It’s a Friday night at the Hacienda Hotel in downtown New Port Richey, the historic hot pink stucco resort that once helped sell the city as “Hollywood East.”
Nearby, families play and stroll through Sims Park, as the Pithlachascotee River glows in the setting sun. Community activist and New Port Richey native Marlowe Jones walks among them, pointing to the hotel.
“My great-grandfather helped build this,” he says.
For Jones, the Hacienda is more than just a local landmark. It’s part of a city his family helped build while living under segregation. More than a century ago, relatives on his mother’s side, the Arline family, came from Georgia by train and settled near Pine Hill Cemetery on Pine Hill Road. On his grandfather’s side, the Jones family came from the Tallahassee area to the segregated “Pine Hill Colored Quarters.”
“It was in this community, this home, that my family could own their own land and not be treated like slaves anymore,” he tells Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.
Now, the 36-year-old is running for mayor in the city his family helped build, the same city that, during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, tried and failed to brand him a felon. If Jones wins, he would be the first Black mayor in New Port Richey’s history.
Before filing to run, Jones had already spent years fighting New Port Richey in the streets, in court, and at city hall. A week after a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, police arrested him and charged him with felony obstruction and battery on a law enforcement officer. Jones has previously described the arrest (which has been posted to YouTube) as being “surrounded by about 30 stormtroopers in tactical gear.”
“My life was tested,” he says. “I had nightmares of being shot and killed by police officers.”
The case relied on a now-former officer’s allegation that later failed to hold up in court, and ajury acquitted Jones on May 5, 2022. Jones later sued the city, which ultimately settled out of court.
“I was falsely arrested, falsely accused,” he says. “It took me two years to fight and clear my name.”
What Jones survived in court now sits beside a newer grief, closer to home.
The campaign is unfolding in the shadow of a more recent tragedy. On New Year’s Day, Jones’s brother, Izeal Peterson, age 30, was killed in a Pasco County shooting at Gulf View Square Mall.
“I haven’t even had time to properly mourn my brother’s death,” Jones says. “What hurts the most is it happened in my own backyard.”
The conflict at city hall, however, continued after the acquittal.
Reporting by Creative Loafing Tampa Bay was cited as part of the case that ended in Jones’s acquittal. Following the jury trial, CL obtained text messages via public records requests that show now-former NPR City Councilman Jeff Starkey telling current City Manager Debbie Manns of Jones, “He’ll never let the city live this down.”
Manns replied: “Not happy.”
Manns remains city manager of New Port Richey. In April 2024, she was granted a five-year contract extended through 2029 and 9% raise. And in New Port Richey, the city has a council-manager form of government. That means the city manager—not the mayor—is in charge of all city departments, along with all hiring and firing of city personnel.
But his conflict with city hall didn’t end at Jones’ acquittal. He points instead to New Port Richey’s fight over the single-hauler trash ordinance as the moment he decided to run for mayor.
Jones says the city’s push to take over residential trash service and move residents into a single-hauler system showed him the same habits he had been fighting for years: big decisions made from the dais down, presented to the public after the fact.
“I watched firsthand decisions be made behind closed doors and then only presented to the public,” he says.
The trash hauler debate unfolded under current Mayor Alfred “Chopper” Davis, Jones’s chief opponent in this year’s race. In 2023, Davis won the Mayor’s office by just 13 votes after serving nine years on City Council, where he first won his seat by nine votes in 2013.
During a 2023 special workshop tied to the city’s single-hauler trash fight, Davis had Jones escorted out by police for “interrupting.” Jones later told CL that one of the officers escorting him out of that workshop was also there the night he was arrested in 2020.
“I felt like, why am I going to keep complaining about what they’re doing?” he says. “I need to mobilize, organize, and run.”
For Jones, the single-hauler issue was another example of the city centralizing control, narrowing residents choices, and asking working people to absorb consequences later. The ordinance gave J.D. Parker (who was then bought out by Waste Pro) exclusive control over most solid waste collection beginning March 2, 2024. It also required all property owners to pay for service, whether or not they used it, allowed overdue bills to trigger liens after 30 days of nonpayment, and gave the city manager broad authority to administer the system.
Speaking with CL, Mayor Alfred Chopper Davis defended the single-hauler system, saying the city held public forums, was trying to address gaps in service, and believed moving to one hauler would help control costs and reduce wear on city streets.
