The Political Whore

Bill Foster wasted no time in getting the Times recommendation on his website

The drumbeat that the St. Petersburg Times was considering an endorsement (errr, recommendation, as the Times will always let a candidate know its preferred term) of Bill Foster. On its surface, it seems ludicrous. After all, Foster is the same guy who wrote to the school board a few years back making a strong pitch against teaching Darwinian evolution alone in public schools, hoping it would mix in a bit of “intelligent design.”

But the lack of an emerging alternative to Foster left the Times in the inexplicable position of endorsing an anti-gay rights, anti-evolution mayor of St. Petersburg. More to the point, however, the editorial board chooses a candidate based on who will play ball with it. Which candidate will kiss the ring over on 1st Avenue S? That’s what gets you the recommendation. Disagree with the Times on a core concern at the paper — say, firing Police Chief Chuck Harmon, as Scott Wagman as vowed to do — and you are at a disadvantage, to say the least.

It is OK to disagree with the Times on social conservative issues, as long as you play your cards right, promise not to let those views play out in public policy at City Hall and generally keep your wingy-ness in the closet. After all, the Times’ former editorial chief, Phil Gailey, was totally tight with Rick Baker, who was also a social conservative who refused to recognize gay pride parades or appear in them.

From its recommendation today: Read the rest of this entry »

A quick roundup of all the ads airing in the St. Pete mayor’s race. First, Bill Foster’s ad:

Next, Scott Wagman’s from last week:
Read the rest of this entry »

Join me and other CL writers tonight starting just before 7 pm here as we live blog the Bay News 9/St. Petersburg Times mayoral forum from the Palladium Theater in downtown. i love the title: “Conversation with the Candidates.” I seriously doubt it will be anything that approximates a real conversation.

Watch along on Bay News 9 and throw in your comments, as well. It runs from 7-8:30 pm.

We’ll be providing live fact-checks, analysis and satirical snide comments in the comment section below.

This week’s column from the print edition of Creative Loafing:

About 500-600 people are voting for a new mayor of St. Petersburg every day now, part of what has become a vote-by-mail system of absentee voting in Florida. Nearly 60,000 city residents have requested an absentee ballot, almost 40 percent of the registered voters.

That’s a big number. So why do I hear so many complaints about the 2009 race to succeed Mayor Rick Baker being a real snoozer? Polling earlier in the month showed that 61 percent of the voters didn’t have a preference among the 10 candidates running. And although nearly 7,000 people had voted by the end of last week, there is very little visible to any of the campaigns, beyond the ubiquitous yard signs. It’s impossible to time the peak of your political campaign when Election Day lasts 45 days, and no candidate has enough money to run a full-bore mass media campaign for that long.

Take the latest mayoral forum, held by St. Pete Preservation last week in front of about 100 good folks at Studio@620. I popped in to shoot a few photos and perhaps hear their stump speeches, but after almost an hour the crowd had heard only from preservationists, who got five minutes apiece to school nine candidates on why historic preservation is important. Even the hometown St. Petersburg Times didn’t staff the preservation forum. When the candidates did begin to talk, there wasn’t much separation.

How can something be anticlimactic before it’s even over?

Here are the reasons why this year’s city election is having a hard time connecting with voters:

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St. Pete voters and other political junkies: It just got a lot easier to track all of our CL and PoHo coverage of the St. Petersburg mayoral race with our new widget. Just click on a candidate’s mug to get a listing of stories and podcasts about them. The St. Petersburg Mayor’s Race widget also lives full-time on our News & Politics section front.

I’ve spent some time interviewing the seven major candidates for St. Petersburg mayor, in the Sept. 1 primary election. You can still listen to podcasts of some of those interviews.

There are three other candidates whose campaigns do not appear to be on the same competitive plane as the other seven, but I wanted to give you some information about two of them so if you are a St. Petersburg voter you can be fully informed. The third minor candidate, Paul Congemi, does not appear to have a website or a serious platform to speak of.

Ed Helm is making his second attempt at the mayor’s office. He describes himself as a progressive candidate, and his website is at edhelm.com.

Richard Eldridge is a political newcomer. The 47-year-old says his military experience prepares him for service as St. Pete’s next mayor: “Having served honorably in the United States Marine Corps, I know how to lead, take risks, and make tough decisions. Some of the duties that I have had were Reconnaissance Marine, Marksmanship Instructor, Mortar Section Leader, and Physical Training Instructor.” His campaign website is at eldridge2009.com.

