Bob Buckhorn and Charlie Crist announced their comebacks two weeks apart.
Buckhorn, the former two-term mayor of Tampa, wants his old job back. He left City Hall in 2019 due to term limits. And Crist, the former Florida governor who has held public office or run in almost every election cycle for the past 20 years, wants to be mayor of his adopted hometown of St. Petersburg.
They are now back to reclaim their former glories, both with money, name recognition and experience — a winning formula for many campaigns.
But are voters tired of seeing the same names on the ballot? Their opponents say voters want fresh faces to lead a region booming with growth and an influx of new, young residents. Especially, they say, as many Americans claim to crave a new generation of leaders.
With birthdays five days apart this month, Crist is turning 70 and Buckhorn will be 67. Will voters take to familiar politicians to run two of Florida’s largest cities on the rise?
Crist loves public office
Crist, whose political future hinges on next month’s primary election, has been a fixture of Florida politics for decades.
He’s run for the state Senate, attorney general, U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and governor three times. He’s held most of those offices, too, with a winning 4-3 political record over the past 20 years.He’s sported all three major political stripes, starting as a Republican, then as an independent in 2010 and as a Democrat since 2012.
That combination may lead to voter fatigue, said Darryl Paulson, a professor emeritus of government at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. Though the St. Petersburg mayoral race is nonpartisan, Crist is dogged by the perception that he changes his beliefs and party affiliation when it suits him.
“People remember that sort of thing,” Paulson said. “It’s a credibility issue. Is he going to get into office promising one thing and then once he’s in office, is he going to do something completely different because he’s a political chameleon? That’s part of his political legacy and one of the issues he has to deal with.”
Last month, in the first direct attack ad of the election season, a political committee supporting incumbent Ken Welch hit Crist on his conservative past. Crist’s campaign has touted endorsements across the political spectrum.
“We never know which Charlie we’re going to get,” read the ad from St. Petersburg Progress. “And St. Pete doesn’t need another Charlie Crist campaign.”
What Welch has characterized as political opportunism, Crist calls a love for public service. As for his shifting politics, Crist says the Republican Party no longer represents him.
“Public service is what I love to do. I’ve done it almost my entire adult life,” Crist said. “So, it’s just a love of serving people, it’s a calling.”
Crist portrays his candidacy for mayor as an option for voters who have been frustrated bywhat he says is a lack of leadership under Welch. He said he hopes his executive experiencewill endear voters.
“I’ve run the state of Florida. I can run St. Pete,” Crist, who was born in Pennsylvania but grew up in St. Petersburg, said at a June 9 debate.
While the five other candidates in the mayor’s race have targeted the incumbent, Welch has largelyfocused his attacks on Crist, including for not being around since his last gubernatorial race in 2022. Crist retreated to Minnesota after he lost in a landslide to Gov. Ron DeSantis that year. It was his second attempt to return to the Governor’s Mansion he occupied from 2007 to 2011.
“I didn’t have to find my way to St. Pete,” Welch, born and raised in the city, retorted at the debate.
Paulson said Crist still has strength in St. Petersburg. His war chest helps.
Crist has raised more than $1.6 million between a political committee and campaign contributions since October.That’sabout $1 million more than Welch, who comes second in fundraising. Many of those donations, however, come from out of town and out of state.
Paulson said a bid for St. Petersburg mayor — arguably the most influential political position in Pinellas County — is an ideal political avenue for Crist. But it carries risk.
“If he lost (the) mayor’s race in St. Pete, his home territory, so to speak, he would definitely be done as a politician,” Paulson said.
Buckhorn loves the mayor’s office
If Crist is a familiar name statewide, Buckhorn is well-known in Tampa. Like Crist, he has far out-fundraised his opponents, with more than $2 million ahead of the March 2027 election.
Buckhorn got his start in Tampa politics as a special assistant to then-Mayor Sandy Freedman in 1987. He served on the City Council from 1995 to 2003 before launching unsuccessful bids for mayor and the Hillsborough County Commission in the early 2000s.
He made a political comeback with a second mayoral bid in 2011, winning 63% of the vote, and cruised through reelection against a write-in candidate with 96%. If elected next year, Buckhorn would join a small group of Tampa mayors to serve more than two terms, including former Mayor Dick Greco.
“I don’t think he needs to convince the voters that he knows how to do the job, because he’s already done it, and he doesn’t need to develop name recognition, because he already has it,” Paulson said. “So he’s got a heck of a lot of money to spend on the most important thing for a candidate, and that’s getting out his supporters.”
But Buckhorn’s dozen competitors say his money, name recognition and record won’t win him the election. Tampa voters want a fresh face, they say. The downtown projects that defined Buckhorn’s prior terms — including Water Street and the expansion of the Tampa Riverwalk — have already appeared as talking points for some opponents.
In a reference to theBob Buckhorn River Center, Tampa City Council member Bill Carlson said in a campaign video in Aprilthat putting his name “really big on a building” would “be obnoxious.”
“The last two mayors ignored our infrastructure, then they overspent and overbuilt on pet projects,” Carlson said, referring to Buckhorn and current Mayor Jane Castor, who is leaving office due to term limits.
Taryn Sabia, an urban designer and University of South Florida administrator, said in a news release in April that her campaign offers “a clear contrast” to Buckhorn’s.
“This campaign is about the people who are feeling the pressure every day, the parents budgeting for groceries, the workers stuck in traffic because we don’t have real transit options, and the small business owners trying to navigate a broken system,” she said.
Tampa City Council member Lynn Hurtak said the people giving Buckhorn’s election effortlarge donationsmight want something in return for their money.
“Bob Buckhorn has friends who can write him $100,000 checks,” Hurtak said. “I’m an average person. That’s not the kind of money my friends have. The great thing about that is, I don’t owe anybody anything.”
Buckhorn, meanwhile, said his fundraising represents “broad, citywide support for the vision we’re putting forward.”
“When I am mayor,” he said in a statement, “what is best for our neighborhoods and the people in them will guide my decisions.” The former mayor has leaned on his experience in campaign messaging and says he is running to “finish the job.”
“We’ve proven we can do it, I’ve already done it,” he said at a campaign announcement event in April, listing transportation, infrastructure and fixing the city’s permitting process among his priorities.
“Now,” he said, “it is time to write our next chapter.”
As for the critique that voters crave a younger leader, Buckhorn joked at a campaign event in May that his mother had just turned 99.
“For those haters out there,” he said, “I’m going to be around for a long time.”
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