David McKalip is running for City Council in District 4.
Darden Rice is the far superior candidate, and you should do everything you can to support her. She will be stellar on City Council.
But the truth is, Rice is really unmatched in this race.
I believe in our political system. I do believe it needs some fundamental changes, but generally speaking, things work the way they should. I am a fairly liberal Democrat, and given the paradigm of the political system we occupy in this country, I recognize there will be fairly conservative Republicans to counter my ideas, votes, actions, and advocacy. Sometimes guys like me win at the polls. Sometimes we lose. That's the way it works.
And so given that framework, I give my friends and neighbors on the other side of the aisle a lot of leeway. After all, they are entitled to their ideas, their ideals, their values and their way of doing business. I don't agree with most of it. But the good news is, I don't have to.
Of course, I get outraged, angry, plain livid at some of the things my Republican and conservative countrymen propose. But that's the way honest debate works. If an idea doesn't get you going one way or the other, is it really worth debating at all?
David McKalip, a neurosurgeon, is not about debating ideas. He's not even about participating in the political process -- he's about exploiting it. More on that in a moment.
That McKalip doesn't care to engage in the process is just fine with me, because I don't particularly care to give time to racists, which David McKalip is. "Funny stuff," indeed.
A brief aside: I do not understand racial politics in this area, and may never. How a man who was so publicly embarrassed, on the national stage, no less, can be taken seriously as a candidate for the City Council of the fourth largest city in the state is a complete mystery to me. For what it's worth, I cannot for the life of me understand how a person can utter a racial epithet during a political campaign in 2009, and be taken seriously as a mayoral candidate only four years later.
Back to Dr. McKalip: I suspect he genuinely loathes the political process. In fact, his campaign website proves he hates government: "We should cut local property taxes, fees and utility bill costs." "Social programs continue to fall far short of their promises." "...it is time for the local government to tighten its belt and live on less..."
Don't bother looking for specific examples of the "ineffective government programs" he cites.
For sure, though, one of them is public transportation. Dr. McKalip has been an outspoken critic of transportation, including the efforts to bring light rail to the area. Although bringing rail here would be an unquestionable economic boon to the region, Dr. McKalip, well, questioned it at a recent candidate forum. He has called light rail a "boondoggle" at his blog, the Sun Beam Times, and has accused PSTA of engaging in "shell games". And on his campaign site, he's gone to war with the Pinellas Realtors -- of all people -- and tied it to a "rail boondoggle" (he likes the word "boondoggle," I guess).
So it's established, then: Dr. David McKalip, a man with a track record of poor judgement at best (racist tendencies at worst), who hates government programs, does not care for mass transit.
Very well.
Funny, then, that Dr. McKalip would advertise on a PSTA bus (pictured at the top of this story).
It is an ad for his medical practice -- in fonts and colors far too similar to his campaign color schemes to be a coincidence. I say it's an "ad". What it is, of course, is wild hypocrisy.
When it comes to candidates for political office, perhaps you can stand a racist (I know I can't). Perhaps you can tolerate an anti-tax, anti-government ideologue. Maybe you can support someone light on specifics, heavy on polarizing rhetoric.
But can you really tolerate a hypocrite?
St. Petersburg deserves better.
