The Political Whore

Facing strong criticism and opposition to their plans for a $450 million waterfront ballpark, Tampa Bay Rays executives have done just what I lauded them a few weeks ago for not doing: They’ve hired a high-powered lobbyist, Ed Armstrong of Clearwater.

The Times reports:

Clearwater land use attorney Ed Armstrong joined the Rays’ lineup in May — not because the team needed legal work, but because it needed access.

Armstrong, 51, has contributed both cash and savvy advice to help elect most of the seven-member commission. He counsels commissioners on everything from policy to media relations, and he represents developers before them.

“There is nobody that has more influence than Ed Armstrong when it comes to changing public policy,” St. Petersburg City Council member Karl Nurse said.

Armstrong demurs, but Nurse is right. During my years as a political consultant (1996-2004), I worked on many campaigns with Armstrong, and nobody is better connected at the Pinellas County Commission and Clearwater City Hall than Armstrong. When the Church of Scientology needed political counsel, it hired Armstrong. That’s the kind of ability he brings to any issue.

The team says it was referred to Armstrong:

County Commissioner Ken Welch was one of several people who suggested the Rays consider hiring Armstrong, according to the team.

Welch said he watched with dismay last month as team executives unveiled a financing plan for a new waterfront ballpark to the St. Petersburg City Council. The Rays were clumsy, Welch thought, in trying to pull the levers of power.

Afterward, Welch called the team. Get serious and talk to the right players, he said, or you’re done. And another thing: you could use an Ed Armstrong.

The next day, May 16, the Rays called Armstrong.

The Rays had mishandled the county commission so poorly in this process that when I reached Welch the day after the Rays unveiled their financial plan in front of the St. Pete City Council, Welch told me that the team didn’t even give him the info packet they handed to the press at the event, which he alone attended from the county commission. Welch said he was forced to download the plan from this blog and had to brief his colleagues at a workshop that night from notes he took.

He wasn’t happy about it.

Now, with Armstrong lobbying the County Commission and the St. Pete Times editorial board lobbying pro bono at the City Council, here is what is likely to happen: The Tourist Development Council will vote Thursday against the idea of extending the fourth cent of the county’s tourist (hotel bed) tax to allow the Rays to build their stadium. The TDC is dominated by beach interests who were not happy when the Trop was built, and they would rather see the tourist tax funds go to marketing our beach destinations and for beach renourishment. County commissioners, buoyed with reasoning supplied by Armstrong, will grudgingly overturn the TDC recommendation, on the basis of giving St. Petersburg voters a chance to vote and the rationale that the fourth cent is already committed to the Rays through 2016, so it isn’t like money is being lost by the beaches any time soon.

That will pave the way (just as the carpet-bombing editorials will) for the St. Petersburg City Council to vote either 7-1 or 6-2 to put the Rays proposal on the ballot in November, again under the theory that this is too important a decision not the let the voters directly participate in it. Helping that vote along with be the — surprise, surprise, surprise! — final recommendation from Mayor Rick Baker that this is a great thing for the city of St. Petersburg, where the sun always shines or the newspaper is given away free for the folks hanging out on the green benches.

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