Simon vs. Bunting: An unlikely lively race

Column

Even alert voters who remember their ninth-grade civics, read multiple editorial pages and routinely attend campaign rallies would have trouble describing the duties of the major parties' elected state committeemen.

That said, it doesn't take a political junkie to predict the liveliest race on Pasco County's August (yes, August) ballot will be the one for this all-but-unknowable office. All you need to know are the names in the contest, and those names would be Bill Bunting and Steve Simon.

Bunting, for those just joining us, is the irresistible force of Pasco politics — equal parts Don Corleone and Vince Lombardi shrouded in Darth Vader's cape. For his endless ebullience — we suspect he even yammers in his sleep — Simon is Kilauea made flesh, the human who overflows, polysyllabically.

Bunting is the incumbent Republican state committeeman (whatever that is) from Pasco County. Simon, the former two-term county commissioner, hopes to replace him. It's a blood-on-the-moon showdown over a position that pays … absolutely nothing. Zip.

Remuneration is beside the point. State committeemen (and women) wield influence. They identify and recruit candidates. They help write planks of the party's policy platform and enjoy access to their party's elected officials. And they get good seats at the big events.

In short, state committee members are the local points of the grassroots spears. In that light, it's the ideal place to renew the feud between the well-defined factions in Pasco's Republican ranks: the Bunting neoconservatives vs. Mike Fasano's pop-conservatives.

Already, each side is digging in and lobbing mortar shells.

Simon, out of politics since his loss to Michael Cox in 2006, returns hoping to rekindle a sense of purpose. His gift is explaining complicated concepts, he says, in ways that soothe and persuade.

Consider the nights Simon would drive across the county to visit with constituents riled up over some half-understood portion of Pasco's comprehensive land-use plan. Those meetings would end with heads nodding in approval.

"Those were nights when I slept especially well," Simon says. "I knew I'd done good work."

That's the itch he's scratching, he says.

In a monologue that stretches a good 10 minutes and includes terms such as "interface," "promulgation," "disenchantment," "digitalizing," "specificity," "neophyte," "disaffected," "mesmerized" and — my favorite — "a campaign of transitioning," it all came down to this:

Simon is in the race because he despairs for the direction of the country; that Republican conservatism is its last, best hope; and he is bursting, from a position of influence, to lay out the particulars as only he can.

Well. That's nice work if you can get it. The question arises as to whether GOP voters will think Simon's ambition best fits the job description. Whatever it is.

As for Bunting, the blunt-tawkin' Noo Yawkuh — but I repeat myself — his first salvo borrows from Cox's withering campaign:

"When Steve Simon was a commissioner and playing on his computer buying golf clubs during commission meetings, he was on the taxpayer dime," he said. "People forget. I haven't forgotten. He wasn't doing his job then. Why would he want to take a job that pays nothing?"

What, that old nonsense again? We said it then; we'll say it now: Internet surfing is the modern equivalent of doodling. Are we saying elected officials can't doodle at meetings?

We are confident it will get better. Given each candidate's ego, baggage, sharp tongue and likely supporters, it can't help but get better.

And we can't wait.