• Look Back In History
• Pmessages
• Quiz
• Stump The Staff
• Top Fifty
• Close

Commissioner Takes His Job to the Mat

Posted: Sep 12th 2007 By: CMBurnham

During his professional wrestling career Brian Blair was known as a "baby face" - a good guy.

He donned yellow-and-black-striped tights as half of the wrestling duo the Killer Bees, relying less on brute strength and more on finesse.

Now approaching the final year of his first Hillsborough County Commission term, Blair hasn't racked up many style points lately.

He's been painted as a developer-friendly ideologue without concern for the environment. He's been lampooned on YouTube, where his likeness rips trees from the ground to make way for sprawl.

Harsh comments to fellow Commissioner Al Higginbotham and Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson - men he considers friends - prompted apologies from him.

Blair insists much of the criticism is overblown, that his mea culpas will make the hard feelings fade. His public scolding of staff members and other elected officials, he said, are part of his competitive nature and a reason why he was elected.

"The people didn't elect me to follow the status quo," Blair said. "That often causes the perception of being mean or mean-spirited or bullyish."

That attitude seems to have served him well in life. It prompted him to leave college to pursue a wrestling career. That, in turn, led to a successful business venture.

As a public official, though, that brash behavior has invited criticism. Environmentalists consider him the ringleader of a failed move to disband local wetlands oversight.

Blair said his plans for the wetlands division were misconstrued by the media and activists. It's unfair, he said, for people to define his time on the commission by episodes like the Higginbotham and Johnson dustups.

Instead, he points to his record as a conservative who's sought to slash spending, stymied efforts to increase taxes and supported efforts to help protect seniors and children.

"I've tried to turn nickels into dimes," Blair said.

He said he has no regrets about his three years in office, and that when he's spoken too bluntly he's said he sorry. "I was elected to challenge government," he said.

That's not enough for those who see his actions as impulsive and overbearing.

"He seems erratic," said Jan Platt, a former county commissioner who held Blair's seat before her retirement in 2004. "He doesn't give issues the thoughtful attention they deserve."

Patrick Manteiga, editor and publisher of the newspaper La Gaceta, said Blair has been his own worst enemy at times.

"I don't think he thinks about perception," Manteiga said. "He does things that make you question everything he does."

Early Home Life Had Tribulations
Blair's success in life hasn't come easy. Born in Gary, Ind., in 1957, the oldest of five children, Blair's parents divorced shortly after moving to Tampa when he was 12. An argument with his father when he was 16 prompted him to leave home, and he stayed with friends until graduating from Tampa Bay Technical High School.

He signed a football scholarship at the University of Louisville, where he studied business and political science. There, he lived on a $10 a week stipend from his mother, he said. That was until he got his break in professional wrestling in 1977. The pay for a week of wrestling was $750. School was left behind.

His first marriage to the daughter of a wrestling promoter ended - with gunshots - after Blair suspected his then-wife of cheating on him. When he confronted her, a fight with her suspected lover broke out and her father fired shots at Blair.

He moved on, joining the World Wrestling Federation as half of the Killer Bees duo. Blair's career peaked in 1987 when the Killer Bees performed at Wrestlemania III before more than 90,000 fans in Pontiac, Mich.

"It was a dream come true," Blair said. "Wrestling was a clean, family sport."

The Killer Bees never won a title, the result of politics within the WWF, Blair said. He won titles in other leagues, including the Florida Southern Heavyweight Champion and the Asian Pacific Heavyweight titles.

Two decades in the sport had taken a toll on his body, however. He'd had three concussions, a dislocated right thumb and an array of other injuries.

The sport left him with enough money to buy a Gold's Gym franchise in 1989. He said he and his wife, Toni, built the business from the ground up, eventually owning four gyms.

He sold three of the gyms in 1998 for nearly $2 million, court documents show.

Today, Blair lives in a four-bedroom, lakeside home in north Hillsborough County where he and his wife raise their two sons, ages 15 and 12. Much of his free time is spent volunteering: He coaches youth football in the fall and baseball in the spring.

Luis Vazquez, who coaches a youth football team that Blair sometimes mentors, considers him an effective role model. "He tells them, 'Everything is hard work,'" Vazquez said.

Busboy's Tray Ended His Career?
Blair lost his first bid for a county commission seat in 2002. Three days later, in a Carrabba's Italian Cafe, he tripped over a tray of dirty dishes, a fall that he claims ended his wrestling career.

