With just four days until the election, folks at the Greenlight camp are getting creative. For months there have been seas of green campaign signs popping up all over the county from yard signs to bus wraps.
Now there’s a sail boat.
Stuart Rogel, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay Partnership, has placed a 10-foot by 12-foot Yes on Greenlight banner on top of the mast of his personal sailboat. The green banner has the trademark “yes” inside a circle below the Greenlight Pinellas logo.
Rogel is taking his sailboat out on the water near bridges to get some last minute brand recognition in as voters continue to pile into the polls. This morning the sailboat was floating around just off the Howard Frankland Bridge near the airport exit. That’s one of those pesky bottle neck spots where traffic gets nasty.
“People were just sitting there in their cars and looking,” Rogel said. “I thought maybe it would make them pause for a minute and think, there’s a better way than driving to Tampa.”
In addition to Rogel’s banner-toting boat, supporters of the transit initiative took to the streets with smaller signs near Kennedy Boulevard. The group is hoping voters will approve a one penny sales tax increase that would increase funding for the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority to pay for a sweeping set of improvements including increased bus service and passenger rail.
The proposed rail line would connect downtown St. Pete to downtown Clearwater. It would also eventually connect to Tampa via the Howard Frankland Bridge when it is replaced somewhere around 2025.
Yesterday, Rogel took his boat, and his message, out to the Courtney Campbell Causeway. He plans to set sail again on Sunday, Monday and Election Day Tuesday.
The $285 banner was paid for by the Greenlight Pinellas campaign and contains all the legally mandated disclosure. Rogel just volunteered his boat to carry it.