Angela Rouson stepped into the Creative Loafing recording studio this week to discuss her campaign for St. Petersburg City Council in District 5, against fellow newcomers Steve Kornell and retired police officer Joe Smith. Yes, she’s the wife of powerhouse (and controversial) African American politician Darryl Rouson; but she came off as her own person — bright, articulate, well-informed and passionate — in her recent Suncoast Tiger Bay Club event, and she likewise was engaging in this interview.

I asked her if she felt that St. Pete cops were being “reined in” and not fighting crime to the fullest of their ability, and she said:

I’ve talked with the sheriff, Sheriff Coats, I’ve talked with Chief Harmon (and done ride-alongs with both agencies), and the general consensus is there is some of that. And there is also a lack of resources to be able to address issues, because if you are going to take down, for example, a drug house, you need more than one officer on the beat. I think they are being held back to some extent, but I think resources play into that as well.

Is there a racial political component to the police being held back?

I can’t really answer that question. But what I can say is there is no rational reason for not addressing the crime. …As a member of City Council I’m going to work to make sure that the mayor works with the chief of police to be more aggressive in addressing the issues.

I also asked her — given her husband’s controversial anti-gay statement that being gay was “morally wrong” (he later apologized for saying it) — if she would participate in St. Pete Pride and about her stance on domestic partner benefits. Hear her answers after the jump in the full podcast:

Read the rest of this entry »

The state of Florida’s searchable campaign database

The St. Petersburg Times tried to do its job; it asked each and every St. Petersburg mayoral candidate if they would supply their campaign finance information (their contributions and expenditures) so the newspaper could create a searchable database for voters to use, just like candidates for national, county or state office do. But not the city, which puts up only .pdf’s of the reports, which cannot be searched for names that contribute to different campaigns or to do other important analyses of who is funding whom.

If you’ll recall, that is one of my six ideas to fix Tampa Bay politics on a recent cover of Creative Loafing.

With one exception, however, the Times‘ request fell on deaf or uncaring or incapable ears. From A-Sharock today:

We’ve been told by computer experts that providing this data would take as little as 15 minutes of work.

The response from candidates: Silence.

Only Scott Wagman’s campaign attempted to comply with our request. Candidate Bill Foster said he didn’t think it was technically possible and candidate Larry Williams declined. The other candidates didn’t even respond to our request.

Bill Foster, the St. Pete mayoral candidate with the strongest “get-tough-on-crime” stance, has picked up his second police office union endorsement. The Fraternal Order of Police Pinellas Lodge 43 joins an earlier nod from the Sun Coast Police Benevolent Association.

In a statement, Foster said:

“Knowing full well that public safety is the number one issue of my fellow citizens, I am honored to have the support of our brave men and women in local law enforcement. These are the same people that we entrust our safety to, and I am grateful that they recognize my qualities and vision as the most sensible and effective candidate to reduce crime in our city.”

That makes a clean sweep of rank-and-file cops for Foster. As for the rest of the candidates, Deveron Gibbons recently was pictured with some top SPPD brass who are supporting him. Despite his sketchy driving record.

I’m fascinated by John Warren, a longshot and last-minute candidate in the St. Petersburg mayoral race. He has a long history in the city as a preservationist, history advocate, real estate investor and — currently — the owner of Savannah’s Cafe on Central Avenue. Yes, he’s made rookie mistakes at a recent forum and in his campaign finances. But that’s not important. What is important is his message about learning from the past and looking at the city’s problems (especially those downtown) as all linked. He would restart the city’s visioning process to work on solutions in the aggregate.

Listening to Warren makes you think outside the box about the problems in St. Petersburg. Sure, as the Times has pointed out, he’s long on pointing out the problems and short on pat “solutions.” But his solution is the processes he advocates, the transparency and inclusion and comprehensiveness, and he bring an entrepreneurial bent and preservationist’s soul to the campaign, and that is refreshing.

I also asked him about the problem of aggressive panhandling. He had this to say:

Well, we do have an ordinance that serves a portion of downtown and it’s to discourage aggressive panhandling. But I think for a lot of the merchants who are down there right now, aggressive can be anybody who is sitting in front of their business. The presence of an unbathed individual sitting right at their front door is as aggressive and deters as much business as somebody that’s actually going up with a stick and asking you for a dollar.

CL: But that’s not something that’s drawing police action.

They are not. What really ought to be recognized is that downtown sidewalks and our whole street grid system is intended to allow for society to move, to flow, and your sidewalks downtown originally were owned by the property owners, and those rights were given up so that commerce could be conducted. Commerce is important for a strong tax base. Unless the community has a source of revenue, there is no way they can take care of the destitute. It’s important, No. 1, for us to recognize that the homeless, … is completely different from the career panhandler or the individual who has chosen not to live in a shelter or live in a home. And that distinction needs to be recognized. A lot of downtown business people are very charitable. They’d like to be able to help.

