By Jo Becker
St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
PASCO TIMES; Pg. 1
Sunday, May 31, 1998
Inside a tastefully appointed suite at the Ice Palace, lobbyist Clyde Hobby played host to a group that included lawyers, lawmakers and GTE consultants. The men had paid $ 1,000 apiece to sip beer, nibble on garlic-roasted pork and schmooze with Rep. John Thrasher, Florida’s next Speaker of the House.
The Tampa Bay Lightning lost their hockey game that night. But as the organizer of the political fund-raiser, Hobby, as usual, won friends and influence.
“The Republican Party certainly appreciated it,” said Rep. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, who worked with Hobby on the fund-raiser. “And I don’t mind saying that it was nice for me to be able to help John Thrasher – it helps me get a good position in his administration.”
Money, and Hobby’s ability to raise it for political candidates, has made him perhaps the most powerful man in Pasco County.
Some other influential people say Hobby has more pull than any single commissioner or the county administrator, and tacitly bow to his power by refusing to talk about him on the record.
“There is no two-party system in Pasco,” said one veteran of Pasco County Democratic politics. “There’s only the party of Clyde.”
Say, for example, you want a patronage job from the governor.
You will have to ask Hobby, who raised a lot of money for Lawton Chiles in the last two elections and now controls gubernatorial appointments in Pasco.
Want to run for the County Commission?
Better see Hobby. He has a reputation as the best fund-raiser around, and he has helped elect two current commissioners.
Need a good development lawyer?
Hobby, who has handled the personal legal affairs of commissioners Sylvia Young and David “Hap” Clark, almost never loses a case before the County Commission, where he is hugely popular.
Four out of five commissioners credit Hobby with saving Pasco’s damaged land from further overpumping of groundwater, bringing home large sums of money for major highway improvements and saving various projects from the governor’s veto pen.
They have paid him $ 100,000 a year to lobby for Pasco’s interests in Tallahassee, but they consider that a bargain. Nor do they begrudge him the $ 1.1-million they have paid his law firm to wage the region’s water wars.
They have largely ignored repeated questions about potential conflicts created by Hobby’s multiple public and private roles.
When Hobby announced last week that he was quitting as the county’s lobbyist, a choked-up Commission Chairwoman Young rushed to embrace him.
“There’s never been a harder working person, from the courthouse to the White House, than Mr. Hobby,” she said. “Wherever his little feet have trodden, he’s left a mark.”
But in Tallahassee, Hobby is regarded as a middle-level lobbyist whose greatest asset, his ability to gain Chiles’ ear, is hardly unique.
“That’s impressive to people who aren’t savvy to the way things work up here,” said former state senator and lobbyist Curt Kiser. “But there are a lot of people who can do that.”
And there are some who say Hobby, 56, has thrown the governor’s name around when he couldn’t always back it up, overstated his own accomplishments, worked with a relatively small group of local legislators and kept mostly to himself.
“I do not understand the Pasco County Commission’s affinity for Clyde Hobby – as lobbyists go, he’s not even in the middle of the pack in terms of real power,” said Sen. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Spring Hill. “To have spent $ 1-million on him – my God, I’m glad I’m not a taxpayer in Pasco County.”
It all begins with money
All good lobbyists know that raising money and networking is the key to obtaining access to politicians, influence and clients.
But even by those standards, Hobby has created an especially tight circle of symbiotic relationships, where he uses his power to help friends and clients, and they augment his business and contribute to candidates he supports.
“The real secret to raising money is asking for it,” Hobby said in his low, slow drawl. “I know very few candidates that are any good at raising money, because they are either embarrassed or shy about asking.”
Hobby is neither.
In a county where it is increasingly difficult to raise big bucks for local races, records show that at least one-sixth of the total 1996 contributions received by Democratic Commissioner David “Hap” Clark came from people linked to Hobby. They included people Hobby helped to get patronage jobs, his law clients, companies or people that have business ties to those clients, people to whom he has corporate ties, or lawyers at the law firm of his cousin, Steve Anderson.
Commission Chairwoman Young received more than one-sixth of her total 1996 contributions from the same group. In both cases, most of the contributions that can be linked to Hobby came in bundles of three or more on the same day.
Clark, who in 1995 ignored County Administrator John Gallagher’s selection process and made the motion to hire Hobby as the county’s water lobbyist, received at least $ 8,150. Young received at least $ 8,600.
“I’m surprised they (my clients) didn’t give more,” Hobby said upon hearing those numbers. “But I can’t say I raised all of that.”
Long associated with Democratic Party politics, Hobby has of late been cultivating Republicans. The Ice Palace fund-raiser is one example.
Ed Collins may be another.
People with ties to Hobby gave the Republican county commissioner at least $ 3,100 for this year’s election, more than 10 percent of Collins’ total to date. Collins received four checks, totaling $ 2,000, last New Year’s Eve.
