Last week the Tampa Bay Times listed Gene Siudut, Mark Danish and Luis Viera (all Democrats) as possible candidates to enter the Tampa City Council District 7 seat special election that will take place next fall.
Current Councilwoman Lisa Montelione has announced she will step down next year to run for the state House seat in District 63.
That list will surely change in the course of the next year.
“There are other people who have reached out to me that want to run for that seat,” Montelione said Monday, adding, “They weren’t named, and they’ve never ventured that far into city politics.” She said she wouldn’t reveal those names at this time.
Perhaps the most enthusiastic candidate at this early date is Siudut, a 42-year-old from New Jersey who moved to Tampa 16 years ago. He began working at La Gaceta, where he’s assistant editor at the Ybor City-based trilingual weekly newspaper. Siudut hopes to remedy one slight hitch to his candidacy soon: that is, to actually live in District 7, which encompasses Forest Hills, Terrace Park, New Tampa, and University of South Florida, according to the city’s website.
“My wife and I are going to look at a couple of houses today,” Siudut told SPB Monday. “The hope is that we’ll be living there by January.” Siudut was recently married, and he said that he and his wife know a lot of people in the New Tampa area, another incentive he says for wanting to represent the district.
He says he’s had his eye on that seat for awhile, but was resigned to the fact that opportunity wouldn’t come until 2019, when Monteleone’s term was set to expire. Even when stories floated earlier this year that she was contemplating running for a seat in the legislature, Siudut figured she wouldn’t announce until 2016. But in fact Montelione announced Nov. 10, and Siudut says he’s working on becoming a candidate for next year’s special election.
Siudut says that since he moved to Tampa 16 years ago, he’s worked hard to see Ybor City “have at least equal standing with other parts” of Tampa, and says he sees parallels with the District 7 Council seat.
“I think that area has a similar problem,” he says. “People here don’t think of New Tampa when they think of the city of Tampa … certainly I want to be somebody who represents that area, and make sure there’s an equal voice at the table.”
We asked for his take on some of the issues facing Tampa lawmakers, beginning with last week’s rejection of Mayor Bob Buckhorn‘s $251 million plan to address stormwater problems.
“I think that there is a need to have it fixed. I think that there are better ways to approach it though. I don’t disagree with them voting against it, I certainly believe something has to be fixed, but it has to be more spread out.”
On the Citizens Review Board, he said, “I think it’s a positive thing. Whenever you can get citizens involved in it, and especially if those are people who are interested parties who are going to be fair, people who don’t want to sit on a board just to be on a board, you have to be active. That being said, you also want to make sure that it’s not a political thing. It’s hard to take politics out of any of these things. I don’t know what kind of authority that board is going to have.”
On transportation issues, and specifically the Go Hillsborough sales tax plan for transportation that may go before county voters in 2016: “I think we’re going to have to wait and see how the sheriff’s investigation goes (referring to Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee‘s investigation regarding the procurement process on how contractor Parsons Brinckerhoff was chosen to run the Go Hillsborough effort). It seems like something where consultants make a lot of money in it. It also seems like it has a lot for roads.”
Later, Siudut emailed to emphasize this: “I am against Go Hillsborough as presented, regardless of the investigation.”
