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Fret Not, Mayor: Louisville Has Nothing On Us

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By STEVE OTTO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 25, 2008

Mayor Pam was being at least a little reflective as she worked over her ropa vieja.

"Bet you can't get a decent ropa vieja in Louisville!" she claimed, waving her fork in the air.

She was laughing but you could also tell she was just a tad miffed at this week's raid in Tampa by the mayor of Louisville, who is trying to recruit young professionals to come to his town.

She doesn't have much to worry about, even if Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson was supposed to host a party in town last night called the Louisville Reunion, to which he promised to bring in a hefty supply of Kentucky bourbon along with recruiters from his hometown's companies.

Even if the economy is on the upswing there and even if they do hold a horse race there once a year, Louisville is still in Kentucky and it's still just Louisville. I've been there and it looks pretty much like any other middle-American town except for the giant bat outside the Louisville Slugger museum.

Louisville might have the bat, but we have a team that uses them. We have so many other great things in this area that I'm not even going to run a list. I'll only suggest that from now on, the Louisville mayor should sit out on the porch sipping his mint juleps before we start spreading the word up there about what they are missing down here.

'Call Me The Flugtag Mayor'

Mayor Pam was still reliving the weekend before, with the 100,000-plus people who crammed downtown for Flugtag, that rather odd event that featured teams with makeshift so-called flying machines sliding off the Convention Center roof into the drink.

"I'm not even sure I understand what it is that appeals to so many people," she said, "but if it brings 100,000 people downtown and they all have a good time then you can call me the Flugtag Mayor and they can come back anytime."

But getting this deep into a second term, it's also time to do a little more speculating on what might be down the line for arguably the most popular political figure in these parts.

"I think I might try working with some kind of organization out of politics; something where you build up something or improve how it operates," she offered.

It's All In The Timing

"Well, how about the county mayor idea?" I tossed out. She's talked about it, never with much enthusiasm. Politics is also a matter of timing, and for her that time would be 2010. That would be the time for the next battle for the senate seat currently held by Mel Martinez.

Mention that and it's like when you plug your cell phone in to recharge the battery. She gets that charged-up look. At the same time, she comes up with all sorts of disclaimers about not having a statewide base, or having many things left to do here as mayor, and anything else that might pass as a reason to not do what she really wants to do.

"It's not like being a senator or representative," she says, "A mayor is more of a manager and you have to be here doing that, not running around the state campaigning."

Maybe.

But if I'm a Democratic party boss and looking at the thin list of leaders on the rise around the state, I'm not sure how you could not put the Flugtag Mayor at the top of any list of possibilities.

Keyword, Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve Otto's column.

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