Rajewski will challenge Brenner for District 3 seat

Ray Rajewski has served as executive vice president of CBS and a board member of Ion Television. Currently, he serves as president of the Bayou Association, and is a member of the Longboat Key Citizens’ Oversight Tax Committee.

But, now, Rajewski, 67, is seeking a new role: He will challenge Vice Mayor David Brenner for the District 3 seat of the Town Commission. A Bay Isles resident, Rajewski has never sought political office. And, despite the fact that four commissioners were up for re-election in the March 2012, Rajewski is the sole non-incumbent to seek a seat on the commission.

Rajewski’s decision to seek elected office boils down to this:

“You can sit back and complain or you can get involved,” he said. “I think that what’s happening in the town is not in the best interest of the residents.”

Specifically?

“You start with Bruce St. Denis,” Rajewski said of the longtime town manager who resigned from the commission in September, facing mounting pressure from the commission. “The man has been here 14 years and ran what I consider to be a very nice island.”

He has also been concerned by changes to town codes he feels have been made to accommodate projects such as the Longboat Key Club and Resort’s $400 million Islandside redevelopment plan or a proposed cellular tower.

Born and raised in Boston, Rajewski is a veteran of the U.S. Army. He earned a degree in business from Burdett College, in Boston, where he began his career in television. He went on to work at television stations in San Francisco, Cincinnati, Buffalo, N.Y., and Los Angeles, where he became executive vice president of CBS. Rajewski began visiting Longboat Key in 1983, at the invitation of a friend who had purchased a unit in Fairway Bay. He later purchased his home in the Bayou section of Bay Isles in 2004.

Rajewski used to be a tennis player, although now he prefers golf, along with riding his bicycle and traveling. And although he has never served as a commissioner, he compares it to a job that he has held multiple times:

“Being a commissioner is similar to being on the board of a corporation,” he said.

Ray Rajewski
Age: 67
Hometown: Boston
Career: Chief operating officer of television stations
Family: Divorced with three children and seven grandchildren
Hobbies: Golf, bicycling and traveling