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Gadd-zooks! A political beheading!

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By TOM JACKSON Tom Jackson

tjackson@tampatrib.com tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: June 14, 2009

In the high-profile dismissal of high-energy lieutenant Ray Gadd, conventional wisdom suggests Heather Fiorentino has some 'splainin' to do. After all, you don't just up and fire a 28-year employee - let alone one with Gadd's accomplishments and credentials - without describing down to the most excruciating detail the journey that's taken you from partners to irreconcilable differences.

Oh, wait. This isn't "Jon & Kate, Etc."

The icky truth is, as a constitutional officer, the Pasco County schools superintendent is the last word in the composition of the district's administrative staff.

Regarding her failure to retain Gadd, for five years an assistant superintendent overseeing new construction, planning and transportation, Fiorentino has played the Sphinx of Land O' Lakes Boulevard. Her explanation - the front office is "moving in a new direction" - is intentionally oblique, a catch-all dodge.

School board members expecting Fiorentino to be more forthcoming at Tuesday's assembly must be prepared to be disappointed.

Election Day upshots

Elections have consequences. Winners get to establish their agendas, with the full appreciation that they will have to defend the purposes and outcomes when the season for re-election arrives. What the school board is unable to squeeze from Fiorentino now, her constituents almost certainly will.

Or not. Three years is a long time, and by 2012, Gadd may be some sort of agency director in the administration of Gov. Alex Sink, a rising star in Tallahassee.

For now, really, only the willfully obtuse are unable to see this for precisely what it is: a political assassination. Fiorentino has chosen this moment to consolidate power. She has gone, as they say, "to the mattresses."

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

High-stakes poker

At 52, Gadd's spring is wound tighter than the foremost Swiss watch. He is a dynamo, equal parts competence and goodwill, and it is impossible not to think well of him.

But he was John Long's man, which made him Chuck Rushe's man. He was never a member of the Fiorentino camp, as his local campaign contributions make clear: $8,300 in 27 donations over nine years, including $500 to Rushe in his GOP primary race against Fiorentino in 2004; plus a single, bet-hedging $100 payment to his future boss's efforts months after she beat Rushe for the nomination.

In truth, for all his laudable qualities, Gadd owes much to Fiorentino's magnanimity, which may be why he survived her first term. Assuming the superintendent identifies a reliable ally to fill his former duties - a difficult, but not impossible, task - Gadd's dismissal in the first year of her second term will be, for purposes of the next campaign, a memory, and immaterial.

So, Gadd hedged his bet. Now Fiorentino is wagering she can weather this summer storm.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 259-7068

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