Retirement hasn’t exactly been leisurely for Jane Castor.
Since leaving her role as chief of the Tampa Police Department in spring of 2015, she’s had quite the schedule.
She’s been traveling the country as a law enforcement consultant.
She serves on boards of seemingly countless organizations whose missions, she said, are “near and dear” to her heart “and help the people of Tampa.”
She has her hands full as a grand marshal in this year’s Tampa Pride.
Oh, and there’s that (likely) run for mayor of Tampa she’s been looking into.
When she’s in town, the Tampa native and 31-year TPD veteran works late into the night in her home office in Seminole Heights. She’s lived there since before it was cool; her family had a cabinet-making business there well before the pricey home renovations and the chic restaurants moved in. Her officemate is a tiny but tough-as-nails terrier mix she brought home from a Humane Society benefit where, she jokes, the wine had been flowing.
This is her second go as a grand marshal of Tampa Pride, an event that relaunched in 2015 after a 14-year hiatus. She was still in office during her first go-round as grand marshal in 2015, so this is her first time as grand marshal after her retirement from TPD. When organizers of this year’s Tampa Pride invited her to participate again, it was a no-brainer.
“It was quite an honor,” she told CL.
As an officer, she helped keep the peace at Tampa Pride going back 25 years — when the event looked a lot different than it does now.
“I was involved with the original Pride parade, probably back in the early ’90s as a police officer, and had a number of officers who volunteered our time to work along the parade route,” she said. “The parade route was just a few blocks long in downtown Tampa. That was an exciting event, and now all of these years later, to be asked to be involved as the grand marshal is quite an honor.”
As for how she got chosen a second time as grand marshal, Tampa Pride cofounder and executive board member Carrie West said it’s about Castor’s role in the community over the years.
“We appreciate all that Jane has done as the chief of police, as a leader of the community and later, for young girls and also as a person who is always out and wants to know more about the community,” West said. Such work includes serving on the boards of organizations like Hillsborough House of Hope, a nonprofit that helps recently incarcerated women transition into normal lives after prison, as well as Grace Point, a wellness nonprofit focusing on mental health and substance abuse.
Most important in the selection process are candidates’ impact on LGBTQ equality over time. As has become common in pride festivals in recent years, straight allies are often honored; at this year’s Tampa Pride, organizers have named John and Nancy Desmond as Grand Couple. After their son came out to them at 28, they founded a local chapter of the group PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and can often be seen counter-protesting homophobic protesters on Friday nights in Ybor City.
The timing of Castor’s spot at the top of the grand marshal list — weeks out from when prospective Tampa mayoral hopefuls ought to be solidifying their bids — could certainly help raise her profile ahead of a tough race, but that doesn’t appear to be the organizers’ intention.
When asked about the timing, West said he’d heard speculation about Castor, sure, but he’s heard about a lot of people who might be interested in a run, so he didn’t really think about it in conjunction with Pride.
“Jane’s running for mayor?” he said.
When she became police chief in 2011, Castor made history on multiple fronts.
She was the first female police chief in city history as well as the first openly LGBTQ individual to serve in the role. She’s been openly lesbian for years. Her longtime partner is Ana Cruz, a Democratic political consultant and daughter of Florida House Minority leader Janet Cruz (D-Tampa).
But Castor has said she hopes others look beyond the labels.
She’s one of those instantly recognizable figures: tall and slim, with cropped blonde hair and impeccable posture. Most days (though not for our cover shoot), she’s wearing glasses, and she’s traded in her police uniform for pencil skirts and heels. Some may note she shares a last name with U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Tampa) and her mother, former University of South Florida head Betty Castor. She went to the same Tampa high school as the congresswoman (Chamberlain), but there’s no relation.
It’s quite likely tons of casual observers will be googling the question of whether they’re related soon, though.
As of press time, Jane Castor hadn’t announced anything, but she has said to expect news about her much-speculated mayoral aspirations really soon. She’s already been raising money via her political action committee, Florida Strong, and she’s had many a conversation with Tampa community leaders.
“I have opened up a PAC,” she said. “I’ve been talking to a number of individuals out in the community, getting input from a variety of grassroots groups, developmental groups, transportation; just trying to get a very well-rounded view of how the community sees Tampa moving into the future.”
In other words, probably.
“I do intend to run for mayor, and you can just look in the not-too-distant future for an announcement,” Castor said. (We will, of course, keep you posted on this at cltampa.com.)
We asked about specifics of a potential mayoral run: what’s compelling her to even think about running for mayor; what it would mean to be the first openly lesbian mayor of Tampa; how she hopes to offset the controversy over a controversial TPD policy targeting bicycle riders in predominantly low-income, African-American areas of Tampa, a policy implemented during her tenure; what kind of encouragement she’s getting from the community.
But she wasn’t ready to talk about the big-picture stuff yet.
“I don’t really want to talk about the mayoral portion of it, but all the feedback I’ve been getting has been very positive,” she said.
Part of Castor’s reticence on her long-speculated run comes from her concern that talking about it just before Pride would overshadow the event itself, she said.