It makes business very difficult if you have the career panhandler who is competing and threatening the livelihood of those businesses whose sales and taxes are going to be providing for the other individual who genuinely has that need.

So, how do you balance that? One of the things that has been considered in other communities is extending to the merchant, or property owner, a bit more control. you’re not giving the land back to them, because you can’t, but assigning back to them some responsibilty for maintaining the property between the curb and their doors.

CL: So they would have the ability to say you’re trespassing on their area.

Exactly. It’s a delicate issue. There still are a lot of people who feel that any piece of property in front of business out to the curb belongs to the public, it’s a public right of way, without recognizing that public right of way was intended for infrastructure elements that are under the surface…

CL: And not as a living room…

It’s not somebody’s bedroom or bathroom.

Listen to the full interview with John Warren after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Scott Wagman gets some help in his attempt to the be the next mayor of St. Petersburg, and two council candidates — incumbent Karl Nurse, long known for his conservation efforts, and newcomer Steve Kornell — also get the nod from St. Pete Sierra Club, which endorsed in just three municipal races.

From the Sierra Club announcement: Read the rest of this entry »

Just getting back into the office today after six days off and getting caught up with stuff like this TV commercial from St. Pete mayoral candidate Deveron GIbbons. Yes, of course Charlie Crist is in the ad. As are Deveron’s parents. And footage of Deveron chatting with two old white ladies, evidence for nervous white St. Pete voters that it is all right to support a black candidate.

See the full video after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: We have 10 candidates for mayor, as Alex Haak didn’t qualify. They are Deveron Gibbons, Kathleen Ford, Bill Foster, Scott Wagman, Larry Williams, Jamie Bennett, John Warren, Richard Eldridge, Ed Helm and Paul Congemi. The primary election to determine the two finalists is Sept. 1.

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Today is the last day to file all the necessary paperwork to run for St. Petersburg mayor or city council, a day called Qualifying Day. We’ll know who is in and who is out by 5 pm.

A last-minute entry into the field, however, is entrepreneur, preservationist and restaurateur John Warren, 59, who owns Savannah’s Cafe on Central Avenue in St. Petersburg.

Warren, who has been frustrated by the city’s inability to help small businesses and truly grow its downtown in a sensible fashion, told supporters in an e-mail that he knows he is getting in late but doesn’t hear the issues he thinks ought to be disucssed.

“I don’t believe current candidates are addressing the issues that need to be discussed, nor do I feel they have the vision or experiences to deal with today’s challenges. Apparently many of you agree,” Warren wrote.

He also hints that he will get rid of controversial police Chief Chuck Harmon if the SPPD can’t start battling crime more effectively.

Here is his e-mail to supporters: Read the rest of this entry »

Cross-posted from The Daily Loaf blog

By Denis Baldwin
Daily Loaf contributor

Last week, I attended the Rhino Political Action Committee’s political mixer at NOVA. Like the first event I attended, local mayor candidates and other politicos met with the common man, answering questions and trying to convince us that they were the right person for the job.

Unlike the first one I attended, the candidates actually seemed to have an agenda now. Many spoke on the importance of keeping our children in programs to avoid gangs. Others spoke of keeping the streets clean, both of garbage and of drug users and prostitutes. Still others pushed issues involving the St Pete Pier and its ongoing subsidy by taxpayers. It seems that everyone was making good points, making this a valuable (if somewhat overwhelming ordeal).

Here are some more photos from the mixer: Read the rest of this entry »

Of the Big Six candidates for St. Petersburg mayor (Jamie Bennett, Kathleen Ford, Bill Foster, Deveron Gibbons, Scott Wagman and Larry Williams), the only one that I have not had a chance to have in the CL Studio was Williams — until now. The former St. Pete city councilman came in recently to tape his half-hour on the HoCast, talking about how to battle the city’s crime problems and whether he is behind the eight ball because he got into the race late.

Download here.

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”?

Read the rest of this entry »

My column for next week’s print edition is about St. Pete City Council candidate Steve Kornell, who faces a tough run against Angela Rouson for the seat that Jamie Bennett is leaving. I caught up with him at an Ybor City fundraiser attended by Hillsborough progressives for this podcast chat.

Download.

