Republican presidential candidate John McCain has announced that County Commissioner Mark Sharpe and Sheriff David Gee will lead his campaign in Hillsborough County.

The announcement could be seen as something of a coup. Hillsborough County Republican Party Chairman David Storck said as far as he knows, no other county commissioners or constitutional officers have taken sides in what promises to be a hard-fought presidential primary.

Nonetheless, Storck said he can’t tell yet which of the presidential candidates is likely to dominate the county.

Sharpe and McCain, by the way, are both Navy veterans. McCain, famously, was a carrier pilot during the Vietnam era, and Sharpe was an intelligence officer in the 1980s.

And, as it happens, they both served on the carrier USS Forrestal.

That’s not why Sharpe’s going with McCain, though, he said.

“I was with McCain back in 2000. I liked his maverick personality, his willingness to cross party lines,” Sharpe said.

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