Young Republican Mayoral Candidate Forum
February 25, 2019
Jane Castor speaks with the Young Republicans
March 17, 2019
On March 5th, the City of Tampa will vote for a new mayor as well as city council members. As you may be aware, these local elections don’t get the media coverage or voter turnout of national elections. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t huge differences between the candidates as well as significant consequences for the region.
First and foremost, Tampa’s elections are nonpartisan and there are no mayoral candidates currently registered as a Republican. As a branch of the GOP and chartered under the Young Republicans National Federation, our bylaws state that the Tampa Bay Young Republicans CANNOT formally endorse any candidates in this race. Instead, we’ve ranked the seven mayoral candidates in order of our preference. Like a Buzzfeed listicle combined with investigative journalism. For the sake of brevity, the same process was applied to the twenty-five city council candidates, but their write-ups were condensed for this article.
Factors Considered While Ranking
1)Candidates’ willingness to communicate with the TBYR and thereby instilling confidence our concerns would be heard past their campaign and into their tenure as Mayor.
2) Candidates’ responses to TBYR’s written questionnaire and our oral forums.
3) Candidates’ platform and responses to questions outside of the Republican community throughout their campaigns.
4) Candidates’ overall vision for the City of Tampa being aligned with the values of TBYR.
The Process
1)Poll our audience and members on the most important issues facing them today from the CITY’S PERSPECTIVE. Devise a questionnaire reflecting the values of this organization for all candidates.
2) Reach out to all candidates with this questionnaire (multiple times) and follow up for written responses.
3) Host a City Council Forum for candidates to address our group and our concerns.
4) Host a Mayoral Forum for candidates to address the group and respond to the top five issues directly. For more on this forum please see the write ups in both Florida Politics and The Tampa Bay Times.
5) Poll members and audience after events, read written responses, and have the 10-member Executive Board debate each race over drinks and pizza.
6) Each Executive Board member individually ranked their choices from one to seven and we took the averages. Here are the results:
1) Dick Greco Jr.
Dick Greco, Jr. took the top spot in our rankings and earned a majority of our board’s top vote for Mayor of Tampa. Greco was the ONLY mayoral candidate to return our questionnaire. His campaign has been open and friendly to discussing all difficult topics. He has the experience as both a judge in Tampa for the past 20+ years as well as a Deputy Sheriff in Texas. He is realistic about the mayor’s ability to implement complex transit plans without cooperation from other leaders around the region. During a recent forum, Greco was the only candidate to take a hard stance on “sanctuary cities”, one of the most pressing concerns of our members. Dick Greco, Jr. has also run his campaign on his own merits and qualifications without relying heavily on the great work his father did for the city previously.
2) Mike Suarez
One of the two sitting city-councilmen in the race, Suarez has a deep understanding of the city and its distinct neighborhoods. Suarez is a true “Son of Tampa” and has the ability to run the office effectively. His campaign to empower individual neighborhoods and small businesses are concepts we can get behind. Our only worry with Suarez is the same democratic/bureaucratic negatives that we see with the majority of the candidates coming out of Tampa politics. However, our members would feel welcomed approaching Suarez’s office with concerns in the future.
3) Harry Cohen
We didn’t keep count, but “I agree with what Harry said,” or “Everything that Harry Cohen said is right,” seem to be some of the most repeated phrases by other candidates at multiple forums over the past few months. Cohen understands the city’s needs and has vast knowledge of the inner workings of the government. Every time he answers a question, his opponents have a hard time differentiating themselves or discounting his opinion. He also has a fiery passion for the city of Tampa. The key plan we’re not sold on is his concept for a Tampa “Grand Central Station”. He also has voted to raise mileage rates in the past and, like all candidates, deflected on our question about sanctuary cities. Cohen is also solidly democratic, supporting many dem candidates across the state. Overall, if Cohen is elected, the detailed nuances of running the city will be in safe hands. Oh, and he won our unofficial award for best advertisement of the campaign.
4) Ed Turanchik
The former county commissioner is the only candidate to have come out against the recent transportation tax and that wins him points in our book. Turanchik and his campaign have been open and transparent when discussing their plans with the TBYR. We’re not sure his GO plan is entirely feasible, but he addresses something that no other candidates seem to want to address…our interstate system has awful bottlenecks that need to be rebuilt. Ed seems fiscally responsible when it comes to most issues, but some of his plans say otherwise. We’ve enjoyed having Turanchik at recent meetings and we think he would do a good job at reaching across the aisle if need be, but this group prefers the aforementioned candidates.
