Café con Tampa is a weekly gathering of regional leaders, neighborhood residents and interested parties to discuss critical issues facing the Tampa Bay area — and have a nice breakfast. The organizers have generously invited me to opine this week about Florida’s ever-changing political and media landscape.
Consumer protection attorney Ryan Torrens is quite aware that he’s not an established political presence, but he says that should be an argument for his fledgling candidacy to become Florida’s next Attorney General. “Look, I get it,” the 32-year-old told an audience who gathered Friday morning at Tampa’s Oxford Exchange to hear the Hillsborough County resident speak as part of the Cafe Con Tampa lecture series. “I’m young. First-time candidate. A lot of people look at me and think, ‘Can…
Whatever adjective(s) you may wish to use to describe Sharon Calvert, Tom Rask and Barb Haselden, “effective” has to be one of them. The three Tea Party-aligned citizen activists have led the opposition to the two major public transit initiatives that have gone down to defeat over the past seven years, and contributed strongly to a third never making it to the ballot in Hillsborough County in 2016 (they also proudly add the failed referendums in Polk County in 2010 and…
