Advertisement

Luis Viera wins Tampa City Council District 7 runoff

 
Luis Viera won with a margin of just over 1 percent.
Luis Viera won with a margin of just over 1 percent.
Published Dec. 7, 2016

TAMPA — After outspending his opponent nearly 5 to 1, political newcomer Luis Viera on Tuesday night won the runoff election to represent northern Tampa and New Tampa on the City Council.

With all votes counted, Viera, a 38-year-old lawyer, defeated emergency room doctor Jim Davison 2,588 votes to 2,523 votes — a winning margin of just over 1 percent — in the runoff for council District 7. Viera will serve the 2⅓ years remaining in the term of Lisa Montelione, who resigned her seat to run for the Florida House of Representatives.

Davison and Viera, who both live in Hunter's Green, qualified for the runoff by winning the most votes in a six-candidate primary on Nov. 8. After that initial vote, two candidates, Cyril Spiro and Avis Harrison, backed Davison.

During the campaign, Viera proposed that the city create a community redevelopment area for the area around the University of South Florida and pursue transportation improvements, including mass transit.

Davison, 62, is a longtime New Tampa activist on transportation issues and served on Hillsborough County's Indigent Health Care Advisory Board. He campaigned on a platform of unifying the district's neighborhoods as a more effective voice at City Hall. Davison contended that New Tampa gets disproportionately less in services and projects than it pays into the city budget.

Mayor Bob Buckhorn endorsed Viera after Davison said last week that he would never say never to the idea of New Tampa trying to secede from the rest of the city — especially if taking a hard line helped New Tampa get a larger share of city spending.

Viera said Davison was a good, honorable candidate, but he believed the last week of the campaign, including the discussion of the idea of secession, helped "put us over the top."

"The closer that people looked at the issues, the closer that people looked at the candidates, the more they gravitated to our candidacy," he said.

Both candidates said they wanted to see the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority expand service in the district, which includes USF, New Tampa gated communities such as Tampa Palms and West Meadows, and Tampa neighborhoods such as Forest Hills, University Square, Terrace Park and Temple Crest.

Tuesday's runoff, the only thing on the ballot and a vote only for Tampa residents in one-quarter of the city, drew less than 9.5 percent of the district's 53,968 eligible voters. By comparison, turnout was about 14 percent last year in the council runoff between Guido Maniscalco and Jackie Toledo.

Council races are officially nonpartisan, but party politics often assert themselves, and this race was no exception. Viera was endorsed by Democratic officials, Davison by Republicans.