Welcome back to season 2 of My Mayor, the Catalyst series that helps you get to know the person behind the policy. We sat down with each candidate and asked them each the same five questions, with a few follow up questions sprinkled in. For Episode 4, we asked:

  • If you could spend a week shadowing anyone, who would it be? 
  • What’s something you’ve become less certain about as you’ve gotten older? 
  • Tell me about a time you had to choose between being liked and being respected. 
  • What’s a misconception about success that you no longer believe? 
  • What’s a compliment you’ve received that has stayed with you for years? 

Joe: All right, we’re back on “My Mayor,” the last episode before the primaries, and joining me is Fire Chief Jim Large. Good to see you, as always.

Jim: Good to see you, Joe.

Joe: How you feeling? We’re sort of rounding third here towards the primaries. How you feeling?

Jim: I feel good. I’ve enjoyed this, every minute of it. It’s work, without a doubt — more work than I ever dreamed of. But the real benefit is the people that I’m meeting. I’m meeting people every day that we have great conversations. Had a great one yesterday on small businesses in St. Pete with a business owner. We spent about two hours together. And the interesting part is, as I was walking to that meeting, I had a very young lady and her grandmother stop me on the sidewalk. And I’m coming from the gym, so I’m in shorts and a T-shirt — I didn’t have any of my campaign gear on, if you will. And she said, “Aren’t you running for mayor?” And I said, “Well, yes, ma’am, I am.” Like I said, it was a young woman, and she was at the forum we had at the St. Pete College by the League of Women Voters. And she said, “I was very impressed with you. I’m very appreciative of your career. You have my support.” It was just a great conversation on the street, unsolicited. So those are the kind of things that, as you move forward — win or lose, they’re rewarding.

Joe: Yeah. And you’ve made a friend in Maria Scruggs. In two episodes, she’s brought you up — I think you were on a podcast, and you had some time in advance that you spent talking with each other, and she said that she was really happy, that you guys just really hit it off. She was very complimentary of you as well in one of our other episodes.

Jim: Yeah. No, and I saw that, and I appreciate it. I thanked Maria. Yes, we get along great. We both have a non-political approach to this. It’s just basically all heart and the fact that we care so much about the city and public service. And so we really strike it off. We have some similarities in our family values as well, raising children, and we talked about a lot of things. And the thing I like about Maria — she’s a straight shooter. She doesn’t give you any fluff. She called me out recently on a — I did a post, and she called me out right away to see what my intent was. And it was good. We cleared it up right away, what my intent was. And she accepts that, because she knows we’re both straight shooters. So it’s been a really great relationship that we’ve been able to further, because I already knew Maria and always respected her and everything. We’ve gotten along really good.

Joe: Wonderful. All right, let’s dive into these last five questions.

Jim: Okay.

Joe: Question four: if you could spend a week shadowing anyone, who would it be?

Jim: So the first thing that jumped out at me on this one — and again, I’ve got to compliment you on your questions, because I really appreciate the fact that you’re helping the citizens of St. Pete get to know each one of the six of us with these questions, because we’re not talking politics. And that’s a nice break for those of us that are talking it almost all our waking hours. So this question, right away, the first answer that jumped out at me — and it’s not my ultimate answer, but I’ll tell you my train of thought here. The first thing that jumped out was a week with Jesus would be unbelievable. Just unbelievable. You talk about everything that you want to be as a leader — He embodied. But that’s kind of what I think a lot of people would say.

So the second thing, I looked at my career, and I thought — I went and saw this man speak, and I was ready to go down and enlist. And that was Admiral McRaven. I don’t know if you’re familiar with him. SEAL Team Six, all that. Man, he spoke at an event and I literally was ready. And I think I was about 60 years old when I saw him, and I was ready to go join the SEALs. He’s very inspirational.

