TAMPA — Mayor Bob Buckhorn breezed to a second term Tuesday night in a city election with the lowest voter turnout since the Nixon administration.
With nearly all votes counted, Buckhorn piled up nearly 96 percent of the vote against a write-in candidate. Joining Buckhorn in re-election were four sitting City Council members. But a fifth, open City Council seat, District 6, will be decided in a March 24 runoff.
"You have given me the opportunity of a lifetime," Buckhorn told a crowd of supporters at Ulele Native-Inspired Food & Spirits.
Buckhorn, 56, recalled arriving in Tampa in the 1980s with a 1966 Dodge Dart and a discharge from naval flight school. He talked about the importance of making Tampa attractive to future generations of young professionals.
"Let's have fun tonight," he said, "and tomorrow, at 7:30, I'll be at that desk, doing what you hired me to do."
The re-election of four council members by wide margins — Mike Suarez, Charlie Miranda, Yvonne Yolie Capin and Harry Cohen — suggests voters had little appetite for change in City Hall, where the council has supported Buckhorn's pro-development agenda while occasionally challenging him to spend more on specific neighborhood projects.
But for two City Council candidates, the race is not over.
Civil engineer Jackie Toledo, 38, and jeweler Guido Maniscalco, 30, are headed to a runoff.
"I feel good," Toledo said during a party with supporters at Piquant in Hyde Park Village. "We worked really hard, and we ran a really good race."
Toledo finished first in a three-way race, though several percentage points short of the majority she would have needed to win outright.
Returns from individual precincts showed that Toledo led in nearly every precinct in the district, except for Wellswood, which Maniscalco won, and Lowry Park Central, where she tied third-place finisher Tommy Castellano.
For the runoff, Toledo said she planned to "make sure I get my message across of what I want to do for the city and what I can do as an engineer in transportation and creating jobs and fixing our infrastructure."
During a party at Montauro Ristorante, Maniscalco said he planned "to knock on doors again and chase every vote, because every vote counts."
He didn't have to go far for the first one.
Less than two hours after the polls closed, Castellano drove over to Montauro's to offer Maniscalco his "100 percent endorsement."
Castellano, who had sharply criticized Toledo's campaign, said Toledo was an "embarrassment" who had "never gone north of Kennedy Boulevard until this campaign."
"She's not one of us," said Castellano, 64, who owns a West Tampa air-conditioning company.
In contrast, he said Maniscalco is "Tampa-born and -raised. He understands Tampa issues. He's loyal to Tampa. He's honest. He has integrity. He'll be a great candidate, and he'll be a great City Council person."
The winner of the runoff will represent District 6, which covers West Tampa and parts of South Tampa. Miranda left the seat to run in citywide District 2 because of term limits.
Election day, early voting and absentee ballots produced a voter turnout of about 12.7 percent — Tampa's lowest since at least 1971. Of 211,158 registered city voters, 26,743 took part in the election, most by absentee ballot.
"Was lonely," tweeted Michael Hoad, who voted at Precinct 359 in New Tampa. "More joggers than voters."
Two other council members, Frank Reddick and Lisa Montelione, were automatically re-elected when no one qualified to run against them.