Reclaiming My Mind

Reclaiming My Mind is a Tampa Bay politics podcast built on one simple idea: people should get to hear from the candidates on their ballot, and there are few ways to do that. Jessica Vaughn hosts. She was elected to the Hillsborough County School Board, and she regularly opens by saying the podcast is her personal project and does not speak for the board. That disclaimer frames what follows, a 2026 series she calls 'Get to Know Your Candidate'. The range is wide. Alan Henderson is running for Tampa mayor. Brant Robinson came across the bridge from Pinellas to talk about his bid for Congressional District 13. Neil Manimala describes himself as a medical doctor and a new father, and he is running countywide for Hillsborough County Commission, arguing that dignity belongs at the heart of politics and that the work starts locally. Other conversations take the series to Pasco and Plant City. The guests come with concrete positions. Kell Cameron treats teacher pay as a root cause: pay teachers a living wage and more of them stay, classes shrink, and students remain in public schools and eventually take jobs in their own community. A Pasco guest named Stephanie argues for term limits, noting how often incumbents there run with no challenger at all. In Plant City, a guest named Tony wants public meetings livestreamed and a structured chance for residents to put questions to the board, which he counts as part of transparency. Robinson lays out a program for veterans, a push on affordability and a pillar he calls securing and defending rights. Vaughn is a friendly interviewer, quick with congratulations and generous with praise. She still asks the practical question, pressing Henderson on how a mayor keeps things moving with a city council when the politics turn heated. She doesn't play the neutral moderator either, and tells Robinson she has watched the incumbent in the seat he wants and is horrified. The civics may be the show's most distinctive thread. Sign-offs urge listeners to learn who represents them, from the state house down to water and soil, and to treat the vote as the place their power lives, and before one interview she warns that vote-by-mail enrollment now has to be renewed after every election. The production stays in the family: her husband, Nilesh Kapadia, sets up the equipment, records and edits. A natural first stop is the episode titled So…What Does the County Commission Do? A Real Talk Conversation with Neil Manimala, which puts a basic civic question right in its name.