But then I did tie it back to the campaign a little bit. I did a reel recently walking through Straub Park, and I said, “What a great job our forefathers did for this city when they deeded all that waterfront park land.” And so William Straub — I did a little more research on him. I was aware of him. And what a great guy to spend a week with. What a visionary. What a leader. He was an editor for the “St. Petersburg Times” for, I think, 30-some-odd years before he sold off to Paul Poynter. But his work was so instrumental, really, in what St. Petersburg enjoys today. And so when you look at everything we have going on in this city, what a great opportunity to sit down with a guy like that and say, “Look at this gas plant district. What do you see 100 years from now? What is your vision for that?” After spending a week with him, that would be my final question probably — tell me how you see it, that makes this city — because we really are a better place today because of a lot of his work when you look at it. So I think I’d spend a week with Mr. Straub. The park’s named after him. We got the Vinoy Park, all that. He just did a great job.

Joe: Yeah.

Jim: Really pushed for that. It was Hillsborough County, and he’s one that pushed to split off and have Pinellas and Hillsborough, and did a lot of things that really set St. Pete up for success long term.

Joe: Cool. Great answer. What’s something you’ve become less certain about as you’ve gotten older?

Jim: So when you look at leadership — when I was a young firefighter, I thought all the officers, they had to have all the answers. That’s why they’re the officer. But what I became less certain about as I moved up through the ranks, and as I learned — and it’s a key part of leadership — is that you don’t have all the answers. So the key is recognizing that. The key is developing both the understanding and the network of where to go to help you get those answers, because ultimately you’re still responsible for providing them in the end. So I became less certain, I guess, about leaders knowing it all as time went on. And that transitioned into being a leader and understanding really why listening matters, and just incorporating that team. We’ve talked about that in the past — how important having the right people around you are. So I think that’s probably the answer for that.

Joe: Nice. Tell me about a time you had to choose between being liked and being respected.

Jim: Okay. The time starts in February of 2006, and it ended in March of 2024 when I retired. So the time is my time as fire chief, because I’ve said it before: you have to make hard decisions. And the thing about — we say leadership is making tough decisions when everybody’s looking. You just have to, and you’re never going to make everybody happy on every single decision. But again, you learn that. So there were budgetary issues that I’ve faced where at one time I was told by the mayor I had to lay people off. That was brutal. But the next year, I was facing the same dilemma, and I made a decision to do away with overtime. And in doing so, it required us — rarely, it ended up being only 5% of the time — but to down a unit now and then. It was called browning out a ladder truck. It was very unpopular with the firefighters. But I saved people’s jobs by making that decision, and the impact was really negligible because we have closer units. We had a lot of things that would make that work and get us through that tough year in the budget. This is back in the ’07, ’08 era when the economy was really bad. But you can’t avoid difficult decisions. You have to be very transparent with it, and the big thing is communicate your reasoning. If people accept it, great. If they don’t, well, you gave them the opportunity to know why you made that decision.

Joe: Yeah. Makes sense. And how does it go sometimes — obviously, you had to answer to administration. When that comes back at you, are you able to differentiate on the receiving end of that, from liked and respected, when decisions like having to do layoffs, or orders like having to do layoffs, come down?

Jim: Absolutely. I guess when you say — what I did on the layoffs was, I did a lot of research before I actually had to pull the trigger. And it really came down to — I’m not sure exactly what administration was thinking. With our drop plan, we could chart out when we would fill those. It was six positions to start with. And I had six people retiring within the next nine months or whatever. And the cost was going to be less than maybe $80,000, I think, at the time. So I did go in and try to fight for keeping those people and spending the $80,000, even though we were in a tough budget. I said I would find it somehow, or we would do without something. And that didn’t go over well. I got told, “I told you what to do, and I expect you to do it.” So I understood — it’s my job. That’s what my boss wanted me to do, and I did it. One of the hardest days I ever had, because I hired all of them. And then I had to call them in and say, “Your job’s over.”

But yeah — don’t accept a role like that if you’re not prepared to make the tough decisions, and not prepared to know that everybody’s not going to like you. As a mayor, we see that every day. You can make great decisions for the city as a whole, but there will still be a percentage. My mentor years ago — I reference him a lot, I know, in these things, but this guy just had that great sense. He said, “Jim, as you go up the ladder and you make decisions, just always remember, there’s always three groups on that decision. There’s the group that agrees with you 100%, there’s the group that disagrees with you, and there’s a group that says, ‘I don’t care either way.'” He said, “That’s just the nature of the beast. You want that group that agrees with you to be the biggest group.” So I’ve always remembered that when I go into decisions, knowing there’s going to be some people that don’t like it, and there’s going to be some people that could care less — as long as they can come to work, do their job, get their paycheck, go home, they’re happy. It’s the other two groups, and how it affects them in their minds.