“On the one hand, I want to wait till I make an announcement to go into detail, but on the other hand, it’s only fair to the Pride parade that everything’s focused on them,” Castor said. “Just honored to be a part of it. I think it’s going to be a great event for our community. It’s just another example of what makes Tampa great, to celebrate our diversity with a wonderful event in Ybor City.”
If she does run, she’ll likely join a large field of contenders for Tampa’s 2019 mayoral race. Current Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn is, of course, terming out, as he was elected in 2011 and easily reelected in 2015.
Even though the momentous 2018 midterms will likely siphon attention from Tampa’s 2019 municipal elections, politicos are starting to see interest in the mayoral contest. It’s an open seat in one of the biggest cities in the third most populous state, so of course there is.
“We’re seeing a fair amount of interest in it,” said Ione Townsend, chair of the Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Committee. “I can think of seven people who have expressed an interest in running to me. So I think it’s going to be interesting. It’s certainly going to be competitive.”
A good number of public figures appear to be eyeing the position, though only three have announced. Though Castor is not among those three, Townsend confirmed she has recently spoken to Castor on the phone about her interest in running (Townsend also declined to affirm whether a run is imminent).
Perhaps the best-known mayoral contender who has announced so far is former Hillsborough County Commissioner Ed Turanchik, who was one of the more progressive commissioners in recent history. Entrepreneur and first-time candidate Topher Morrison has been a candidate for months, as has newcomer Michael Anthony Hazard. Of those, Turanchik has raised the most money, with $63,550 (of which $7,599.70 has been spent). With $124,072, Castor’s Tampa Strong PAC dwarfs that.
There are plenty of other potential candidates that would be formidable in the Tampa mayoral race. These include retired banker turned philanthropist David A. Straz (for whom the Straz Center is named), who may face some flak over his reported support of Donald Trump in the 2016 election, as well as Tampa City Councilmen Harry Cohen and Mike Suarez.
Although Castor is formerly a Republican and now a Democrat (she made the switch in 2016, citing the Republican Party’s pivot to extreme views), many political observers say it’s a good year to be a female candidate, assuming the ongoing reaction to Trumpism and the ensuing “blue wave” proceed as planned.
And that could certainly help Castor.
“Being female in this election cycle, I think is positive,” Townsend said. “I’m excited about Jane getting in, because right now the field is all men and I think there are at least two other gentlemen who will be getting into the race, or maybe three, and I think having a female will add another important dimension and give voters a real choice and more candidates to look at. The more the merrier, I think.”
Speculation about a potential run for her has been ongoing for years. It began shortly after Buckhorn began his second term, and has never really died down.
But even if she’s opened up a PAC and explored a run, it’s not as though she wouldn’t have been busy anyway. Through her firm, Castor Consulting, LLC, she’s constantly flying to other cities to give presentations to their police departments. Usually, they’re cities that are dealing with higher crime rates. Among these, Castor said, are Memphis, Flint, Orlando, Miami and Columbia, South Carolina. That’s because, under Castor’s watch — and ever since — Tampa has been seeing a drop in its crime rates, and other cities want to know Tampa’s secret.
“A lot of the cities I’ve worked with, there’s a lot of focus on reducing violent crime in those communities. And we were very successful in doing that. We reduced crime over 70 percent,” she said that.
The big takeaway she likes to impart to other police departments, she said, is the idea of community engagement; that the ability to prevent and solve crimes often lies within communities, and not with the people who are policing them.
“First and foremost is the partnership with the citizens,” she said. “They would keep crime out of their communities with our help, not the other way around.”
She advocates “proactive policing,” an approach that’s controversial in some circles. Critics say it often results in minorities being profiled and targeted even when there’s no evidence of illegal activity (even if those who study its effectiveness say it appears to significantly reduce crime).
“Law enforcement as a profession has historically been reactive — just sit back and wait for people to call to the police and say they need us. And so the stance that we took in the police department was to be very proactive and to try and prevent crime in neighborhoods rather than reacting to it. And there are a number of initiatives that worked out well in doing that,” she said.
Traveling to other cities and observing other departments, she added, has made her appreciate her hometown even more.
“When I come back to Tampa I just want to kiss all the officers,” Castor said. “I knew we had a great police department, but until you go to other cities and see some of the other organizations it really made me appreciate our department that much more. And it’s the same experience with our city. The more I visit other cities, the more I realize how great Tampa and its citizens are.”
Even if one could reasonably correlate those methods with drastic reduction in crime, the controversy over “biking while black” could still be a vulnerability if she were to run — and Democrats know that.
“I think the African American community may have an issue with Jane’s candidacy, at least some people. That may be an issue that comes back around,” Townsend said.
Dave Cutler, head of the Hillsborough LGBTA Democratic Caucus, agreed that Castor would certainly face those questions on the campaign trail, but that doesn’t mean the prospect of her candidacy isn’t exciting to his group’s membership.
“That would be an interesting candidacy,” he said. “She is LGBT and we would definitely be interested in having an LGBT mayor.”
This article appears in Mar 22-29, 2018.