It is a only bit of a surprise (and far from “stunning,” as the campaign puts it), since Deveron Gibbons has long been a supporter of Charlie Crist and a beneficiary of the Gov’s appointments, but Crist has publicly endorsed Gibbons in the mayor’s race in St. Petersburg. Normally, politicians running in their own races have their hands full and stay out of other campaigns where they could make enemies. Nonethless, Crist is on board with Team Gibbons. Here is the news release, and DL the entire release after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ed Helm, l’enfant terrible of St. Petersburg Democratic politics, has gathered up his lance and mounted the steed of another political campaign for mayor. The St. Petersburg Times reports that Helm filed paperwork late last Friday, citing the “lack of a progressive voice” in the already crowded field of nine.

From the Times:

“I think it’s important there be a progressive voice,” said Helm, who retired after 26 years as an attorney with the U.S. Department of Labor. “I’m confident in terms of who I am, what I’ve been and that I’ll be speaking with a progressive voice. That’s part of what I want to see happen.”

The playbook for Helm focuses on the notion that government can and should do more to help residents. Among his first ideas: the city should explore offering a public access channel for residents to communicate, initiate curbside recycling citywide and grind deeper into neighborhoods to fight crime.

It’s unclear how strong Helm’s support could be, given his late entry into the race and the polarizing figure he has become in local politics. He was ousted as chairman of the Pinellas Democratic Party in 2006 after only four months because local Democrats grew tired of his aggressive leadership style. ? And much of the county’s elected Democratic leadership has openly shunned Helm.

In Helm’s last mayoral effort, in 2005, he got his clock cleaned by current Mayor Rick Baker. Our own Max Linsky wrote a profile of the longshot effort, noting just how much Helm is able to convince some diehards of his positions and viability:

Read the rest of this entry »

With a hat tip to Peter Schorsch at his blog, it appears the St. Petersburg Times local politics blog Bay Buzz had a post late Wednesday, about St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Paul Congemi and an incident at a KFC restaurant. The post was subsequently pulled from the blog (and restored after further reporting on Thursday). But thanks to Google Reader (and Google is forever) the original can be shared here.
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Guess who is NOT going to get the St. Petersburg Times editorial recommendation in the mayoral race later this year?

Yeah, Jamie Bennett.

From today’s opinion page:

St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Jamie Bennett is pitifully ignorant or disappointingly complicit when it comes to a series of campaign mistakes and second-rate dirty tricks. He has fired the campaign manager he never should have hired, but if he stays in the race that will not end the questions or remove the stains.

Sorting out who knew what when between Bennett and his former campaign manager, Peter Schorsch, may be an exercise in futility. But some of their maneuvers cannot be dismissed as low-grade sleaziness. At least one neighborhood president was given campaign literature and requests for contributions along with free baseball tickets to the city’s Tropicana Field suite. Candidates cannot legally use public resources to benefit their campaigns. Bennett said Monday he did not know that happened and has apologized for “a blurring of lines and lack of oversight on the baseball tickets.” But he continued to distribute the baseball suite tickets he receives as a City Council member to neighborhood association presidents even after the issue was publicly raised.

Nobody can really be surprised by the tangle of accusations and revelations in the St. Petersburg Times over the weekend by former PoHo contributor and political consultant Peter Schorsch about Jamie Bennett and his mayoral campaign (IF we can believe any/all of Schorsch’s allegations), just surprised that the meltdown caused by having Schorsch in the campaign happened so suddenly.

Whether the allegations are true or not, Bennett’s ability to be elected mayor is mortally wounded. Nothing worse for a politician and campaign worker than a publicly played-out, back-and-forth session of throwing each other under the bus.

Here’s what happened:

Read the rest of this entry »

In my continuing series of interviews with St. Petersburg mayoral candidates, Deveron Gibbons today stepped into the plush West Tampa studios of Creative Loafing to cut a half-hour podcast interview with me. With his political consultant Adam Goodman listening in, Gibbons talked about how he feels about the St. Pete Police Department (historically, it has made great strides, he said) and the impression by skeptics that he doesn’t have the gravitas to be mayor.

Get the full podcast after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, politics is all fun until somebody gets Tased. Then it becomes unbearably delicious.

St. Pete mayoral hopeful Bill Foster has become the first candidate in the race (as far as PoHo knows) to get Tasered in the course of proving his worth to the voters. His campaign posted a video of the former city councilman (and strong advocate of the police) getting the juice put to him.

The campaign wrote:

Bill Foster has always been insistent that our police officers have every tool they need to keep us safe. Watch the below demonstration and see how Bill really went the extra mile when it came to arming our officers with Tasers. Ouch.

