A group of citizens trooped in to a recent Hillsborough County Commission meeting hoping to convince the board not to ax money for affordable housing.
In purple T-shirts bearing the name of a grassroots group called Hope, they spoke of the homeless, of low-income seniors, of places for people to live near work. Geraldine Rogers-Toombs quoted a Bible verse to commissioners: “Proverbs 14:31 states he who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.”
Commissioner Josh Wostal, the first board member to speak, responded with a Bible verse of his own: “Exodus: 20:15,” he said, “which, of course, is thou shalt not steal.”
Connecting affordable housing to theft is not the most attention-getting thing Wostal — a fiercely conservative, libertarian, anti-property tax Republican — has done since his surprise 2022 election.
Wostal said he didn’t want to run for office. But he’s been busy. He’s taken aim at funding for nonprofits, called a health care tax for the poor a form of socialism and tried to block a tax to pay teachers. His causes have made this former political unknown one of the most talked-about politicians in town, getting both outraged pushback and enthusiastic thumbs-up.
“I’ve met a lot of elected officials that believe they can manage people’s money better than (people can) themselves,” said Wostal, 40. “Which I think is offensive.”
His style can be pleasant and turn blunt, confrontational and prickly. In a commission discussion on what qualifications should be required to serve on a veterans advisory board, Wostal, who spent 10 years in the Navy, told fellow commissioners he didn’t need a lecture on military service.
When he went before the local legislative delegation last year to rail against the the county’s longtime health care tax for the poor as illegal “taxation without representation,” one legislator accused him of “throwing bombs” and called his manner as “disrespectful.”
When Tampa Mayor Jane Castor left the local public transit board, Wostal called it “a shameful display of cowardice that she did not accept accountability for her direct role in leading this critical public institution into financial turmoil.” Castor declined to comment for this story.
Privately, some have called him Hostile Wostal.
Brash? He doesn’t deny that. Even at times rude? “Yep,” he said. “I’m very direct.” He disagrees with disrespectful.
“I won’t sit silently just because others want to say less,” he said.
He has fans: Last year came a tweet from influential east county Republican political activist and donor Sam Rashid: “Joshua Wostal was a warrior at the (Board of County Commissioners) today well done buddy!”
From fellow Republican Commissioner Michael Owen just before Owen left the board to run for the Florida House: “He’s one of the most brilliant men I’ve ever met — when it comes to the budgeting, he’s unmatched.”
Wostal, he said, “stands up for conservative values.”
Others are less impressed.
Last year, longtime environmental and civic activist Vivienne Handy served on the City-County Planning Commission and on a citizen task force helping implement a government-sanctioned community plan for the town of Wimauma. Wostal called it a potential conflict of interest and invited her to resign from the planning commission. She suggested he stop being a bully.
“They’re demanding and fairly thankless roles to serve on those committees,” Handy said. “And to be treated that way by a board member is pretty egregious.”
Commissioner Pat Kemp, a Democrat, often has found herself at odds with Wostal. She says the way he has weighed in against middle and lower-income residents, schools, not-for-profits and affordable housing “is no way to build our future.”
Mariella Smith, longtime community activist turned county commissioner, was ousted in 2022 — the same year Wostal won — by another political unknown, Donna Cameron Cepeda. A founder of Glory Ministries International with her husband, Cepeda often seconds Wostal’s motions and votes with him. Cepeda did not return calls to her office for this story.
Smith, a Democrat, said the new commissioners came in “like bulls in a china shop with no regard for some of the work that had gone on before and the compromises on all sides that had gone on before.”
Said Wostal: “We’re not doing anything they didn’t do.”
Wostal wears a neatly trimmed red beard that gives him an almost mischievous air. He grew up in trailer parks in South Texas where he says a piece of carpet covered a hole in the floor.
He was raised mostly by his father, a diesel engine mechanic and bullet manufacturer, didn’t meet his mother until he was 23 and has a brother with schizoaffective disorder who was once homeless, he said.
He has a masters in business administration from the University of Florida, owns a UPS store near Raymond James Stadium and lives in suburban Westchase with his wife Noelle, who’s in real estate, and their son Matthew, 9.
Wostal said his wife and friends urged him to run, the friends knowing that the government’s handling of the pandemic “would break my willpower” and get him to seek elected office.
On the campaign trail, he called commissioners “absolute cowards” and told them “lockdowns are a violation of liberty” repeatedly at a meeting. He was removed from one pandemic-related discussion by deputies.
“I did debate in school and I was good at it, according to my teachers,” Wostal said. “I believe in people arguing passionately.”
He said he didn’t get politically active until Hillary Clinton ran for president. A longtime independent, he ran as a Republican. When he beat Democratic incumbent Kimberly Overman 52% to 48% for the District 7 countywide seat, many were surprised. He says he wasn’t.
With the board’s 4-3 Republican majority, votes often split down party lines.
Wostal’s scorecard is mixed. He got enough votes to take $200,000 back from the budget of longtime elections supervisor Craig Latimer despite Latimer returning unspent money yearly.
His attempt to regulate money for nonprofits was scaled back to what other commissioners called common sense rules to govern the process — which Wostal ultimately voted against.
“The current structure (of the board) is not in my favor,” he said. Republican chairperson Ken Hagan has on occasion been the swing vote for Democrats.
His biggest splash was leading the recent charge to delay a property tax referendum for teacher pay from getting on the November ballot, saying citizens were being priced out of their homes. When the vote was criticized by schools superintendent Van Ayres, Wostal called him “a bureaucrat that makes a third of a million dollars a year of people’s taxes.”
When school officials sued, Wostal got a majority of board members to ditch the services of their county attorney and pay outside counsel up to $50,000 — seemingly clashing with his spending philosophy and a move fellow Commissioner Harry Cohen called “a flagrant waste of taxpayer dollars.” The school district ultimately won the battle.
Though the two often disagree, Wostal names Cohen, a Democrat, as a local politician he respects.
“You don’t have the luxury of getting angry at people,” said Cohen, “because on the next item you might be allies.”
There’s more discord to come: Residents who previously banded together to push back against a plan to further widen Interstate 275 are decrying Wostal leading a vote to make it a priority again.
Recently came a less predictable Wostal moment as the board discussed a community sales tax that has paid for decades of projects and is up for renewal.
Wostal warned Cohen not to pinch himself, then called for making provisions for a grocery store in the “food desert” neighborhood of Sulphur Springs — a move he acknowledged as a pivot from his usual free market policies.
In a power-lunching town where whom you dine with gets noticed, Wostal can be glimpsed contentedly lunching solo at the upscale private University Club.
“I eat by myself there every time I can,” he said. “It’s a way of clearing my thoughts.”
He says he’ll run again because it takes two terms to get anything “across the finish line.” The question of political office after that, he said, will be up to his wife.
“All of my quote unquote friends I’m making now will not be there when I’m done,” he said. “But she will.”
On a recent rainy Monday, members of that grassroots group Hope gathered for a news conference outside County Center to keep pushing for affordable housing dollars in the budget.
Asked just before the event began about Wostal’s Bible verse, Rogers-Toombs said she thought it was “an inappropriate response.” It motivated her to look at his online profile, which describes him as a “passionate advocate for disadvantaged children.”
But if people can’t afford housing, “then what about the children?” Rogers-Toombs said. “I don’t understand his mindset.”
Wostal said this about the Bible verses: “The Bible is simply there to be a moral compass for things — not to pick which parts you like in a moral debate.”
