Mitch Perry
Tommy Castellano has made a living in the air-conditioning business for the past 39 years, so it makes sense that he disdains the hot air that can be expended during a political campaign.
And to him that includes the notion that based on her prodigious fundraising success, engineer Jackie Toledo is the front-runner in the Tampa City Council District 6 contest. So far Toledo has raised more than $89,000 in the race, more than three times as much as either Castellano or Guido Maniscalco, the only registered Democrat in the race.
“I think I’m the front-runner and I have her worried,” declared Castellano defiantly on Sunday at a spaghetti dinner fundraiser at the Sons of Italy in West Tampa. “That’s why she’s got four consultants. I don’t understand why she has four consultants if she’s confident. I don’t have any paid consultants. I have a lot of volunteers who come to me — not that I couldn’t afford it — but it’s a grassroots campaign.”
Toledo has hired Strategic Image Management to help her campaign, a consulting firm founded by Anthony Pedicini. But she says while the entire SIM team is helping her out, she has only one specific consultant, Tom Piccolo.
Toledo says that she’s running her campaign by emphasizing her own virtues and ignoring her two opponents. “I’m working hard, so if he (Castellano) wants to say he’s the front-runner, let me say I disagree with him. We’re running a different campaign. He hasn’t been able to raise the funds that I have…if they want to attack me negatively, that’s indicative of who the front-runner is.”
She says she’s being unfairly targeted because of her success (including being endorsed by the he West Central Florida Federation of Labor). Over the weekend Toledo showed this reporter a cellphone photo of a very simple mailer that she said has been sent to registered Republicans in Tampa that links her name with President Obama — specifically “Obamacare,” a damning charge in GOP world.
But Castellano denies any involvement.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he replied on Sunday, saying that he runs a clean campaign, and that he doesn’t have to resort to dirty politics.
“It’s not in me to do that,” he continued. “She goes around saying she’s a mother of five. Why would I damage the reputation of a mother of five and let her children see that kind of stuff? I’m a grandfather of eight, and I wouldn’t want anybody going to my grandchildren and telling them I’m a bad guy,” he says, concluding, “All’s fair in love and war in politics, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Toledo says she appreciates that sentiment, but still holds suspicions about other people in Castellano’s camp. “I don’t think they’re following his example,” she says, adding that she won’t go negative. “I’ve got a lot going for me. I’m very accomplished. So I don’t need to play dirty politics.”
Castellano is a U.S. Navy veteran who founded Castellano Brothers Air Conditioning and Heating with his two brothers in 1975. He later purchased the company from his brothers and changed the name to Castellano Air Conditioning and Heating in West Tampa. Regarding his community, he says he wants to be the voice on council for those who aren’t benefitting from Tampa’s recent redevelopment renaissance, something often mentioned by Mayor Bob Buckhorn.
While saying he’s a huge fan of the mayor, Castellano thinks there could be more attention shown to West Tampa.
“We need to invest a little more in our neighborhoods,” he says. “The mayor plans on putting $30 million into a playground at Riverfront Park (actually $20 million), for people to visit, but over here in Wellswood, they need a bathroom at one of the parks off of Mendenhall Drive.”
Castellano boasts that the reason he knows this fact is because he’s been going door to door, talking directly to people in the district. “I’ve been very concerned about what’s going on.”
He says the only new thing that’s been done by the city in West Tampa in recent years has been the repainting of the 126-foot-tall city water tower at North Himes Avenue and West Spruce Street. “Beautiful paint job, but when you get into West Tampa, we need to do a little bit more than that,” he says.
For her part, Toledo says she has excellent grassroots support as well, referencing a photo on her Facebook page of volunteers that helped her campaign on Saturday.
