Janelle Irwin Taylor
Five candidates are vying for the District 4 seat on the St. Petersburg City Council and the chance to succeed incumbent Darden Rice, who is running for Mayor.
The race on Tuesday’s ballot includes someone for everyone — a former prosecutor, a tech entrepreneur, an investment banker, a private equity consultant, and even a bartender.
Lisset Hanewicz so far appears to have an edge. The former prosecutor left her law practice in anticipation of her first child, a daughter. Two years later she took on a new role, as the president of the Crescent Lake Neighborhood Association where she worked to revitalize the group. The work, according to Hanewicz, is what prompted her to run for City Council.
The race has been fairly quiet compared to the raging mayoral contest that is hogging the spotlight, but Hanewicz has brought in an impressive nearly $80,000 for her bid. That’s about $24,000 more than her closest competitor in the funding race, Tom Mullins, a longtime executive with Raymond James. And it’s far more than the rest of the pack, where total earnings as of the first week of August landed anywhere from less than $7,000 to about $24,000.
“As a former state and federal prosecutor, I fought to keep our community safe. As president of the Crescent Lake Neighborhood Association, I brought our neighbors together to protect our green spaces and fix our streets and sidewalks,” Hanewicz says in a campaign ad, “St. Pete Values.”
Hanewicz worked for the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney’s Office as a prosecutor. She also served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the Department of Justice for the Middle District of Florida. She started her own law practice in 2014. Hanewicz previously supported Rice in her reelection bid.
Affordable housing is among Hanewicz’s top campaign priorities.
Mullins, meanwhile, has been an executive with Raymond James since the late 1980s, leading the firm’s investment banking practice for the transport and infrastructure industries, where he has developed particular expertise in the environmental service and transport sectors.
“St. Petersburg is a thriving city, and with responsible leadership, there is more opportunity on the horizon than ever for every resident in every neighborhood. I’m running for City Council to bring inclusive, smart-growth policies that prepare St. Petersburg for a brighter future, while maintaining our city’s diverse personality and superior quality of life and environment,” Mullins said when he announced his bid in late May.
Mullins is running as a fiscal conservative who wants to end what he describes as growth moratoriums that inhibit business.
Also running are Jarib Figueredo, a local tech entrepreneur, Clifford Hobbs III, a bartender, and private equity consultant Doug O’Dowd.
Hobbs has raised just over $24,000 for his bid so far. He’s not just any bartender. Hobbs earned a degree from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Austin, Texas. And he boasts a public service track record, having served as student government president at St. Petersburg College’s downtown campus and as a member of the Euclid St. Paul Neighborhood Association. He also volunteers with homeless shelters and is a graduate of Leadership St. Pete.
Hobbs is running on a pro-infrastructure platform, including updating local sidewalks, alleys and roads, and he wants to ban discrimination of renters by updating the city’s Tenants Bill of Rights.
Figueredo is a tech entrepreneur who heads HorusPay, a blockchain payroll startup. He has raised just shy of $12,000 for his bid, as of the first week of August, and wants to bring more tech jobs to the city.
The Cuban immigrant, if elected, hopes to revive the American dream by creating more jobs, and he wants to expand the city’s police force.
O’Dowd is a former finance executive who now works as a consultant for a private equity firm. Despite his background in finance, he has raised less than $7,000 for his bid, as of the first week of August.
He’s running on a platform of economic development, particularly for the city’s Southside. An outlier among the candidates, O’Dowd also vocally supports creating a ninth City Council district on the Southside to provide better representation among those communities.
Only two candidates can advance to the General Election Nov. 2. The top two vote-getters, if no one receives more than 50% of the vote, will advance.
