Mayor can’t shelve his crime and punishment : Should a pillar of the community continue to pay for long-ago misdeeds? The debate rages in Florida city.

When voters in this growing central Florida city went to the polls in November, they knew John Mazziotti had a criminal record. Years ago, in another state--in another era, he said--he served time in county jail for selling an ounce of marijuana to an undercover agent.

Calling his 1971 arrest a youthful mistake, Mazziotti was repentant. “I was sometimes stupid and sometimes naive--and sometimes both,” said Mazziotti, 54. “But the voters recognize that it happened a long time ago.”

Indeed, he was offered absolution in the form of a mayoral victory, receiving 45% of the vote in a race against incumbent Mel Broom and two others. Even the local police and firefighters union backed him.

“What I heard from Palm Bay constituents is, ‘He served three years on council, he did a fine job, and his past is his past,’ ” said Councilman Ed Geier. “How much longer can a man take being dragged through the mud?”

Well, the answer may depend on how much mud there is.

And it seems clear that the dragging is not over.

Mazziotti now admits that the Pennsylvania marijuana bust is not the whole story. He also served more than two years in a federal penitentiary after a 1972 conviction for selling amphetamines and importing the drugs across the Canadian border. He was also convicted in 1961 of illegal entry.

Those revelations have raised questions about Mazziotti’s legal right to hold office and threaten to pitch the city government into a crisis. Opinions on legal issues await an investigation launched Tuesday by Gov. Lawton Chiles’ office.

But the situation also poses some intriguing questions concerning Mazziotti’s integrity. Should he have been upfront about his criminal past? Does the term “youthful indiscretions” apply to the actions of someone in his late 20s, even if those actions took place in more drug-permissive times? And does he deserve to remain in office?

Palm Bay’s 75,000 citizens, it seems, have varying opinions.

“This guy is a hard-core, big-time drug dealer who won the election with deception,” charged Bob Lyttle, a former police officer and frustrated office-seeker who has begun to buy advertising space in the local newspaper to publish columns attacking Mazziotti.

“You can’t hold the man’s past against him forever,” Broom said. “Yet if his record had been known, I’d still be in office.”

And even a former worker in his campaign, Ann King, has turned on him. “People were willing to forgive him for the marijuana charge,” she said. “He was young, and the country was in a time of turmoil. But then he lied, he didn’t take the opportunity to come clean. I’d like to see him spare his family further embarrassment and resign.”

Others still back the mayor, and echo the sentiments of Tom Redmond, who managed Mazziotti’s mayoral campaign. “I don’t condone what he did 25 years ago,” Redmond said. “But he turned a negative into a positive. He raised his family; he worked for the community, and that’s the American dream. So I’m not going to hold his past against him.”

Mazziotti said he did not make his complete record known before the election because no one asked. “I don’t walk down the street with a badge saying, ‘I’m an ex-con,’ ” he said. “For 20 years I’ve been a good citizen.”

Paroled in 1974, Mazziotti said, he enrolled in a community college and later graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in business administration. He and his wife, Penny, have two daughters.

After moving to Florida in the mid-1980s, Mazziotti sold real estate and opened a hardware store. His wife taught school. He got involved in local Democratic politics and in 1993 was elected to the City Council. In 1995 he was named Palm Bay deputy mayor. As mayor, a part-time job, Mazziotti gets $8,000 a year. He still works half days in a hardware store.

His political opponents publicized the three additional criminal charges after unearthing a 1984 Florida real estate license in which Mazziotti had noted the felony convictions. The application did not list the marijuana conviction.

Was it a mistake not to confess his complete record right from the start?

“I don’t think it is my job to hang myself,” he said. “I was not a dealer, but I fell in with the wrong crowd and was using speed. I was charged with sales and conspiracy, I pleaded guilty and I served my time. Getting busted was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

Mazziotti said that he would like to concentrate on his list of mayoral goals, which include improving the storm water drainage system, a $12.5-million road-paving master plan and funding a second community center.

But personal history is nipping at his heels. “I’m an example of how you can screw up royally and still come back and be a good, productive citizen,” he said. “But it seems that some people here are more interested in John Mazziotti’s past than in Palm Bay’s future.”