TAMPA, Fla. — Joe Redner, the Tampa businessman who founded the Mons Venus club and spent half a century picking fights with local government in court, at the ballot box and on television, died Friday. He was 86.
His daughter, Joy Lynn Redner, shared the news on Facebook Friday night, saying her father died peacefully in his sleep. His lawyer, Luke Lirot, has said Redner was fighting cancer for a second time. No funeral or memorial plans had been announced.
Redner turned the strip club into the base of a business empire that grew to include real estate, but he was just as well known around Tampa as a gadfly. He ran again and again for the Tampa City Council and the Hillsborough County Commission, often to force a debate rather than to win, and he sometimes got himself arrested on purpose to draw attention to a law he opposed.
His battles with City Hall were legendary. As a council member, Bob Buckhorn spent about a decade pushing a six-foot buffer between dancers and customers aimed at ending lap dances, and Redner once ran for Buckhorn’s seat and lost. The two later made peace, and Redner backed Buckhorn when he ran for mayor. In the 1990s Redner also tangled with Mayor Dick Greco over a club he wanted to open in Ybor City.
Redner championed free speech, gay rights and medical marijuana. After a Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis, he persuaded a judge to let him cultivate marijuana at home for his own treatment, a win that was later thrown out on appeal. He also co-hosted a long-running public-access show about the First Amendment and civil liberties.
Born in New Jersey, Redner moved to Tampa as a child with his mother and older brother and went to Chamberlain High School, leaving before graduation. City Council Chair Alan Clendenin called him a Tampa original who never backed down from a fight over individual rights, and several old political rivals posted tributes after his death.
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