06.20.08
Dean Trantalis would be city’s first openly-gay mayor
Fort Lauderdale attorney Dean Trantalis has been shaking hands with residents around town, introducing plans to run for Mayor of Fort Lauderdale.
“I will be announcing my candidacy for the mayor of Fort Lauderdale,” Trantalis told the Express.
He will emphasize his position as an openly gay candidate representing the GLBT community in the wake of Jim Naugle’s anti-gay rhetoric that brought negative attention to the city.
“I want to be the champion of the gay community, as well as the leader of a community of people who have felt alienated by its leaders,” Trantalis said. “I feel the gay community is due to have one of its leaders take on the cause of redressing the experience we all felt last summer.”
He takes this stance as other gay candidates running for office in Broward describe themselves as candidates who “happen to be gay.”
Trantalis’ move risks splitting the gay vote, thus favoring Seiler. Seiler, a Democrat, has supported GLBT issues during his two terms in the State House, but many in the gay community criticize him for not signing his name as a sponsor of any GLBT friendly House bills and for not speaking out against Naugle last year.
And while Trantalis is highly visible in the city and county’s GLBT political scene as one of the co-authors of the County’s Human Rights Ordinance and as an outspoken opponent to Naugle, he has been criticized for being a part-time commissioner who attended commission meetings unprepared, an assertion he refutes.
“I knew more about things than all of them put together,” Trantalis said. “On the big issues people would think I knew too much. I would read beyond the [commission agenda] packet.”
Trantalis claims that as mayor, he plans to “bring back dignity to the office” and to be a proactive leader who would emphasize consensus building among the commissioners.
His primary platform issues include improving Waterworks Bond-funded city water projects, streamlining code enforcement procedures, and setting the tone for diversity.
He said he would work to end the ongoing police stings against gay men in city parks.
“The mayor has set a tone in this city that makes gay people open season to be targeted,” Tratalis said. “This puts the city at risk of lawsuits and misdirects the city’s resources that should focus on real crime.”