Tampa | Tampa’s former chief of police and out LGBTQ advocate Jane Castor officially launched her campaign for Tampa mayor on May 17 to outline her vision for the city’s future.
“The message for the campaign kick-off is Tampa Strong,” Castor told Watermark ahead of the event, held at Columbia Restaurant in Ybor. Castor’s campaign will focus on a strong foundation for the city, including building stronger neighborhoods and a stronger economy.
“I am looking at a strong foundation to continue those services that everybody has come to expect on a daily basis,” she asserts. “We can build a new baseball stadium… we can do a lot of the things in this community, but if you don’t have clean water, your streets are flooding or you have potholes, you’re not going to be successful.”
One area of focus is workforce training, with Castor advocating for skilled trade. “There’s a great deal of value and respect in the trades,” she says. “I grew up poor and the most successful people that I grew up with are in the trades; electricians, carpenters, my family owns a cabinet shop. That’s something that I’m going to try to turn the corner on here in our community.”
Castor’s goal is to partner with the neighborhoods she served during her three decades in law enforcement. The newly minted politician first joined the Tampa Police Department in 1983, where she would later become its first LGBTQ community liaison and first openly LGBTQ chief of police in 2009.
“Clearly I have always been a part of the community, I’ve been out and proud my whole life; it’s never something that was hidden,” Castor notes. “I was a police officer for 31 years and everybody knew the day that I was hired that I was gay. It’s never been an issue, and that’s one of the reasons why when I was appointed as the chief of police no one ever made a big deal out of it.”
Castor believes that’s because the city of Tampa isn’t focused on sexual orientation, it’s focused on results. “I think the same applies for the position of mayor,” she says. “People want to know that you’re going to do a good job and you’re going to serve every citizen of the community.”
“I’ve worked the streets of Tampa for 31 years, there’s not a corner of this city that I don’t know,” she continues. “So I know specifically what the needs are in the neighborhoods and I know who to talk to about those needs.”
Thus far, residents in those neighborhoods seem to have backed her bid for mayor. Castor’s campaign announced in early May that it had raised nearly $250,000 since declaring her candidacy on April 19. “Everything’s going well, but I never take anything for granted,” she says. “Just as I have done my entire career, I’ll work harder than anybody else in this race.
“Voters have had 31 years to test drive me and I’ve been the same,” Castor concludes. “They know who I am, they know what I stand for and they know my work ethic. They know that I’m transparent in all I do and they know that I am a community builder. That’s what you’re gonna get: you’re going to get that same person as a mayor for the city of Tampa.”