Collins, who has gone from being an occasional critic of Hobby’s to one of his biggest champions, denied receiving help from Hobby. “I know most of these people,” he said.
But most never contributed to his last campaign. Dewey Mitchell is one of the investors in Golden Acres Development Corp., which gave $ 500 to Collins. He said Hobby’s law partner Frank Grey talked to the company’s managing partner about giving Collins the contribution.
Hobby said he isn’t helping Collins. He also said that Grey acted on his own and that he is “proud of him.”
Money helped Hobby establish ties to the governor’s mansion as well, according to prominent Democrat fund-raiser Marcelino Oliva, and that in turn gave Hobby sole control over the governor’s patronage appointments in Pasco.
“The governor rewarded him by making him the point person,” said Oliva, who along with former property appraiser Ted Williams used to share that responsibility with Hobby. “For whatever reason, Ted and I were out of the process.”
In one case, records show Hobby helped appoint the business associate of one of his clients, a developer of low-income housing, to the Pasco County Housing Authority. That agency is charged with finding housing for poor people.
Since 1996, companies and people connected to the developer, Joseph Borda, donated at least $ 3,700 to the Democratic party and Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay’s campaign. Young and Clark received a combined $ 1,800.
Records show Hobby also played a role in appointing or reappointing all five Pasco members of the nine-member Pasco-Hernando Community College Board. From 1992 to 1995, the board paid Hobby $ 15,000 a year to look after its interests in Tallahassee. When Bob Judson became president in 1995, he said Hobby’s position was not needed.
One board member said during a meeting then that he “could not pinpoint anything that (Hobby) has done for the college that merits the amount of money being paid to him.” Hobby resigned before the vote could be taken.
Chiles later appointed Hobby’s wife, who is a former teacher, to the board.
In other cases, Hobby has helped to land appointments for his law partner (Fred Reeves), his former law partner’s husband, several of his law clients and a board member (King Helie) at the Harbor Behavioral Health Care Institute, a non-profit psychiatric hospital that has paid Hobby to lobby for state funding.
Hobby said it is difficult to find good people for patronage slots. And he said that he chooses people not because they do business with him, but because they supported the campaigns of Chiles and Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay.
Contribution or investment?
Hobby attributes his remarkable success in representing clients before the County Commission to a simple formula: He counts his votes before he takes a case, and always tries to put the interests of the county first.
“A local attorney once asked me, “Clyde, why do you have such success before the County Commission and I don’t?’ And I told him, “It’s because you take bad stuff up there and I don’t.’ ”
Former county commissioner James Hollingsworth said he remembers Hobby as a prepared lawyer who often won him over with clearly reasoned arguments. But Hollingsworth said things have changed since he left the commission in 1984.
“When he promotes the elected politicians and then represents clients before them, it’s not a contribution, it’s an investment,” Hollingsworth said. “People don’t give away that kind of money out of the goodness of their hearts. He pretty well gets what he wants because the majority guarantees that he gets it.”
Commissioner Pat Mulieri, Hobby’s sole critic on the board, recalled an unsuccessful attempt to make a developer put up an expensive buffer wall. She couldn’t figure out why she was outvoted 4 to 1.
“Then I talked to one of the staff people and they said, “Don’t you know? That lawyer is from a firm connected to Hobby’s.’ ”
Ben Harrill, a former county attorney who is now in competition with Hobby, said Hobby’s firm does have a lot of influence. But he said it has to do with trust, not necessarily campaign money.
“I don’t think the commission thinks about that,” Harrill said. “They like Clyde anyway because he’s a part of the county and he does a good job.”
Still, even some of Hobby’s closest friends aren’t sure that one man can represent the county, private clients before the county, and the interests of individual commissioners without finding himself in conflict.
Over the past year, the Times revealed that with almost no public scrutiny, Hobby helped persuade the county to make a one-of-a-kind $ 450,000 purchase of a private road owned by one of his clients and helped another developer build a nine-story building in height-restricted Gulf Harbors without a publicly posted hearing.
Hobby helped that same developer, Joe Borda, take another property off Pasco’s tax rolls by lobbying the Legislature for a special tax break. And he tried to persuade the commission to sign off on a $ 15-million bond deal that would have benefited a private utility Borda heads. The deal was withdrawn after the utility’s environmental troubles were made public.
Hobby also represented commissioner Clark in his private dispute with a state agency. He didn’t bill Clark until after his efforts were made public.
Before Hobby resigned as county lobbyist last Wednesday, the man who got him started in Tallahassee, School Superintendent John Long, had this to say:
“Sometimes I think it’s difficult when you work for so many people to always do the exact right thing. Clyde has so many clients, so many people wanting his services, it’s hard to know that everything you’re doing is the right thing.”