Blair sued.

The litigation was not without controversy. Blair's attorneys quit during the case, citing "irreconcilable differences" and forcing him to find new counsel. During a deposition, an attorney grilled Blair about his previous use of steroids and prescription medications and produced a hospital lab report that showed his blood alcohol content was 0.089, above the level a person is presumed impaired in Florida.

Attorneys also turned up a video that appeared to show Blair wrestling in Japan, after the fall he said ended his career.

Blair settled the suit in early August for undisclosed terms. He called stories based on a partial transcript of the deposition a "hit piece," but acknowledged he signed an agreement preventing him from telling his side of the story. He acknowledged using steroids during his wrestling career, but only under a doctor's care.

By 2004, during his second run for office, Blair had gained support from key Republican party stalwarts.

Even so, his competition, veteran politician Bob Buckhorn, out-raised him by nearly $100,000. Blair won by 2,507 votes, gaining 50.3 percent of the vote.

He garnered strong support from the development and construction industries, groups that would factor heavily in issues that came before Blair and the commission in the past three years, including the wetlands fight.

A Tribune review of donations to Blair's 2004 campaign showed that about $70,000 of his $183,000 in contributions came from people with development, real estate and other housing and construction-related ties.

Blair and his supporters chafe at suggestions the money influences his decisions. "The development community can certainly raise money, but they don't elect you," said Joe Chillura, a former county commissioner and Blair confidante.

For the early part of Blair's tenure on the board, he sat in the shadow of another outspoken commissioner, Ronda Storms.

Some of his comments hardly raised an eyebrow. For instance, before being selected to chair a group studying the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority, then known as HARTline, he suggested giving the $3,600 the agency spent per rider annually to poor people so they could buy cars. Those who couldn't drive? Pay their cab fare, Blair suggested.

With Storms gone, Blair has taken center stage.

In May, he earned some notoriety after castigating Johnson, the elections supervisor, for saying the county might have to spend up to $10 million on new voting machines next year.

"That really frosts my butt," Blair told stunned Johnson during a public meeting.

Blair said he lashed out because Johnson's public comments differed from what the elections chief told him in a private meeting. Blair soon apologized.

During a meeting in July, as commissioners considered layoffs and budget cuts, Blair implied that freezing his $91,000 a year commission salary would be a hardship for his family. It seemed odd for someone whose net worth tops $1 million.

He later apologized.

Part of his troubles, he pointed out, can be traced to the state's open meetings laws.

"Unfortunately," he said, "we have to air any disagreements out in the public."

Blair Led Attack On Wetlands Division
Blair offers no apologies for his handling of the wetlands issue.

He was one of four commissioners who voted to kill the division in July. A month later, after a public outcry, commissioners voted unanimously to allow a streamlined wetlands division to survive.

During that meeting, Blair suggested the board take a vote before more than 100 people who had signed up to speak had a chance to talk. The move drew the ire of many in the audience, many of whom felt they were shortchanged at an earlier meeting when Blair decreed they'd be allowed to speak, but only for a minute.

Blair said he's seen others, including Jim Norman, the current county commission chairman restrict public comment.

Norman noted that the EPC role was Blair's first experience as a chair during a contentious fight and that he had to learn how to run effective meetings. "It could have been handled better," Norman said. "He doesn't worry about polish; he just tries to get to the bottom line."

Platt, the former commissioner, said she was disappointed at Blair's handling of the EPC meetings.

"He has overstepped his bounds in dealings with the public," she said.

Terry Flott, an environmental activist, said Blair's behavior seems to have worsened over the past year.

"I expect a different level of coherence and competence on the part of any commissioner," she said.

He Plans To Seek Another Term On Board
Blair has filed for re-election in November 2008, and he said fundraising is off to a good start.

One opponent has filed with the elections office; Kevin Beckner, a Democratic financial planner.

He does likely face the toughest battle of the three commissioners facing re-election next year; Higginbotham and Ken Hagan both serve defined districts. Blair is elected countywide.

Activists have vowed to target his campaign as payback for the wetlands vote.

Blair seems unconcerned. Ultimately, he said, he expects people to vote with their pocketbooks. "I've saved this county a lot of tax dollars."

If they weren't happy with him, he wondered, "Why would they have elected me in the first place? That's what I advertised."

Tags: Brian Blair