“We had open forums where people could come and put their input in,” Davis said. “We wanted to address it in the best way.”
Davis also said making property owners responsible for payment was meant to deal with chronic nonpayment in a city with so many renters.
But Jones says the trash issue highlights an ongoing pattern of city power reaching into residents’ daily lives in different ways.
In 2023, a second federal civil rights lawsuit against the city alleged that police and code enforcement broke into resident Michelle Wojciechowski’s home over suspected code violations, rifled through her belongings, and helped create a campaign of harassment that ultimately drove her out of the city. In one video obtained by CL, officers made a joke about Anne Frank while searching the home of a Jewish resident. Public records cited in that case also said former code enforcement manager Charles Morgan monitored Wojciechowski’s water use and ran her license plate through a police scanner 22 times.
Jones, who works as a community organizer, filed to run for mayor on Feb. 2, 2026. By then, he says, the issue was no longer one ordinance or one case, but the direction of the city itself.
“Right now I see the current government and the current city manager prioritizing development, development, development,” he says.
By development, Jones means condos, high rises, places most working people in New Port Richey can’t afford. He argues city leaders are chasing an upscale downtown while neglecting flooding, infrastructure, affordable housing, and the needs of renters and working families.
“Where’s the affordable housing? Where’s the workforce housing?” he says.
Jones points to the city’s handling of the public boat ramp as another example of what he says is wrong with New Port Richey’s priorities. He says residents want the ramp to remain where it is and for the city to finally repair it, not treat the site as an opening for broader redevelopment.What upset residents most, he says, was hearing more about a riverwalk and housing concepts than about the straightforward repairs they were asking for.
“We kept hearing, we could have a riverwalk, we could have housing over here,” Jones says. “People want the boat ramp to stay where it is.”
Jones also says the city should move on with long-discussed community projects nearby, including turning the 1922 Gulf High/Schwettman Education Center building into a cultural and civic center, and restoring the space for public use including reopening the ball field.
“We want to see the Schwettman building move forward,” he says. “Give it back to the community.
Davis says the city bought two nearby properties by the ramp, because the existing boat ramp only has space for about seven vehicles with trailers, and because overflow parking had become a problem. He says the boat ramp hasn’t moved and remains open, and that city officials are still discussing what to do with the site.
“When you have a river that goes through the town, you have an anchor in the town,” Davis told CL. “That anchor is our boat ramp.”
Davis sees his next term as a chance to push forward on both infrastructure and community projects, including the cultural center at Schwettman and renovating the athletic use of the adjacent field. His focus since joining the Council in 2013, he said, has been economic development, and after that the hurricanes, infrastructure and drainage became an equally urgent priority.
He also pushed back on criticism that city hall is inaccessible, saying residents can reach him directly and he remains more visible than any of his mayoral opponents.
“I have 12 years experience,” Davis said. “I know what direction I want to take myself, and I’m doing my homework.”
Jones is one of four candidates running for mayor in New Port Richey’s April 14 municipal election. According to Pasco County election records, the field for mayor includes Davis, Jones, former councilmember Kelly Mothershead Timmons, and Daisy Thomas.
Campaign finance records show Jones is the financial underdog in the four-way mayoral race. Davis has raised $9,730; Jones $3,421; Thomas $5,965, plus $1,125 in-kind; Timmons $6,075 raised, plus $2,344 in-kind.
Despite running with the smallest campaign war chest in the field, Jones sees his campaign as people-powered rather than money-driven.
For the New Port Richey native, it’s about how residents keep hearing about plans and possibilities, while basic needs like drainage and affordability remain unmet. In a city where renters make up 45% of the population, including Jones himself, he argues too many decisions are being made with wealthier newcomers in mind, not the people already here.
“I don’t see them wanting to keep this a community,” he says. “I see them really wanting to turn it into like Ybor City or Dunedin.”
Walking around downtown, Jones points out bar after bar. He doesn’t object to nightlife, he says, but does question the kind of place his hometown is becoming.
“I think people would like to go out and have a good drink somewhere, but I think they’re over-inundating it. Can we have more family things, maybe?”
Walking by the waterfront, a young man calls to Jones from across the park.
“There’s New Port Richey’s next mayor!” the young man calls.
Jones is also running, he says, to build a better community for the kids he’s raising here.
“I don’t want my daughters and my son to grow up and people are still doing the things they did to me,” he said.
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This article appears in Apr. 02 – 08, 2026.