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Paulson: Iorio angling toward 2014 run

Posted Oct 17, 2011 by William March

Updated Oct 18, 2011 at 11:13 AM

Is former Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio planning a run for governor in 2014?

Based on talks with Iorio and on her current tour to promote her new book, local political analyst Darryl Paulson thinks so.

Paulson, a Republican and a retired political science professor at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, says he spent time last week with Iorio, a Democrat, sharing a ride to Jacksonville for a panel appearance on Florida’s future. The two talked politics.

Iorio, who now holds a position called Leader in Residence at the University of Tampa, has just released a book on the subject of leadership, and is starting a statewide tour to promote it.

Paulson said that’s exactly the kind of thing Iorio needs to do if she’s thinking about a run for office in 2014—elevate her statewide name recognition. Iorio, a former Hillsborough County commissioner and election suspervisor as well as mayor, is well known in the Tampa Bay area, but not so much statewide.

He said he watched Iorio during their trip as she collected names and phone numbers of people attending the panel discussion, suggesting she was building a contact list, and that she grilled him on political subjects.

Iorio says she has put politics on hold to pursue a career as a leadership and motivational speaker.

“I’m focused on my book and leadership speaking and building effective leaders,” she said Tuesday in a phone interview from near Cashiers, N.C. where she and her husband are hiking through the turning leaves.

She said she’s not planning to go to the state Democratic Party convention Oct. 28-29 in Orlando, an event that might be an important step in building a candidacy.

But, Paulson noted, for Iorio or anyone else thinking about a 2014 race, it would be imprudent to talk about it now—it would alienate supporters of candidates on the ballot in 2012.

If she does decide to run, Iorio could face a Democratic primary including another big-name female candidate from Tampa, Alex Sink, and possibly others—maybe even former Gov. Charlie Crist, the subject of widespread speculation that he might become a Democrat. Sink recently started a foundation on public policy issues that will help keep up her public profile, will be at the convention.

But both Sink and Crist would have their own problems in the race: Crist, a former Republican who’s taken many conservative, non-Democratic political stances over the years, would have to get Democrats to trust him, and Sink would have to overcome the stigma of her 2010 loss to Rick Scott.

Paulson said he doesn’t consider Iorio a doctrinaire liberal—“She would have a lot of appeal not just to Democrats, but to independents and some Republicans, especially in the Tampa Bay area,” he said.