Money, lawyers, power
Hobby grew up in Dade City, the son of a gas station owner. He learned early that money, lawyers and power mixed well. Back then, Democrats controlled the county and politicians were controlled by a few wealthy families.
“It was pretty well the old establishment, people from the old Dade City and San Antonio establishment, that decided who would run and who would win,” Hobby said. “Most of the leaders in Pasco County in those days were lawyers.”
When Hobby was about 9, one of those lawyers approached him after he gave a church presentation on a painting of the life of Christ. The little boy listened as the man told him he might make a good lawyer someday.
Hobby received a full scholarship to Stetson University as an undergraduate, but he ran out of money after his first year at Stetson Law School. By then, he was married to his wife, Joy. He approached the college’s comptroller.
After looking over his grades, the comptroller invited Hobby to a lunch meeting with Leroy Highbaugh, one of the college’s board members.
“There were two other students there,” Hobby recalled. “We finished lunch and he informed all three of us that he was going to pay our way through law school.”
It was the first of many powerful men who would help Hobby’s career. After law school, he went to work for Joe McClain, a well-known Dade City lawyer who knew his father from the gas station.
The two men attended Florida Gators football games together and talked politics. McClain liked the younger man’s legal mind and his easygoing, gentlemanly manner. Within a year, he made Hobby a partner.
Over on the west side of the county, development was booming, and Hobby liked real estate law. Eventually, the young lawyer headed west.
His first foray into County Commission politics came in 1976. He joined a group of about 125 businessmen trying to oust Mike Olson, who was then a county commissioner and is now the tax collector. Olson had cast the swing vote in establishing zoning laws in Pasco.
Olson won re-election by a landslide. Afterward, Hobby said some members of the group met for lunch.
“One of them said, “What are we going to do now?’ ” Hobby recalled. “I said, “I’m going to get down on my knees and apologize to Mike Olson.’ ”
Two years later, Hobby chaired Olson’s re-election campaign. Former Property Appraiser Williams, the godfather of Democratic politics in Pasco, took Hobby under his wing. The three men became inseparable.
Hobby joined the county political establishment, sitting on several advisory committees that made recommendations on land development regulations. He quickly gained a reputation as a top development lawyer.
But by the late 1980s, with the county in a recession and new state land development codes making rezonings more difficult, work had slowed significantly.
John Long was at that time a state representative from Pasco. Hobby had helped him raise money for Democratic legislators.
“When the economy changed, John started saying, “You know all these guys, you’ve raised money for them, why don’t you start lobbying?’ ” Hobby said.
Long helped direct a list of clients to Hobby, including big players such as GTE and Gulf Power. But in 1994, he publicly chastised Hobby for using his name to attract clients.
To show his displeasure, Long, the House appropriations chairman, didn’t put into the budget some money being sought by two of Hobby’s clients.
“I don’t want anyone to think they can hire anyone and have special access to me,” Long said at the time.
When Long retired, there were those who said Hobby would not last in Tallahassee. But Hobby had worked hard to establish close ties to Chiles. The two had met at a hunting club years before. Hobby helped him in the 1990 election. And during the 1994 election, Hobby took months off work to raise money for Chiles, eclipsing Williams as the governor’s point man in Pasco.
His close ties to Chiles helped persuade county commissioners in 1995 to hire Hobby as their water lobbyist.
Taking credit
When he resigned from his Pasco lobbying jobs Wednesday, Hobby cited a list of accomplishments. He said that without his help:
The Suncoast Parkway would not have been built.
The state would not have funneled millions of dollars into road improvements throughout the county.
And the water wars would not have been successfully concluded.
But in all three cases, Hobby must share credit with others.
The Suncoast Parkway was an idea that County Administrator John Gallagher pushed for years. Another major player was James Kimbrough, a prominent figure in Hernando County, who sat on the state transportation commission that reviews major expenditures.
“I’m satisfied that Clyde Hobby played an important role,” said Don Crane, president of Floridians for Better Transportation, a group that has also pushed the project. “But there’s no question in my mind that this would have happened in a timely fashion without Clyde Hobby.”
Hobby can take some credit for road improvements, but the unique financing deal that speeded the flow of state transportation money to Pasco was in the works before he became the county’s transportation lobbyist.
There’s no question that it was Hobby who persuaded Chiles to tour Pasco lakes and wetlands devastated by overpumping.
“He said, “Clyde, I’m going to come because you asked me. But I’m not going to get involved in micromanaging the issue,’ ” Hobby told commissioners last week. But after the tour, Hobby said the governor was dismayed by the damaged landscape.
“Clyde, why did this happen?” Hobby said the governor asked.
The tour was a turning point, but some paint a more complicated picture of Hobby’s efforts to bring an end to the region’s water wars.
