Voters can stop asking Lynn Hurtak if she’s running for mayor.
This morning, the Tampa City Councilwoman—appointed in 2022 then elected to her seat in 2023—filed paperwork to join what’s projected to be a competitive race for the most high profile job in city hall.
She filed her documents with campaign staffer Bradley L’Herrou in attendance.
Last week, Hurtak, 48, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that she could no longer move about town without locals popping the question. She’s now the first elected official to enter the race.
“It’s become a bit of a fever pitch, with the constant asking,” Hurtak said. “I could have kept going, but ultimately, once I made up my mind. I just thought, ‘I’m not really good at just saying, “I’m still thinking about it,” so let’s just do it.”
Outside the Fred B. Karl County Center after filing paperwork in downtown Tampa on Monday, Hurtak added that she’s more convinced than ever “this is the right thing to do.”
Hurtak said she loves the work of being a Tampa City Councilwoman. Meeting people, the activity around the office, and ability to get into the weeds of policy and inner workings of Tampa are all a joy, she told CL.
“It’s just a really awesome job,” she added. “I love fighting for the people, and that’s what I’ve done.”
But she’s worried about her ability to keep doing that under the next mayor.
“The names that keep popping up in the mayoral race are not names that are known for really working with council, much less really being open to collaboration,” Hurtak said.
The Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections lists just six people officially registered to run for mayor in the 2027 municipal election, including 25-year-old Alan Henderson, who was the first to declare his intentions more than a year ago. Best of the Bay-winning food influencer Anthony Gilbert Jr. is easily the most well-known official candidate so far—but Hutrak was referring to folks who’ve not yet filed.
Bob Buckhorn, who served two-terms between 2011-2019, and has not filed paperwork yet, but is hoping to pull a Dick Greco in a return to office. The 67-year-old’s mayoral PAC has also raised more than $1.4 million, mostly from development and investment interests.
Last week, Buckhorn spoke about those connections with CL, adding that he’s proud to have the backing of well-monied interests like Tampa Bay Entertainment Properties LLC (a $100,000 donor) and Dream Finders Homes LLC, the company of new Rays owner Patrick Zalupski, donated $50,000, amongst others.
Hurtak speaking on her reasons for running, told CL that she’s constantly fighting for resources and second-guessing things under Tampa Mayor Jane Castor, who cannot seek re-election in 2027 after serving two consecutive terms.
“The current administration just wants what they want and is not very collaborative about getting it. So it’s a constant fight to find out background information,” Hurtak said about her efforts to engage with city staff to provide answers to questions for various matters ahead of city council meetings.
For example, she told CL, it’s been hard for her office to get details on the plan to move Tampa’s police headquarters out of downtown. She ran into similar issues during the bid process for Tampa’s controversial City Center at Hanna Avenu, which some experts have said violated state law. In 2022, Mayor Castor said that she approved the city center more than five months after council members and local leaders asked who greenlit the project, which jumped from $10 million to $108 million without a public bid.
Despite its best efforts to avoid it—and city staff’s willingness to answer the questions to the best of its ability—Hurtak’s office regularly finds itself surprised by new, important, information that comes to light during public meetings.
“It doesn’t matter how much work you do, you can’t find out all the stuff because you don’t know what to ask. We get better every time, but it should not be this hard. It just shouldn’t, and it is for whatever reason,” she said before noting that the administration and staff do have built-in understandable challenges when it comes to the daily work of making the city run.
“I mean staff can only do what they’re told to do, right? Staff is fabulous, I think staff is wonderful. They want to do more,” Hurtak said.
Still, people are still leaving for various reasons, she said, noting the 2026 departure of Tampa City Planning Director Evan Johnson, who replaced star planner Stephen Benson.
“It’s stuff like that. People are just leaving for various reasons, but mainly because they can’t do the work they want to do,” Hurtak added. “I just think the city could be run better. That’s the whole reason I’m running.”
