With the election less than a year away, Tampa City Council member Bill Carlson announced Wednesday he is running for mayor.
Carlson, who represents South Tampa, joins a crowded field of 10 others. His campaign aims “to bring good government back to the people of Tampa,” according to a news release.
“Good government is invisible,” Carlson said in the news release. “You don’t think about it. You just feel it — in safer streets, better jobs, faster permits, stronger neighborhoods. When the system works, everything works. Fixing that system is exactly what I’m running to do.”
The two-term council member is one of several past and present elected officials competing to lead Tampa after Mayor Jane Castor, who must leave office due to term limits in 2027. He has teased a mayoral bid for months.
“Everywhere I go, people are running up to me asking me to run,” Carlson, president of the public relations firm Tucker/Hall, told the Tampa Bay Times in March.
His three kids are on board, too, he said in a phone call with the Times on Wednesday. They have helped write his advertisements.
Carlson was first elected to the City Council in 2019 and won reelection four years later, beating an opponent who was backed by Castor.
Constituents “are tired of the status quo,” Carlson said.
“What our community has lacked for 15 years is two-way communication where we listen to the public,” he said. “I’m in the community every day listening. City Council is on the front line.”
A political committee called Friends of Bill Carlson, which opened in March, has raised more than $34,300, according to campaign finance documents.
Carlson said the committee was “set up three weeks before the end of the quarter” because he “had friends and family who were itching to donate.”
“Now that the campaign is filed, and as soon as we get the bank account set up, we’re going to start real fundraising,” he said. “But I’m not going to be going after developer money.”
The announcement comes days after that of former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, who filed his paperwork on Monday. Carlson has long feuded with Buckhorn and criticized Castor.
A political committee supporting Buckhorn has raised more than $1.8 million, including more than $400,000 in the most recent quarter, according to campaign finance reports.
Carlson will also face fellow council member Lynn Hurtak, who announced her mayoral bid in February and has listed affordability and transit among her priorities.
Hurtak was appointed to the City Council as a citywide representative in 2022. She beat state Sen. Janet Cruz — the mother of lobbyist Ana Cruz, Castor’s partner — in an election the following year. That was despite Cruz’s hefty fundraising haul and her endorsement by the mayor.
Taryn Sabia, an urban designer and assistant dean at the University of South Florida’s College of Design, Art & Performance, announced her campaign days after Hurtak. And Gary Hartfield, a businessman and former vice chairperson of the Hillsborough Transit Authority, filed his paperwork to run for mayor last month.
Also announced are Anthony Gilbert, a food influencer; Alan Henderson, who would be among the youngest mayors in Tampa’s history; Julie Magill, a general contractor who lists infrastructure and and flooding among her priorities; and Tres Rodman, a paralegal who would be Tampa’s first transgender mayor.
Two others, Ryan J. Edwards and Reginald B. Strachan, have also declared their intentions to run.