Tampa City Council Member Bill Carlson is officially running for mayor in the 2027 race.<\/p>\n
Carlson made the announcement Wednesday morning, saying he hopes he can help ensure the city “grows smarter, serves residents better, and earns the trust of every neighborhood it represents.”<\/p>\n
Carlson has served on the city council for two terms since 2019, when he made history by being the first first-time candidate to win in a primary against two opponents. He went on to win reelection in 2023.<\/p>\n
In a campaign video released Wednesday morning, Carlson took aim at Mayor Jane Castor and former mayor Bob Buckhorn, accusing them of mishandling infrastructure funds.<\/p>\n
“On city council, I saw the mismanagement first hand,” he said in a campaign video<\/a>. “The last two mayors ignored our infrastructure, then they overspent and overbuilt on pet projects.”<\/p>\n This comes only a few days after Buckhorn announced he is running for mayor again<\/a> after leaving the office in 2019.<\/p>\n Currently, Carlson serves on the board of the Florida Chamber Foundation, Florida TaxWatch, Florida Museum of History, Florida House DC and the Pinellas Education Foundation.<\/p>\n He is also president of public relations firm Tucker\/Hall, where he has been a consultant to European and Latin American conglomerates, fast-growing technology companies and Fortune 500 corporations.<\/p>\n He also founded Caf\u00e9 Con Tampa<\/a> and co-founded the Tampa Arts Alliance<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Good government is invisible,” he said. “You don’t think about it. You just feel it \u2014 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.”<\/p>\n Carlson joins Lynn Hurtak as the only other council member running for Tampa mayor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tampa City Council Member Bill Carlson is officially running for mayor in the 2027 race. Carlson made the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[52111,47320,5756,15377,135,1526,610,137,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-233147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-bill-carlson","9":"tag-bob-buckhorn","10":"tag-jane-castor","11":"tag-running-for-mayor","12":"tag-tampa","13":"tag-tampa-bay","14":"tag-tampa-city-council","15":"tag-tampa-headlines","16":"tag-tampa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}