Oct 26, 2008

Rosario: Carolyn the Florist is a true face of small businessBy Rubén RosarioTwinCities.com

Joe the Plumber, meet Carolyn the florist.

Unlike the Ohio man turned political football, if not poster child for Small Business America, Carolyn Smaller is the real deal.

The 64-year-old widowed mother of four and grandmother of nine has a business license. She pays her taxes. She actually owns a small business, a flower shop she opened 17 years ago when she was laid off by Unisys Corp. after 25 years of employment.

She doesn’t generate anywhere near $250,000 — the tax-break-or-tax-hike line in the sand that has become the economic litmus test of sorts as this presidential race thankfully enters the home stretch.

“Gosh, I wish I had that problem,” Smaller said as we chatted in the cozy, inviting living room-style front of her store, Bouquets by Carolyn. It is on the southeastern corner of Selby Avenue and Milton Street in the Summit-University neighborhood — as much Main Street as anywhere else you will find in America.

Smaller is one of the estimated 26 million small-business owners in the country. On Nov. 14, she will be honored as small-business owner of the year by the Minnesota Black Chamber of Commerce.

I confess, I have not interviewed all 26 million. But I detect an air of displeasure, if not frustration, about the Joe the Plumber craze from the handful of folks I’ve bought coffee, sandwiches and pizza from in the past couple of weeks.

They’ve essentially said to me what Rhonda Abrams, a small-business affairs columnist for

“Please — please! — don’t have Joe or his boss represent small business,” Abrams wrote. “You see, it turns out Joe isn’t licensed in Ohio, and it appears his boss is violating the law by employing Joe. Joe has a lien against him for failure to pay income tax.”

Smaller, who had taken the Ohio man’s small-business-related question to presidential candidate Barack Obama at face value, said she stopped in the midst of a flower arrangement when she heard about the unlicensed plumber’s true background.

“I had to sit down,” she said. “I have no malice toward him, although I wonder whether all this was a setup. But yes, I was offended.”

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