Scott Wagman, Jamie Bennett top field at St. Pete Pride mayoral debate
June 23, 2009 at 2:40 pm by Wayne Garcia
Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: Winning a mayoral forum or debate is not the most meaningful thing in a campaign. The myriad gatherings of the 10 mayoral candidates in St. Petersburg that have already occurred and are yet to occur likely won’t alter the Sept. 1 primary outcome one iota.
Why?
Because such forums are a place that can only do a candidate harm. Stumble, or stumble badly, and the media coverage can magnify it into major damage. “Win” such a debate and not only will the MSM mostly not declare you the winner, but you have only “won” in front of a few hundred people, at most.
The way campaigns are really won are through spending campaign contributions on direct mail, television and radio advertising and through a concerted grass-roots voter contact effort.
So that brings me to reporting the “results” of Monday night’s mayoral forum held by the St. Pete Pride organizers at the King of Peace MCC. The “winners”?
Alex Haak.
The longshot mayoral candidate was not included in the Q&A period and allowed only an opening three-minute speech, which he accomplished in less than a minute and that was, for all its brevity, completely incomprehensible. Here are my actual notes, verbatim, from his stump speech: “It’s not going to take me three minutes. Best mayor. Best everything you can possibly think of. And member of the stonewall organization, for a while. I did not expect it. This is the place.” He said more stuff, but I either couldn’t understand it or keep up with his rap.
OK, joking aside, the real winners were Scott Wagman and Jamie Bennett. A close third goes to Kathleen Ford.
Here’s why.
Wagman, Bennett and Ford were the only pro-GLBT candidates in the room of about 200 straights and gays at the church on 5th Avenue N. Larry Williams and Bill Foster win admiration for sticking by their conservative guns and not agreeing to sign a St. Pete Pride proclamation or attend the parade (two things that Mayor Rick Baker has also refused to do for his entire term) but they lose the forum because it was a GLBT forum.
Wagman toned down some of his off-putting “I’m a businessman” rhetoric and was more dynamic than at most events I’ve witnessed. He was solidly pro-GLBT and had the line of the night when asked about attending the parade and inviting participants to say hi to him as he rides in it with his dogs, “Waggers for Wagman, with some of the gayest dogs you ever will see.”
For Bennett, he also touted his participation in the parade for years. “St. Pete Pride is an important event; it represents the strength of diversity. I appreciate that,” Bennett said. “I think it’s a wonderful party.”
By my count, Wagman and Ford both scored points on the next question, about police staffing. Wagman is the only candidate who said he would get a new police chief and add 100 cops (a $10 million price tag annually). Ford made her point strongly without seeming harsh: “When I left city council [in 2001] there were not enough police officers on the street. And still there are not enough officers on the street. The community policing program disappeared. Folks, there has been a lot of slippage. We saw BayWalk struggle to the point where it went into bankruptcy. Where were our leaders? Why? Why is it that any 11-year-old can tell you where the drug houses are in the city of St. Petersburg? I guarantee you there will be a change.”
Ford, Williams and Wagman all effectively played the “parental responsibility” card during a talk about how to engage bored youths and prevent bullying. Ford best articulated the need to protect teens just coming to terms with their sexual orientation or transsexuality, while Wagman had the best there’s-hope-for-our-youth anecdote, about passing some unsavory looking kids at a recent campaign stop, some “very thuggish looking teens, sitting there, pants down the whole thing…” As he passed, one of them asked Wagman, “Can you win? That wasn’t exactly the comment I was expecting. We do not demand anyting of today’s youth, other than lollygagging around and playing video games.” And we should, he said.
His answer was a Youth Corps-like emphasis on volunteering, including reviving a Tampa-esque Paint Your Heart Out home-improvement program like one ended in St. Pete because of legal liability concerns. (Yes, that might sound a bit self-serving for a guy who used to run a paint business.)
Ford, Wagman and Bennett all said they would move immediately to add domestic partnership benefits for same-sex couples, with Wagman pointing out that older straight couples need the benefits as well. Williams and Foster said they would study the costs and consider adding the benefits.
Ford was, again, perhaps the best informed of the lot but showed one of her worst political traits: getting far too wonky. In answering a question about how to get better public transportation (a query that, I am sure, was aimed at getting more and better buses to people’s neighborhoods), Ford used the opportunity to give a growth-management dissertation, talking about water shortages, Senate Bill 360’s impact and “concurrency elements.” Yikes!
Disclosure: Wagman’s campaign has hired the partner of CL Editor David Warner as a political consultant. Becuase of that inherent conflict of interest, Warner plays no role (either in editing or assigning coverage) in CL’s coverage of the St. Petersburg mayor’s race, which is entirely determined by Political Editor Wayne Garcia.
