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Elizabeth Castor (; born May 11, 1941) is an American educator and former politician. Castor was elected to the Florida Senate and as Florida Education Commissioner, and she subsequently served as the president of the University of South Florida, and president of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
Her public service included three terms in the Florida State Senate and one term as a Hillsborough County Commissioner. In 2004, she was the Democratic nominee for the open U.S. Senate seat of retiring Senator Bob Graham and was narrowly defeated by Mel Martínez.
After leaving elected politics, Castor was the director of the Patel Center for Global Solutions at the University of South Florida and later became chair of the J. William Fulbright Scholarship Board. She also works with Ruth's List Florida, a group dedicated to recruiting and aiding qualified Democratic women candidates, receiving the Architect of Change Award from them in May 2018.
She attended Glassboro State College, now Rowan University, where earning her bachelor's degree. While at Glassboro, she was active in organizing a drive to support education in Uganda. President John F. Kennedy appointed her to a diplomatic mission to attend the independence celebrations in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962.
Following her graduation from Glassboro State in 1963, she attended Teachers College, Columbia University for a summer and then returned to Uganda, where she taught secondary school as part of the Teachers for East Africa program. While in East Africa, Castor participated in a project to help lead two dozen African school girls to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the first all-female expedition to accomplish this.
She returned to the U.S. in 1965, and settled in Miami-Dade County, Florida, where she was a teacher while studying for her Master of Education degree at the University of Miami, which she received in 1968.
In 1972, she ran for the Hillsborough County Commission. Castor faced ten opponents in the Democratic Primary and a general election opponent. She won all the contests, becoming the first woman ever elected to the County Commission. During her term, she chaired the Environmental Protection Commission and became chair of the Board of County Commissioners in 1976.
In 1976, she was elected to the state Senate and served until 1978, when she ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor. She was elected again to the Florida Senate in 1982 and became the president pro tempore of the Senate in 1985, the first woman to hold the post. Castor served on numerous education committees and became chair of the appropriations sub-committee on education. She was the co-sponsor of the Equal Rights Amendment (1977) and championed bills to end discrimination and fund spouse abuse centers statewide. She successfully sponsored legislation providing for the early childhood education program.
In 1986, Castor was elected statewide to the Florida Cabinet as Florida Education Commissioner, the first woman ever elected to the state cabinet. As commissioner of education, Castor served on the board of regents and as a member of the Community College Coordination Board. She worked with the legislature to fund the first statewide program to provide funding for the early childhood education program. She worked also with the insurance commissioner to develop the Healthy Kids program, providing health insurance for low-income children enrolled in public schools.
Castor won the Democratic nomination on August 31, but lost the general election to Republican Mel Martínez on November 2, 2004, 49.5% to 48.4%. STATISTICS OF THE PRESIDENTIAL AND CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION OF NOVEMBER 2, 2004, Clerk of the House of Representatives, November 4, 2004, revised June 7, 2007. Retrieved February 26, 2020. The overwhelming support for Martínez among Latinos effectively counterbalanced Castor's relatively high popularity among swing voters throughout the state.
returning her focus back to education and politics.
Betty and Donald Castor divorced in 1978.
In 1989, Castor married Samuel P. Bell III, an attorney and lobbyist who had also served as a state legislator. He died in 2023, at the age of 83.
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