The hipness factor

For a grandmother, Samm Simpson is running the hippest political campaign around.

Her T-shirts are for sale online at the teen-hip Café Press. She has her own MySpace page. She posts to her blog frequently. She's against the war in Iraq. She's an outspoken activist and critic of the Bush administration. She often carries political must-read books around with her on the stump -- last week it was the 9/11 Commission Report and a scholarly work about the human dynamics of suicide bombers.

But Simpson faces a near-impossible task in her quest to become a Democratic member of the U.S. Congress. Her campaign is underfunded ... make that practically un-funded. She is in the wrong party, voter-registration-wise. She's virtually unknown and, by her own admission, knows nothing about running a campaign.

Oh, and she has to beat longtime incumbent Congressman C.W. "Bill" Young, R-Indian Shores, who has brought home countless millions of dollars to Tampa Bay in federal grants and projects. The same Bill Young who is the most powerful member of Congress from Tampa Bay, who is the closest we have to a godfather of politics.

Ironically, her views on foreign affairs are probably more in line with the majority of Floridians than Young's, especially when it comes to the war in Iraq. A Nov. 2005 Quinnipiac University poll found Florida "voters disapprove 64-31 percent of the President's handling of the war in Iraq and say 60-36 percent that going to war in Iraq was the wrong thing to do." Those numbers surely aren't any better nearly a year later.

On the surface, Simpson's comments on the war sound like just more angry anti-war rhetoric. But her position on Iraq is more thought out, more nuanced and more realistic than just some blind hatred of Bush.

Her plan for Iraq? First, get the American corporations like Halliburton out of the country immediately, to be replaced by an international consortium of providers. Second, send home the more than 25,000 private security forces that the U.S. pays for in Iraq, outsourced warriors for whom there are few rules of conduct, Simpson says. Then look at a phased, careful withdrawal of U.S. ground troops accompanied by real dialogue with interests in Iraq and the region.

That sounds a helluva lot more realistic than the Bush administration's open-ended War on Terror that has no conclusion.

"I don't accept that paradigm," Simpson says of Bush's long view of the War on Terror. We may have to fight terrorists for quite some time, but the notion of an overarching world war of ideologies envisioned in the Bush Doctrine doesn't have to be, she adds.

The first step to ending the War on Terror? "We have to declare that we made a mistake" in Iraq, Simpson says. "We admit that we were wrong and we disavow what we did. Then we have a dialogue."

Just how did this 52-year-old former corporate media manager (at Raymond James and Pinellas County government) become a passionate, arm-waving MoveOn.org activist and long-shot political candidate?

Although Simpson seems still a bit mystified by the transformation, she talks about caring for her young grandson recently. It changed her outlook.

Out of work, laid off from her job at Pinellas County, with a preschooler to care for, Simpson had lots of time to read books critical of Bush and the war. She watched his speeches on the Internet (she says she hasn't watched television in eight years). She grew particularly angry watching his January 2004 State of the Union speech and decided then and there she would run for Congress. "They're lying," she thought, "and I've had it."

But taking on Young? He's been in Congress since 1970, and hasn't had even a semi-serious challenge in 14 years. The St. Petersburg Times has rightly pointed out that national political observers don't think Simpson is a real threat, and the best mainstream press she has mustered is a short story on page 5B of the Times. When she had well-known anti-war activist and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern in town last week to support her candidacy, his appearance wasn't covered by the local dailies or television stations or even this newspaper.

Further stacking the deck against Simpson is Young's political base, the multitudes of local governments and organizations for which he has scored federal dollars during his long tenure as the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. The white-haired congressman never blinked at the idea of making sure Pinellas County's diet of federal gifts was rich and full.

"I respect Mr. Young for what he has done for our county," Simpson says. "But right now, what is at stake is much greater than pork."

Plus, while her disdain is aimed at Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al., it is Young who votes with them, Simpson says.

Right now, her main campaign aim is to try to open a dialogue with Young, who has so far managed not to debate or appear together with Simpson. The effort to force a forum has become so important to her that she recently tracked him down at an appearance he made in Tampa at MacDill Air Force Base to challenge him again. He didn't commit to anything, she says, but did promise to call her personally. She's still waiting for that call.

"Democracy means we have a choice," Simpson says. "I want to have a forum with Mr. Young and have an open dialogue about democracy. Wouldn't it be tremendous just to have an open forum about these issues? There's no discussion any more" in politics. And that means, she adds, that the truth is left undiscovered.

"To find the truth," Simpson says, "that's the great ideological struggle of the 21st century."

Political Whore can be reached by e-mail at wayne.garcia@creativeloafing.com, by telephone at 813-739-4805 or on our blog at www.blurbex.com.