Benson’s 2024 departure followed resignations from other bright young leaders like Kayon Henderson, City of Tampa’s Director of Housing and Community Development, Administrator of Development and Economic Opportunity Nicole Travis (Henderson’s supervisor). Erica Moody, director of the city’s community redevelopment agency, also left that year along with Alis Drumgo, Tampa’s deputy administrator for development and economic opportunity.
Those resignations preceded the contentious firing of Transportation Engineering Manager Danni Jorgenson, and the departures of Chief Transportation Planner Alana Brasier and mobility communications staffer Brandie Miklus who worked under Castor’s Mobility Administrator Jean Duncan and Mobility Director Vik Bhide. Bhide was accused of creating a hostile workforce and has since resigned, while Duncan still serves in her position.
Castor has not endorsed Buckhorn’s presumptive run, but her partner Ana Cruz, a lobbyist with the powerful Trump-connect Ballard Partners, donated $1,000 to the former mayor’s PAC.
Castor also presided over the renaming of Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park’s river center in honor of Buckhorn. “It’s only fitting to give this building, the beating heart of our waterfront, a name that honors the man who brought it to life,” she said at the ceremony, referring to the former mayor’s efforts to redevelop the park that sits on.
Another force Hurtak will presumably bump into in the race to become Tampa’s next mayor is her fellow councilmember Bill Carlson, who was elected to represent District 4 in 2019. He was re-elected in 2023 despite facing a Castor-backed candidate who outfundraised him.
Carlson previously told CL that he plans to roll out his mayoral plan “in the coming months” and that he, too, has been hounded by voters about his political future.
He responded to Buckhorn’s war chest of campaign funds by telling CL that other races have shown how “raising a lot of money, especially from developers, is a negative, not a positive.”
Other council members, like Hurtak and District 1’s Alan Clendenin, have won elections against candidates endorsed by Castor, despite funding deficits, Carlson noted.
It was him, apparently, that also helped plant the seed for Hurtak’s decision to run.
She told CL that it was actually over a year ago, during a University Club lunch with Carlson and aides for both their offices when she started thinking about running for mayor in the first place.
“It was the first time we’d gone to lunch,” she said. “We were just talking about all sorts of things, and he just said to me, ‘You know, somebody told me that you were gonna run for mayor, and that you were gonna win.’”
Hurtak told CL she was shocked at the comment since the thought never crossed her mind. At the time, her mind mostly revolved around the challenges she faces in getting things done for constituents as a councilwoman.
“For whatever reason, it stayed in the back of my mind. And other people started talking to me about it,” Hurtak added. “I wouldn’t say that was the first time but it’s definitely the first memory of me stopping to think, ‘Wow, somebody thinks I could do this.’”
And now, she will shoot her shot.
“I am ready to just go to that next step, To help people even more, and I really think that this is the opportunity to do that,” she told CL.
The makeup of the council will look a lot different, should Hurtak be elected to lead the city, too.
Hurtak does not have to resign from her seat to run, meaning she’ll serve out her term on council, but can’t run for two seats at the same time.
That means Hurtak’s District 3 seat will have a new city councilperson along with the chair representing District 7, where Councilman Luis Viera is termed out (he’s running for Florida State House). Carlson, too, is termed out.
Councilmen Guido Maniscalco (District 2) and Charlie Miranda (District 6) can run again, and last week Naya Young filed her paperwork for re-election in District 5. Last July former Tampa City Councilman Joe Citro visited WMNF News and told this reporter he plans to run for Alan Clendenin’s District 1 seat.
This is a developing post.
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CORRECTION: 02/23/26 2:57 p.m. Evan Johnson was promoted from interim city planning director in January 2026.
Full disclosure: This reporter has known Hurtak since they were in a 2017 cohort of then Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn’s “Mayor’s Neighborhood University.” Prior to this campaign announcement, Hurtak also received pro-bono campaign advice from John T. Fox who recently became a part-owner of this publication. Fox runs Vanguard Public Affairs and previously provided pro-bono campaign advice to past Buckhorn campaigns.
This article appears in Feb. 19 – 25, 2026.