Capt. Tony for Mayor

Key West legend, “Capt. Tony” Tarracino became mayor of Key West in 1989 by only 32 votes out of more than 6,000 cast. This is an exact recreation of his campaign signs seen around town at the time. His platform was to “limit Key West’s growth and to keep its reputation as a refuge for eccentrics and renegades” who had found their way to the southernmost point of the continental United States. As mayor, he preserved Key West’s daily sunset celebration but he lost a bid for re-election in 1991 to Dennis Wardlow, (“prime minister” of the tongue-in- cheek secessionist Conch Republic). Capt. Tony always spoke of his two-year term in the office as “the greatest two years of my life.” This coming from a rum-runner, tavern owner and true Key West character straight from a Hemingway novel.