This week we've seen a number of people step up and announce their candidacies for Tampa City Council, and on Thursday the latest entrant was Jason Wilson, a 32-year-old emergency medicine physician at Tampa General Hospital, who has announced his candidacy in the citywide District 3 race, where currently the only other candidate is Seth Nelson.
Currently the District 3 seat is held by Curtis Stokes, named this past summer to fill the remaining months of Linda Saul-Sena's term. Stokes announced earlier this week that he will run for office next March in District 1.
Wilson is another new fresh young face on the political scene, and he says it's time for some fresh ideas to get into the political scene. He says that he believes physicians are well equipped to enter into politics, "because as emergency medicine doctors we already are the safety net of this city. The reasons why our patients come to us are not just medical complaint reasons, but reasons that are the end result of a myriad of social service problems, with the end result being a high unemployment rate, they are the result of the transportation system that can only get them to Tampa General Hospital…so I think we're very well equipped to take a lot of those insights and turn them into policy."
Wilson says he spoke with colleagues about having somebody in the medical profession get into the race, allowing him to come to the realization, why not him?
This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2010.