son in last week’s runoff election against Jackie Toledo.
Buckhorn used much of his speech to tell how Tampa overcame the Great Recession, which forced him to borrow liberally from the city’s financial reserves to balance the city’s budgets in his first few years in office: “There was no blueprint for our recovery. We weren’t going to be handed a one-size-fits-all road map for our rehabilitation. In fact, we wouldn’t be handed anything. We had to be the architects of our way forward, and we were.”
Buckhorn soaring speaking style first appeared when he ran in 2011, and he has used elements of it in the many speeches he’s given during the past four years. This speech, though, wove a complete narrative of how Tampa has evolved in recent years. He noted all the various districts of the city, and described what’s been going on in some of them. Although there was little explicit criticism of his work during the past four years, a common complaint at various recent council candidate forums was that neighborhoods outside downtown don’t think they get the attention they deserve.
He mentioned six new parks, “with more on the way,” a doubling of bike lanes, and praised the city’s new Coast Bike Share program.
He mentioned Channelside developer Jeff Vinik‘s plans on the waterfront, and more importantly noted how the city needs to work for everyone — not just the well-heeled.
“Our story, our city, must work for everyone,” Buckhorn said. “We won’t truly be successful until that morning when every child in Tampa wakes up and feels safe, feels confident, feels secure and and thinks this is my home, I am part of this place. This city cares about me. I can make it here. What I can dream, can happen for me here. That’s why we’re writing this story, and that’s why we have to keep pushing.”
He also discussed transit, an enhanced streetcar, and yes, that four-letter word: rail.
“We need rail,” he said. “To the airport. To our job centers, and eventually to St. Petersburg.”
Buckhorn is a dynamic speaker, and he was never in better form. How his personal ambitions and the city’s future coalesce will be interesting to see, indeed.
(Photo courtesy of Kim DeFalco).
You can watch the speech below:
