Where in the World is Josie Tomkow?

Or The Ghost of Polk City and the Great Tampa Gamble

South Tampa and Downtown are built on a foundation of accountability, trust, and true neighborliness. Residents value public servants who are not only present in name but genuinely committed to the lives and concerns of the community they represent. When politicians stray from these shared values, democracy itself is put at risk.

Politics, at its most cynical, is a game of maps and mirrors. When a career politician finds themselves term-limited or politically boxed in, they don’t look for a way to better serve their neighbors; they look for a new zip code that offers a fresh path to power. Representative Josie Tomkow’s sudden appearance in the race for Senate District 14 is a classic case of political opportunism. But as she asks the residents of South Tampa and Downtown for a promotion, a disturbing question looms: Who was she actually representing for the last two years?

To understand the mystery of Josie Tomkow, one must look at the “merger” that redefined her career. In early 2024, Tomkow married Tom Piccolo, a high-powered political consultant whose firm, Strategic Image Management, is the undisputed architect of the Tampa Republican establishment. On paper, it was a wedding. In reality, it was a political acquisition. The “Seventh-Generation Rancher” from the scrublands of Polk County was now part of a Tallahassee-Tampa power couple with deep roots in the very district she now seeks to represent.

The Residency Charade 

In Florida, “legal residency” for a legislator is not a suggestion but a constitutional requirement. You must live in the community you represent. Yet, since her marriage, the line between Tomkow’s “official” residence in a Polk City ranch house and her “actual” life in the urban heart of Hillsborough appears to create a genuine residency question.

This creates a “Residency Trap” from which there is no graceful escape. Consider the timeline: As late as January 2024, public social media posts show Tomkow attending political events and fundraisers in South Tampa alongside her husband, while the Florida House was in session and Polk County expected her to be present locally. On key committee vote days, such as the important Health and Human Services hearings in February, witnesses and local reporters observed Josie Tomkow attending Tampa networking breakfasts and neighborhood forums rather than being present at her Polk City address. If Tomkow was, in fact, living with her husband in his primary residence in Hillsborough County while holding her seat in the Florida House, readers are left to ask: who was representing the people of Polk County in those crucial moments? The pattern is easy to follow: a paper residency in a rural district, while her heart, husband, and future appeared firmly planted in a South Tampa high-rise. The conclusion, some might say, nearly writes itself.

While Representative Tomkow claims to be a neighbor to the people of Polk County, her actual front door is a mystery. Her official records point to a Tallahassee office building, and her family’s cattle ranch is shielded by miles of wire and ‘No Trespassing’ signs. But in Tampa, the paper trail is much clearer. While she plays the ‘Ghost of Polk City,’ her future and her husband’s high-powered political machine are rooted firmly in the luxury of Hillsborough County.

However, if she maintains that she was indeed living in Polk City for the remainder of her term, she faces a different, equally damning problem. For a party that relentlessly crows about “traditional family values,” the optics are catastrophic. If Tomkow stayed 60 miles away in Polk County instead of living with her brand-new husband in Tampa, it suggests that her thirst for a legislative title outweighed the very domestic unity her party claims is the bedrock of society. You cannot have it both ways. Either she was a residency fraud, or she was a part-time wife who prioritized her committee gavel over her home. Both scenarios reveal a candidate who treats “values” as a branding slogan rather than a lived reality.

The Architecture of Cruelty

This dishonesty about her location is a perfect metaphor for her record as Chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee. Just as she allegedly maintained a “phantom” residency, she has presided over a “phantom” healthcare system. One that exists on paper but fails in practice.

Under Tomkow’s gavel, the Health Committee has been the primary laboratory for what can only be described as a “campaign of terror” against Florida’s most vulnerable. She wasn’t just a witness to the state’s descent into institutionalized cruelty; she was its gatekeeper. While South Tampa’s medical community, anchored by world-class institutions like Tampa General and USF Health, strives for evidence-based care, Tomkow has been the primary legislative enabler for a “science-free” agenda.

Imagine a Florida where health policy puts patients and families first: where science guides our decisions, doctors and nurses feel supported, and every neighbor has access to trustworthy care without fear or stigma. In this vision, lawmakers would defend evidence-based medicine, respect the complex realities facing women and LGBTQ Floridians, and ensure that truth prevails over politics in every health debate.