5) Topher Morrison
Topher has been a friend of the TBYR over the past year and has been willing to come out to all of our events (and really all networking events around Tampa) in order to meet ALL of his potential constituents…and that means something. Morrison’s work ethic, big visions for the city, and out of the box thinking are the types of characteristics we should be looking for in a mayor. His campaign has run from a very grassroots level and he has had to claw his way into the conversation as a political outsider. As a creative entrepreneur, his solutions are much more forward thinking than the same ridiculous regurgitated plans for a train or additional empty streetcars. We think his plan to become America’s “Rooftop City” is a great idea, and honestly, no matter who wins, they should implement this. However, somewhere along the road his campaign took a hard left turn. His talking points became more about social justice and topics that pander to the city’s most liberal groups. If his campaign stuck to visionary plans for improving the city and bolstering innovation, and less time about laying down in front of bulldozers, Topher might have been at the top of our list.
Interlude
It’s not by accident that the two “front-runners” to the mayoral race ended up near the bottom of our list.
*Side note: Shame on THE MEDIA, Exhibit A, Exhibit B, as well as several TV stations for touting a statistically invalid 450 person/4.5% error margin study by BOLD BLUE CAMPAIGNS …Seriously, click that link and let me know if you think they have honest and fair polling. Or this one from St. Pete Polls. (How are we supposed to trust a company with our election polling when they have a website that looks like it was designed by a 6th grader?) The local news reporting on this race based on these polls is irresponsible and has caused the average citizen to think this race is already won and it is simply not. There are a lot of organizations around this country that need to take a look in the mirror when the Young Republicans are more objective than them during an election.
6) Jane Castor
First and foremost, Jane Castor’s campaign has ignored attempts by our group for answers to our questionnaires and they blew off our forum. We’re unsure on where Castor stands on several issues and her ads are fairly generic. Her campaign seems controlled by lobbyists and special interests, which concerns us on how she will lead a city as diverse as ours. She’s also endorsed by current Mayor, Bob Buckhorn, and has the Democratic machine behind her. On a positive note, crime in Tampa went down statistically during her time as police chief and we think she’ll treat our first responders and police officers with respect and dignity…as long as they aren’t bike cops.
7) David Straz
As you may have heard, philanthropist and retired banker, David Straz, is trying to buy win the election as well. Straz’s has been notably absent from almost half of the town hall/forums put on by various community organizations as well as ours. We’re worried he might be notably absent from his office as mayor too. With the largest campaign staff in the race, they didn’t even send out a representative to talk with us or have someone fill out our questionnaire. When pushed, his staff let us know he’s, “a busy guy” and has other roles as Ambassador at Large to Honduras and Honorary Consul to Liberia as well as running the Straz Center…genuinely, Straz is too busy to be Mayor of Tampa. Additionally we have legitimate concerns that his age affects his ability to connect with young voters as well as understand how to entice young people to move to this city. If either Castor or Straz wins this race, we’ll hope there’s more cooperation with the Young Republicans, but we’re skeptical. We could write about his campaign for a while, but we’ll just copy and paste additional excerpts from his website directly.
David believes if the citizens of Tampa want to ban assault rifles, bump stocks, or high capacity magazines, Tampa should enact its own ordinances, without permission from the Florida legislature.
David believes we should gradually increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour and will implement that first in city government.
There’s a place in Tampa for David Straz, but we don’t think it’s mayor. However, the exec board might look at him more favorably in exchange for some Hamilton Tickets. We’re pretty sure that’s the going rate for bribes in Florida.
City Council Election
Nearly all of the City Council candidates joined us for our forum or wrote in on our questionnaire. The TBYR greatly appreciates the willingness of almost everyone on this list to work together to tackle city council level issues. Several races have two great candidates and it made our job a bit difficult because we weren’t able to focus in and dive as deep as the Mayoral election.
Candidates highlighted in Green are recommended by the Tampa Bay Young Republicans.
Candidates highlighted in Yellow are close runner-ups and are viable options.
Written by: Jake Hoffman, President TBYR. For media or business inquires please email president@tbyr.com.
The views expressed in this article are the opinions of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans, and do not reflect the views of the GOP or any other Republican Party clubs. These opinions also DO NOT signify a formal endorsement of any candidates mentioned.
