For at least the last five years conservative colleagues have called populist Mike Fasano a RINO -- to his face and behind his back.
Yet, the former state senator and state representative remains a media favorite and golden boy within his district for his accessibility and particularly for choosing principles over party in opposing Gov. Rick Scott.
Home-turf voters embrace him, even consult him. Fasano is now Pasco County tax collector, yet he is arguably the most powerful political personality in the Pasco landscape.
He spent much of his working life in the Florida Legislature, 1994-2002 and 2012-2013 in the House; then, 2002-2012 in the Senate. By the time Sunshine State News encountered him, Fasano had served as majority whip and floor leader of both chambers, and president pro tempore of the Senate.
In 2010 when Rick Scott came out of nowhere to defeat Bill McCollum in the primary and Alex Sink in the general election, Fasano had trouble seeing eye to eye with Senate President Mike Haridopolos. Haridopolos' agenda was much aligned with Scott's.
During the 2012 legislative session, Fasano was removed as chairman of the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations because he opposed a plan to privatize at least 27 prisons in South Florida and turn them over to for-profit companies. Passing that plan had been a primary goal of Scott and Haridopolos.
Fasano won the day: The prison privatization plan was defeated in the Senate, 19-21.
"It's unfortunate when leaders of the Senate can't lose like gentlemen," Fasano said of Haridopolos' decision to demote him.
Fasano also was a longtime foe of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio. He vigorously supported Charlie Crist after Crist left the Republican Party and challenged Rubio in the 2010 U.S. Senate election.
In February 2010, on the day Sunshine State News hung out its "open for business" sign, Fasano was talking to the media, challenging Rubio's conservative credentials. "Rubio is a slick package from Miami, and people haven't seen the other side of Marco Rubio and who he is, where he stands and his flip-flopping," said Fasano, "whether it be taxes or cap-and-trade or high-speed rail."
If the Florida GOP moved further right in the last five years, Fasano certainly moved further left -- and he did it faster.
When Pasco County Tax Collector Mike Olson died in 2013, Fasano asked for the appointment. Republicans in the House, in particular, saw it as a way to make him happy and shut him up at the same time. The governor obliged.
After resigning his House seat, Fasano pledged to remain neutral in the October 2013 special election to replace him. But, during the final weeks of the campaign, he broke his promise and campaigned hard for liberal Democrat Amanda Murphy while aggressively attacking Republican Bill Gunters integrity with negative campaigning.
In a campaign ad filmed and aired during the final week before the election, he claimed school teacher and pastor Gunter was merely a puppet who will ask How high? when unnamed taskmasters tell him to jump.
Fasano no doubt provided the margin of victory for Murphy, who won by just 300 votes out of nearly 20,000 cast.
Mike Fasano, representing House District 34, was the most liberal Republican in the Florida House during the 2013 legislative session, according to the liberal website The Florida Squeeze.
Then, in 2014, he worked even harder stumping for Democrat Crist than he did in 2010 when Crist had no party affiliation. He saw Rick Scott as a symbol of the abrupt hard right the Florida GOP had taken.
During the gubernatorial campaign, Fasano told the Capitol press corps he had no intentions of switching parties -- but there was a caveat. Im a lifelong Republican, and I support Republicans throughout the state. But, I cannot support a gentleman, in my opinion, who has left behind the little guy and gal: the ratepayers, the premium payers, those who are struggling each and every day
Speaker Will Weatherford issued a public response: "Its sad to see Mike Fasano has fallen so far as to endorse a serial swindler with no principles except personal ambition.
Mild-mannered and gentlemanly, always passionately driven to champion the underdog, Fasano was never far from the spotlight during the last five years. Many even believe, had Crist won the governor's seat in 2014, Mike Fasano -- now his own party, in a separate ideological place -- would have been the Democratic governor's new chief of staff. Don't expect him to stay silent in Pasco County for too long.
(Mike Fasano is the fourth in a special anniversary series of 20 political personalities who loomed large since early 2010, when Sunshine State News set up shop in Tallahassee. To backtrack in the series, readNo. 20, Ted Yoho;No. 19, Jeff Atwater; and No. 18, Adam Putnam)
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
