Reading the Tampa Bay Times‘ disturbing stories about “Hoe” Brown, chairman of the Tampa Port Authority, political fundraiser and, um, ‘slumlord’, the conspiracy theorist inside of me cannot help but think that the expose is blow-back from the collapse of the Port’s deal with Santosh Govindaraju and Punit Shah, whose bid to buy Channelside’s lease was killed in May by the Port’s governing board.
No offense to the dogged reporters who put the story of Brown to paper, but it’s been an open secret in many quarters what kind of business Brown conducted. All you had to was go by his office on Stanley Street to pick up one of the countless checks he donated to local political clients (as I have), take a good look around, and you’d quickly realize that something was amiss.
“It always struck me as odd,” said Chris Ingram, a Republican communications consultant and an ally of Brown, told the Times and wrote on his blog. “Hoe is a relatively successful guy, and his office being in that part of town was just different. But I just attributed it to him being thrifty.”
Like many others, Ingram must have had blinders on about what was really going on at Brown’s properties, although I tend to agree with Ingram when he writes, “(T)hose who are down on their luck … still need a place to live. Hoe merely found a way to provide a need – albeit a poor choice, and a potentially illegal one (for not having permits and being up to code) – he could provide to those with few options.”
This is not the first time, Tampa’s political elite has been caught blindsided by the double-life of one of its most prominent political donors and leaders. At the same time Brown was building his fiefdom, so too was “Commander Bobby Thompson” — the charity-scammer who allegedly duped donors out of tens of millions of dollars earmarked for his front the U.S. Navy Veterans Association, all the while funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservative political campaigns.
Certainly, Hoe Brown is no Bobby Thomspson (or whoever Thompson really is), but they both operated in the same cash-and-carry political circle in Tampa and Hillsborough.
Which leads me back to my original question: What’s new about this news about Brown, other than it finally exposed by the newspaper?
What’s new is that the deal with Liberty Channelside fell apart — and did so bitterly, with accusations of physical threats being lobbed at Govindaraju and Shah, whom may have decided that if their names were going to be dragged through the mud, so was everyone on the other side of the negotiating table. Is it difficult to imagine Govindaraju and Shah had their public relations team investigate Brown and the other members of the Port Authority board? If they did, Brown’s slumlording would have been unearthed almost immediately by anyone who bothered to drive by Brown’s office. From there, all it took was a tip to Will Hobson and Jamal Thalji.
Brown’s downfall should serve as a reminder to us all that those who live in glasshouses, shouldn’t let others live in roach-infested trailers.
