Mitch Perry
“Confederate monument in Tampa will stay put” was the headline by a published on CNN’s website on Wednesday, shortly after the Hillsborough County Commission voted 4-3 to keep a statue of a Confederate soldier in front of the annex of the county courthouse located in downtown Tampa.
“Officials in Tampa decide not to move Civil War monument,” was the headline in the Washington Post.
“Tampa leaders won’t remove Confederate Monument,” read the headline in the Orlando Sentinel.
On Thursday, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn wanted to make sure everybody knows that it was the government of Hillsborough County – and not the city he runs – that made that controversial vote.
“There is no honor in treason and there is no valor in enslaving people because of their race,” said the mayor. “That statue represents the worst of humanity not the Tampa that we aspire to be. This decision doesn’t speak for our city and the people that I represent.”
The board’s 4-3 vote on Wednesday has angered many parts of the community, and made the region somewhat of an outlier from what other metropolitan areas that Tampa compares themselves have done with Confederate monuments of late. As CNN reported, “It was a rare negotiated outcome in the national debate over the place of divisive Confederate memorials.
On social media on Thursday, angry citizens noted that all four commissioners who supported the proposal to maintain the monument – Stacy White, Victor Crist, Ken Hagan and Sandy Murman – are all running on the 2018 ballot, and they vowed retribution at the polls.
That remains to be seen, however.
Hagan is running (again) in District 2, the Northern Hillsborough County Commission seat that has been maintained by Republicans for years. He’s also already raised over $200,000 in that race.
White is running for reelection in District 4, the eastern Hillsborough County seat that is considered the most conservative region of the county.
Crist and Murman are running in Districts 5 and 7, respectively, both countywide seats where theoretically they could be challenged by a strong Democratic challenger.
7 comments
Carmen Ines Schumacher
June 23, 2017 at 6:10 pm
All four of them are an embarrassment to the city and the people they represent. There is no amount of money big enough for anyone to vote to keep such piece of history that is offensive to so many.
Wayne Willingham
June 25, 2017 at 4:35 pm
You should learn some history that’s not taught by the government schools and you might can get some hate out of your life.
Michael Hutson
June 26, 2017 at 2:20 am
what a weasel he is! carpetbagger/scalawag mentality!
Mary
June 27, 2017 at 12:50 am
You don’t know what you r talking g about. We were fighting for independence not slavery
Shannon Kimbrell
June 25, 2017 at 4:37 pm
Treason? Secession was not treason, else they would have tried the CS leaders for treason after the war. They practiced their right to legal secession. As for slavery, it exsisted in the US for eighty three years under the US flag. You can not destroy an economic system without plans to help the people impacted, both slaves and plantation owners. The soldiers’ obeyed Florida’s call to arms, and you, Mr. Major, should be ashamed to call their act in obeying the laws of your state as treason. You are the worst example of humanity, not those young men.
Mary
June 27, 2017 at 12:51 am
Ditto
Justin Waters
July 1, 2017 at 11:27 am
Buckhorn is to blame for not helping the commissioners find a historically appropriate place for the monument. He even refused the commissioners to place the monument in Tampa’s historical Oaklawn Cemetery. As mayor, it’s his responsibility to help manage these Tampa related issues.
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