Instead, the record could not be more bleak. According to the Associated Press, Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo has publicly compared mandatory vaccinations for diseases such as measles, polio, and chickenpox to government-imposed “slavery.” Despite this, she did not speak out against his controversial statements that diverge from mainstream medical guidance. She also supported the six-week abortion ban, a policy that does not account for the complex medical emergencies regularly faced by Tampa’s obstetricians. And her committee advanced the bans on gender-affirming care that have left over 60% of transgender individuals in this state too terrified to even seek routine medical check-ups. When a “Health Chair” creates a climate of fear that keeps citizens away from their doctors, she has fundamentally failed her public vocation.

Patrimonialism Comes to Tampa

As we have noted in previous analyses, the current political era has signaled a shift toward “patrimonialism,” a system in which the government is run like a family business, with loyalty as the only currency that matters. Josie Tomkow is the Florida embodiment of this rot. Consider last year’s so-called local priorities budget, which funneled over $3 million in state grants directly to organizations chaired by Tomkow’s closest political allies in Hillsborough, bypassing other longstanding local nonprofits. Meanwhile, appointments to critical health boards were handed not to community physicians but to donors and campaign surrogates, turning public service into a reward for loyalty rather than merit. These concrete moves show how the machinery of “patrimonialism” operates: if you are inside the circle, the resources of Tampa and Tallahassee are yours to divide.

Her campaign for Senate District 14 is not a grassroots movement; it is a corporate rollout. She is what we might call an “ideological tourist,” imported into Hillsborough by her husband’s consulting firm, which owns the district’s political infrastructure. Let’s make it simple: When you see a politician pop up with no local roots, ask yourself, are we looking at another ideological tourist? Say it with me: No more ideological tourists in Tampa! This is how the “Family Business” of Tallahassee works: you move a candidate like a chess piece, manufacture a “residency” on a map, and hope the voters don’t notice that the “rancher” on the mailer is actually a Tallahassee insider who hasn’t lived a day of the life she’s selling.

This is more than just “carpetbagging.” It is the expansion of a system where power is used to reward the loyal and punish the “other.” In Tomkow’s world, the law is not a shield for the weak, but a weapon of the powerful. We see it in the budget bills she supports. Bills that slash Medicaid and SNAP while rural hospitals in her own backyard are pushed to the brink of collapse. If she could not or would not protect the health of the neighbors she claimed to live among in Polk County, why would the voters of Tampa trust her with theirs?

The Choice: Healers or Opportunists?

There is an old warning that holiness without mercy is fraud. By any moral or ethical metric, Josie Tomkow’s record and her “residency” are a double-sided fraud. We are not meant to live as “predators” seeking political advantage through the suffering or the deception of others. We are meant to be neighbors committed to the collective well-being of our city. But a neighbor has to actually live in the neighborhood. A neighbor has to share the community’s concerns, not just its zip code.

Tampa deserves protectors who step up because they love this place and the people who call it home. Let us be those protectors together, committed not only to challenging what is wrong, but to building a city where everyone belongs, and everyone matters.

The special election on March 24th is not just a date on the calendar; it is the decisive turning point in Tampa’s story. This is the chapter where we, the residents, become the heroes who choose a new direction or allow the old script to repeat itself. The ballot is in your hands, and you have the power to decide whether our Senate seat will be handed over as a trophy to a Tallahassee power couple, or whether we reject the outsider narrative of an “ideological tourist” who treats the truth about her residency with the same disregard she treats the science of public health. This is the moment to write the ending we want: will Tampa’s next chapter be defined by courage, honesty, and genuine community, or by cynical calculation and absent leadership? The choice, and the ending to the story, belongs to you.

Tampa deserves a Senator who views healthcare as a sacred responsibility, not a political cudgel. We deserve a leader whose presence in our district is a reality, not a legal technicality. It is time to tell the “Ghost of Polk City” that South Tampa is not a family asset to be traded, and our community is not for sale. Let’s maybe elect someone who works to keep the lights on in District 14 rather than someone who works for the lobbyists. Let’s elect Brian Nathan.

Data & Verification Sources:

• Legislative Record: Florida House of Representatives, Committee on Health & Human Services (2023-2026 Session Archives).
• Candidate Filings: Florida Department of State, Division of Elections (Form DS-DE 9 and Statement of Candidate filings for SD-14).
• Business Records: Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations (SIM Wins, LLC / Strategic Image Management).
• Public Reporting: Florida Politics, “Winners and Losers of the 2023-2025 Sessions”; Tampa Bay Times, Local Government Coverage.
• Constitutional Requirement: Article III, Section 15, Florida Constitution (Residency Requirements for Legislators).

This article contains investigative reporting and political commentary. Statements regarding residency represent the author’s analysis of public marriage records, business filings, and legislative timelines. All conclusions regarding candidate intent or domestic arrangements are presented as matters of public concern and opinionative inquiry protected under the First Amendment.