TAMPA — Polls open at 7 a.m. today for a special Tampa City Council election in northern Tampa and New Tampa.
The race is a runoff in council District 7, where the seat came open after Lisa Montelione resigned mid-term to run for the Florida House of Representatives.
Emergency room doctor Jim Davison and attorney Luis Viera emerged from a field of six candidates — including a former police officer, a retired teacher, a journalist and another doctor — on Nov. 8.
Davison, 62, has served on Hillsborough County's Indigent Health Care Advisory Board and has been involved in transportation issues in New Tampa since the 1990s.
Viera, 38, has served on the city's Civil Service Board and established the group Lawyers Austism Awareness Foundation.
Viera has raised more money, more than $100,000, and outspent Davison nearly 5-to-1.
"I see an area with so much lost potential, and I'm going to work hard to bring that potential home," said Viera, who wants to create a community redevelopment area for the area around the University of South Florida, pursue more mass transit and use city contracting to support apprenticeship programs to help train young people.
Davison is more the change candidate.
"I think we need to have a new breath of fresh air on the city council," he said.
Last week, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn endorsed Viera after Davison said he would never say never when it came to the idea of New Tampa seceding from the rest of the city — especially if taking a hard line helped New Tampa get a bigger share of city tax revenues.
"Our tax dollars that go downtown never seem to reappear in our district," Davison said. That's not true, said Buckhorn, who called the idea of trying to secede from the city "ridiculous."
As of Monday, nearly 4,300 voters, or about 8 percent of those registered in the district, had voted early or by mail.
Both Davison and Viera are residents of Hunter's Green. District 7 covers other New Tampa gated communities — Tampa Palms, West Meadows and Cory Lake Isles — plus northern Tampa neighborhoods like Forest Hills, University Square, Terrace Park and Temple Crest.
The winner will serve until the next city election in 2019, when he will be eligible to run for a full four-year term.
Polls close at 7 p.m.