TAMPA, Fla. — Rick Fernandez, a Tampa Heights based transportation and neighborhood activist, is the latest Democrat to enter the race to succeed Hillsborough County Commissioner Les Miller in the District 3 seat later this year. Miller is term-limited from running again for the seat.
District 3 is the most urban district in the county, concentrated around much of Tampa.
Four other candidates have previously filed to run in the race: former Tampa City Councilman Frank Reddick, former City Councilman and County Commissioner Tom Scott, former Hillsborough county health care official Gwen Myers and Sky White, who ran unsuccessfully for the countywide District 7 seat in 2018.
Fernandez, 65, worked for many years as an attorney, which led to stints serving on the Florida Bar Board of Governors and also as president of the Hillsborough County Bar Association. He then segued into a second career recruiting attorneys for law firms as well as serving as a career coach.
But he’s become best known in Tampa politically for his fierce advocacy for public transportation and against what was originally known as the Florida Dept. of Transportation’s Tampa Bay Express (TBX) project, going back to 2015. He was the head of the Tampa Heights Civic Association when opposition from citizens predominantly in Tampa Heights and Seminole Heights ultimately led the FDOT to drop that project and reinvent it as “Tampa Bay Next.”
Fernandez says that he has always recognized the inequities that he says happened to the downtown urban core of Tampa when interstates 4 and 275 were built decades ago.
“Transportation really ties into everything else that we do,” he says. “It is the bloodstream of the community, and if we’re concerned about health equity, and if we’re concerned about food equity, and if we’re concerned about education, jobs, wage equity – at the end of the day, people need to get where they need to go in order to make a living and feed their families, and we’re doing a miserable job of that in this county.”
Since becoming active about transportation issues, Fernandez has served as the vice chair of the citizen advisory committee with the Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization (where he selected to do so by Miller), as well as being named to serve on the Hillsborough County Transportation Surtax Independent Oversight Committee, formed after the successful 2018 transit tax referendum in the county (which is now tied up in the courts). He also served as the president of the Tampa Heights Civic Association.
The District 3 has been known as the “minority seat” on the Board of County Commission, and historically has been held by an African-American, ever since Rubin Padgett, Sr. was elected to serve on the board back in 1985 (Padgett died last week).
Fernandez is very aware of that history, which he lauds as “honorable.”
He’s sensitive to the notion that race could be an issue in the contest, but he rejects the notion that a white person can’t run for the seat and be the best representative for the district. He also says that he hopes there can be more diversity with the other seats on the board, saying “there’s a broad constituency out there that needs representation, and not all minorities live in District Three.”
“Let’s get away from that idea, and let’s talk about electing the most qualified people to do the advocacy necessary to give the representation to the people that they deserve,” he says.
The district is heavily Democratic in terms of its electoral makeup, making the August Democratic primary election in August in essence the real election.
So how does a first-time candidate like Fernandez break on through when the ways that we traditionally associate with campaigning has been thrown out the window for the time being as the county- and the world -battles a pandemic outbreak?
He says the focus will be on getting the word out via Facebook, Twitter, email and old fashion telephone calls.
The Democratic primary for the Hillsborough County District 3 seat is August 18.