Despite Controversies, Tampa Mayor Expected To See Easy Re-Election

TAMPA, FL — After completing her first term in office, Mayor Jane Castor will face one write-in candidate — attorney and adjunct college legal professor Belinda Noah — in the March 7 contest for re-election.

But poll watchers say the wildly popular Tampa mayor who saw the city through a pandemic while still managing to host a Super Bowl XLIII and back-to-back Stanley Cup celebrations for the Tampa Bay Lightning will easily be elected to a second term.

And she has the funds to back her re-election campaign. Castor's raised $136,775 and spent $99,227. Noah's raised $3,770 and spent $3,468.

Tampa's first openly gay mayor, Castor is a lifelong Tampa resident who lives in Seminole with her longtime partner lobbyist Ana Cruz. Castor graduated from Chamberlain High School and attended the University of Tampa on a basketball scholarship before becoming a Tampa police officer.

The mother of two grown sons, Castor, 62, spent 31 years with the Tampa Police Department, becoming Tampa's first woman chief of police in 2009 and serving until she retired in 2015.

Despite her high approval rating, the first term of Tampa's 59th mayor wasn't without its challenges.

In addition to tackling business and school closures, the need to provide COVID-19 vaccinations along with food for Tampa's low-income population and the affordable housing crisis that came to light during the pandemic, Castor has received criticism over a series of controversial decisions during her first term.

Tampa, like most major cities, has a strong mayor system of government. The mayor is directly elected by voters to serve as the city's chief executive and has administrative authority with the power to appoint and dismiss department heads.

The seven city council members are elected separately in three at-large districts and four single-member districts, and serve as the city's legislative body.

Castor's admittedly strong-willed personality has led to a series of clashes with the city council after she not only failed to consult with council members regarding major decisions but never informed council members of her decisions. Council members said they had to read about it in the news media.

One of the more widely publicized clashes occurred when Castor appointed Mary O'Connor to replace Brian Dugan as police chief after he resigned. Dugan's own hand-picked successor and the popular choice among residents was Tampa's assistant police chief, Ruben Delgado, well-respected by both the Hispanic and Black communities in Tampa.

O'Connor, on the other hand, left the Tampa police after 22 years to become an FBI and Department of Justice consultant. But the main objection of residents to O'Connor's appointment was the fact that, while she was a 24-year-old rookie cop in Tampa, she was arrested for driving under the influence and subsequently charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, obstruction and disorderly intoxication after she struck the Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy who arrested her and kicked the windows of the deputy's car.

Members of the city council were offended when Castor named O'Connor the new police chief in February 2022 before the city council had a chance to interview or even meet O'Connor.

They were vindicated in December when Castor agreed she'd made the wrong decision in appointing O'Connor. In November, the police chief and her husband were pulled over for driving an unregistered golf cart outside of their East Lake Woodlands golf and country club community in Oldsmar.

In video footage shot by Pinellas County sheriff's Deputy Larry Jacoby's body-worn camera, O'Connor tells Jacoby that she's the police chief of Tampa, displays her badge and then tells him, "I'm hoping you will let us go tonight."

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“It is unacceptable for any public employee, and especially the city's top law enforcement leader, to ask for special treatment because of their position. Public trust in Tampa's police department is paramount to our success as a city and community,” Castor said after asking for and receiving O'Connor's resignation.

Additionally, civil rights groups lashed out at Castor over the Tampa Police Department's handling of the protests following the May 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.

Both Castor and Dugan, who was police chief at the time, were lambasted after Tampa police officers, dressed in full riot gear, used rifles that fired bean bags, rubber bullets and pepper spray pellets on protesters when they became aggressive toward officers.

Afterward, Castor initiated a number of police reforms including de-escalation training for officers, the use of body-worn cameras by officers and the formation of a Tampa Police Department Community Impact Team made up of residents from Tampa's various neighborhoods tasked with working with the police chief on community issues involving police conduct and use-of-force policies to be addressed by an independent panel, the Tampa's Citizens Review Board.

