UPDATE: Congresswoman Castor has responded to our question about whether she is endorsing Yolie Capin in the Tampa City Council District 3 race, as Capin is distributing a mailer showing the two in a photograph. In a statement sent to CL, Congresswoman Castor says:
"Tampa residents are fortunate that we have so many good candidates running for City Council. While I have not officially endorsed any candidate in any race, I believe Yolie Capin is a hard worker and good listener as are others on the ballot. I voted early today and encourage all Tampa voters to vote early by Saturday afternoon or on election day on Tuesday."
The Tampa City Council District 3 race should be a close one this Tuesday night, and it's likely that -as is the case in most of the seven city council contests - this one will end up in a run-off election on March 22.
With the Tampa Tribune endorsing Jason Wilson and the St. Pete Times recommending Seth Nelson, the scramble is on amongst the three other candidates to break on through to become one of the top two finishers.
Those would be Republicans Chris Hart & Michael Ciftci, and Democratic party activist and current District 4 interim council member Yolie Capin.
Thursday night we reported that in this post you can see a recent Capin postcard that has been mailed out to certain households in the city wide race, which certainly looks like Congresswoman Kathy Castor is endorsing Capin in the competitive race.
When we spoke with Yolie Cpin on Thursday, she said Castor had not endorsed her,, but did say it was the Congresswoman's "suggestion" to do the postcard with the photo of the two of them.
Speaking to CL Thursday afternoon, Capin said that the public could "perceive" that she was endorsed, "or she wouldn't have offered." She continued by saying, "She (Castor) offered to take the photo. I took her up on it. She said 'let's take a photo and maybe make a card out of it.'"
Capin added that "I wouldn't want to say it's an endorsement, but I'm the only one she asked to take a photo of."
So there you have it. Being the only woman in the race and with strong ties to the Hillsborough County Democratic party (and with some of the biggest billboards we've seen in the city), don't count Capin out just yet to make the runoff next month.