Joe: Okay. What’s a misconception about success that you no longer believe?

Jim: So, it’s interesting that this question is today, even though I already thought of my answer prior. But I had a little bit of a measure of success today. Success is not being fire chief. Yes, that’s a personal achievement, but that doesn’t make you successful, for example. It’s not measured by your rank or your title. It’s really, for me — did I leave the organization better than when I started? Maybe 10 years from now, there’ll be a better comparison, if you will — I don’t know if that’s the right word — but people will say, when I left, the organization was ISO Class 1, was internationally accredited, and we achieved that combination while I was the fire chief. But it’s we achieved it. It’s not I. There’s only 127 departments nationwide, out of over 45,000, that are rated that have ISO 1 and international accreditation. So to me, that’s a measure of success. Me being the fire chief is not a measure of success.

But let me tell you the thing that happened today that really struck me. So, my daughter had a patient today who asked her, “Your last name — are you related to the guy running for mayor?” And she texted me this, and she said, “Yeah, that happens to be my dad.” And he said, “Well, my wife and I are going to vote for your dad, because if he’s anything like the daughter that he’s raised, he’s a good guy.”

Joe: Wow. That hit me right in the heart.

Jim: Yeah. That hit me right in the heart when she texted me that.

Joe: Well done.

Jim: That is how you measure success. I have three grown kids that I’m extremely proud of. But like I said, I kind of went over the job success, but real-life success there — I’m going to have to go with statements like that.

Joe: Well, my last question is going to be tough to top that one. What’s a compliment you’ve received that has stayed with you for years? I guess it can’t have stayed with you for years yet, since it just happened. That’s the only —

Jim: Yeah.

Joe: — but there’s not —

Jim: The one that stays with me. So, when I was an 18-year-old rookie on the job, I had a captain at a station that I just really admired. Great guy. Very highly respected organizationally and everything like that. So, fast-forward, I’m now 35. He’s still on the job. He’s in his 40-some-odd year on the job, and now he’s a district chief. And I get promoted to assistant chief, and I’m now his immediate supervisor. And this guy — he was salt of the earth, doing the job, just a great leader. And now I’m supervising him. So we had a relationship for almost five years of that supervisor-subordinate relationship, and then I moved over to fire marshal, and I didn’t supervise him any longer. And about a year later, he was retiring. Before he retired, he came down to my office one day and he sat down, and he said to me, “Jim, you’re the best assistant chief I ever worked for. You always treated me with respect. You always treated me like a man, and I just want to tell you how much I appreciate that.” That brought tears to my eyes at the time. You had to know the guy.

Joe: Yeah.

Jim: Very big, booming voice and just — it touched me to the core. And that stays with me. And it’s kind of a motivator, in the sense that it makes you think about how you treat everybody. You’d love for everybody to feel that way. It’s not possible. It just doesn’t — some people take a dislike to you right away, for whatever. Something’s popping up on my screen there. But anyway, that was a compliment that has really stuck with me, because of the amount of respect I had for him, just for him to say that to me before he left. And there were little things — like on my promotional ceremony when I made assistant chief, he was the first guy in to congratulate me and look forward to working for me. And I learned so much from him as a rookie firefighter, and watching his leadership over the years as a district chief. He was my district chief for quite a while. So anyway, I could go on and on.

Joe: That’s a great one. That’s great. Wonderful.

Jim: I’ve enjoyed it. I think we have a —

Joe: As always. Yeah, I appreciate it, and I know you’re busy, and I appreciate the time.

Jim: Absolutely.

Joe: Best of luck in these last couple of weeks before the primaries. Enjoy yourself, and keep on keeping on.

Jim: Okay. Well, thanks again. And I just want to say thank you for doing this. As I mentioned at the beginning of this, for you to let the citizens see what the six of us are like as a person beyond the campaign — I think that’s important.

Joe: Yeah, I agree. 100%. Really appreciate it.

Jim: Wonderful. All right.

Joe: Be well.

Jim: All right. Thank you.