What was supposed to be an effort to build trust between police and the community, however, led to further distrust when activists called on city officials to give the Citizens Review Board, which was originally formed in 2015 and reconstituted in 2021, access to independent counsel and subpoena powers.

Castor said she'd veto such a measure, maintaining it would set a dangerous precedent by giving an unelected board made up of volunteers the power to subpoena private civilians and initiate legal action against members of the police department.

Activists urged the city council to place the measure on the ballot for voters to decide but, at a special meeting in November, the city council voted against drafting an ordinance to take to a vote, with council members Lynn Hurtak, Bill Carlson and Orlando Gudes voting in favor of letting voters decide.

Although not all of these Black cemeteries disappeared on her watch, Castor faced heavy criticism when the community learned that historic Black cemeteries in the city had vanished including the Zion Cemetery that was bulldozed over when the Robles Park Village public housing project was built on top of it, Ridgewood Cemetery that was lost when the city sold the property to Hillsborough County Schools to build King High School, and Memorial Park Cemetery, which the city inadvertently allowed to be sold at a public auction in January.

However, in her 2022 State of the City address, Castor focused on her accomplishments during the past four years including:

• The implementation of road improvements and the painting of murals at school intersections as part of the city's Vision Zero plan to reduce injuries and deaths from car crashes.
• Establishing the five strategic goals for Transforming Tampa’s Tomorrow
• Creating PIPES, the largest water/wastewater infrastructure program in Tampa’s history
• Supporting permitting and development citywide: The city of Tampa permitted $4.5 billion in development citywide in Fiscal Year 2020 despite challenges from COVID-19 ($1.4 billion more than the previous year.)
• Launching Bridges to Business, a series of vendor certification events in Tampa neighborhoods designed to help minority, women-owned and small businesses get certified to be eligible to receive city contracts.
• Facilitating the McKay Bay Waste to Energy facility ownership. In 2020, Tampa became only the second city in the nation to own and operate its own waste-to-energy facility, which offers a more sustainable method of managing the city’s 360,000+ tons of waste per year.
• Declaring Tampa as part of the Vision Zero Network with the mission of eliminating all traffic fatalities and severe injuries.
• Unveiling the Resilient Tampa Roadmap, a tactical plan for building resilience by addressing Tampa’s most urgent shocks and stresses.
• The launch of a homeless shelter in partnership with Catholic Charities on Dec. 13, 2021, called Tampa Hope.
• A groundbreaking took place in January 2022 for the much-discussed City Center at Hanna Avenue, designed to consolidate and house at least nine city departments in the underserved East Tampa area. The 161,000-square-foot building adjacent to a new gathering place known as Hanna Square replaces a warehouse that had become an eyesore. The facility will also offer culinary arts and workforce development programs, career pathways for young adults and is one of the first projects in which the city is requiring the contractor to subcontract with minority- and women-owned businesses.
• Castor established the Transforming Tampa's Tomorrow advisory teams to focus on the most pressing issues facing the city: transportation, development services, workforce development, affordable housing, and sustainability and resilience.
• She passed the largest water and wastewater infrastructure plan in the city's history.
• During the pandemic, she established the Rental and Move-In Assistance Program to provide housing stability to residents due to escalating rents.
• Established the Lift Up Local program that permitted the use of public rights of way for outdoor cafes so restaurants could stay open during the pandemic.
• She established a housing in-fill program in which the city bought up empty housing lots to award to housing contractors building affordable homes.
• Began paying city employees a minimum of $15 an hour.

Additionally, under Castor's tenure as mayor, Tampa was named one of the 10 best cities for startups, one of the emerging tech cities in the U.S. by Forbes, the fifth best city for recreation, the best city for veterans to live in, the 27th best city in the country for Fortune 500 Companies by Best Cities in 2022, among others recognitions.