Representative Carl Littlefield, R-Dade City, criticized Hobby in 1996 for pushing a water bill that he said would be “devastating” to Pasco, and suggested Hobby only supported measures he knew would pass in order to make himself look good before the county commission.
Kiser, who is paid $ 20,000 a year to lobby for St. Petersburg, said that in 1997 Hobby claimed the governor would veto a bill if Pasco wasn’t exempted from several clauses.
“It was beyond what the governor had said he would support,” Kiser said. “When they found out, they made it quite clear that the governor wouldn’t support that. Right there at the table we rewrote the bill to exempt only what was supposed to be exempt.”
Hobby disputed that account, but April Herrle, the governor’s spokeswoman, said, “Kiser’s recollection is correct.”
Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Palm Harbor, worked closely with Hobby. He praised the lobbyist, but said the region’s water management district – and the money it put forward to help encourage other, alternative sources of water – was the key to completing the deal.
And Gilliam Clarke, a local water activist who has traveled back and forth to Tallahassee to fight for Pasco’s water, said activists were the ones who originally made Pasco’s problems known to the Legislature.
“But no matter what happens, no matter who does it, Clyde takes the credit,” she said. “I guess you can’t blame the guy – he’s just trying to make a living.”
Out of the spotlight?
With his lobbying role coming to an end, the question for Hobby becomes: What’s next? He has made significant inroads with Republican legislators, and hopes to help get Lt. Gov. MacKay elected governor.
But his plans, he said, are to spend more time on local real estate law and less time in Tallahassee.
Hobby, who once decided against running for elected office because he didn’t want to give up his privacy, said his law practice has suffered because of the media scrutiny he has endured over the past year.
“One fellow said to me recently, “You don’t have as much power as you used to because of you being in the spotlight,’ ” Hobby said. “Clients are afraid that they’re going to be unjustly spotlighted and ridiculed – I don’t know any businessman who wants his name in the paper.”
When the ruckus dies down, Hobby said he hopes to return to a “sane, normal lifestyle” where people think of him as an “honest and hard working man. That’s the reputation I had until ya’ll started writing about me.”
– Staff writer Geoff Dougherty contributed to this report.
+++
“The Republican party certainly appreciated it. And I don’t mind saying that it was nice for me to be able to help John Thrasher – it helps me get a good position in his administration.”
– REP. MIKE FASANO
R-New Port Richey, on a Hobby-organized fund-raiser for the GOP
“There’s never been a harder working person, from the courthouse to the White House, than Mr. Hobby. Wherever his little feet have trodden, he’s left a mark.”
– SYLVIA YOUNG
County Commission chairwoman
“I do not understand the Pasco County Commission’s affinity for Clyde Hobby – as lobbyists go, he’s not even in the middle of the pack in terms of real power. To have spent $ 1-million on him – my God, I’m glad I’m not a taxpayer in Pasco County.”
– SEN. GINNY BROWN-WAITE
R-Spring Hill
“The governor rewarded (Hobby) by making him the point person” for patronage appointments. For whatever reason, Ted and I were out of the process.”
– MARCELINO OLIVA
along with former property appraiser Ted Williams, Oliva used to share that responsibility with Hobby
“Then I talked to one of the staff people and they said, “Don’t you know? That lawyer is from a firm connected to Hobby’s.”
– COMMISSIONER PAT MULIERI
recalling why she was outvoted 4-1 in an attempt to make a developer put up an expensive buffer wall
“Sometimes I think its difficult when you work for so many people to always do the exact right thing. Clyde has so many clients, so many people wanting his services, it’s hard to know that everything you’re doing is the right thing.”
– JOHN LONG
School superintendent
“I’m satisfied that Clyde Hobby played an important role (in promoting the Suncoast Parkway). But there’s no question in my mind that this would have happened in a timely fashion without Clyde Hobby.”
– DON CRANE
president of Floridians for Better Transportation, a group that also pushed the project
“No matter what happens, no matter who does it, Clyde takes the credit. I guess you can’t blame the guy – he’s just trying to make a living.”
– GILLIAM CLARKE
water activist
+++
Hobby on Hobby
“Gosh, gee, man alive. I wonder if I could market that?”
– upon hearing that someone said the only political party in Pasco County is the “party of Clyde.”
“The real secret to raising money is asking for it. I know very few candidates that are any good at raising money, because they are either embarrassed or shy about asking.”
“People trust me to pick the right candidate.”
– on why people give him campaign contributions
“A local attorney once asked me, “Clyde, why do you have such success before the County Commission and I don’t?’ And I told him, “It’s because you take bad stuff up there and I don’t.’ ”
“I’ve had lawyers stop me and say, “Man, I wish I could get that kind of publicity.” But I don’t view it that way.” – on press coverage over the last year