Watch the video after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

I am at the Tradewinds Island Gulf on St. Pete Beach, laptop in lap, filing updates on Twitter on the mayoral forum this morning. You can follow at my Twitter account.

Not much news so far, but one major candidate is missing, Jamie Bennett. He is at a City Council meeting.

UPDATE: Forum lasted about two hours, and no knockout punches or spectacular ledes. Here are some thoughts after seeing these candidates do their business:

• Deveron GIbbons is a smooth talker. He was engaging and inspirational, even riveting the audience with a story about being 11 years old and watching a guy get shot in the head right in front of him at a playground, as an illustration of understanding the violence gripping St. Pete. He was reallllll short on details or solutions, however. He started in on an answer about BayWalk, for instance, and never did get to what is wrong with it or what can be done about it. But he did it so slickly that I’m not sure everyone watching the forum got that he just cruised right past the question.
• Bill Foster is exceedingly well versed in the details of government and has some interesting ideas. His voice, however, is very soothing and low-key, so he tends not to score knockout points with his grasp of city hall policy. One reporter put him on his snoozer list.
• Scott Wagman keeps hammering the “I’m not a politician” bit and intends to throw as many new ideas out there as he can, even at the risk, as he admitted himself, that some don’t cut it. That can be exciting or a risky strategy, but his talk about keeping rec centers open for more hours and recruiting high school seniors and college students to get credit for mentoring after-schoolers at the centers was the most interesting new idea of the morning.
• Larry Williams is a nice guy but didn’t impress anyone at the event.
• Alex Haak’s Dutch accent makes it hard to figure out what he is saying — if he is saying anything worth figuring out. Hard to take the guy seriously, as he spoke for a short time compared with the rest and didn’t have much meat on the bone beyond a lengthy screed about how youth events will boost tourism.
• Kathleen Ford also had a strong command of details but just didn’t seem to connect with the audience.
• Jamie Bennett got screwed, as the forum was scheduled for the same morning as a City Council meeting. He chose the people’s business over campaigning.

Bay Buzz’s Aaron Sharockman has an interesting live blog of the forum. And the full text of all my Twitter coverage after the jump (in reverse order):

Read the rest of this entry »

The HoCast this week is devoted to an interview with St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Bill Foster, and we talk about everything from the police department, the broken-window theory of crime, high-speed chases, budget cutting and, of course, that infamous “creationism” letter he sent last year to the Pinellas School Board.

My series of in-depth interviews with the candidates for mayor in St. Petersburg continues this week with City Councilman Jamie Bennett. Here is an excerpt from my print story:

CL: What’s wrong with the police department?

Bennett: Every police department on the globe has issues. So what is wrong? We can spend plenty of time on what is right. What we have are challenges. There is no greater detriment to going forward as a city if people do not feel safe, so your police dept has to be led by people that get it. The city council stepped forward in two particular veins, when we did the police study we immediately began having two good years of adding policeman so that we can reach our authorized strength of 540, which is an awesome consideration in this budgetary crisis year. The other is that we need a police chief that communicates. When Chuck Harmon came to city council, we said please tell the community that — and the police — that they’re doing a good job.

Can Chief Chuck Harmon be that communicator, or would you be looking to make a change at police chief?

There will be no changes going into the transition period. That’s just crazy to think that you’re going in to eliminate this position or that. Chuck is trying very hard. He’s everywhere; you can’t shut the guy up now. He’s doing what we asked him to do. Chuck Harmon is the police chief until such time as we find somebody else, but that certainly is not a priority going into it.

Listen to the entire interview with Jamie Bennett here:

My series of interviews with the St. Petersburg mayoral candidates continued this week, and I am late in getting the full audio online here for my discussion of the issues with Scott Wagman. Sorry about that.

Listen to the entire interview with Scott Wagman here.

An excerpt from my print story about the interview:

Read the rest of this entry »

By Peter Schorsch
PoHo contributor
Peter Schorsch is a political consultant and writes St. Petersblog 2.0.

You may not have known it was Election Day on Tuesday by the low number of voters who headed to the polls, but there were several important municipal positions up for grabs in Dunedin, Kenneth City, Safety Harbor, Seminole and several other Pinellas towns.

Read the rest of this entry »

Former St. Pete City Councilman Bill Foster got gigged a bit today as he was supposed to be getting good headlines on the formal launch of his mayoral campaign (he filed the paperwork in early February, so no surprise in terms of him running).

Foster’s news release about the launch twice misspelled the word “publicly,” as Cristina Silva in Bay Buzz pointed out:

Bill Foster to Publically (sic) Announce Candidacy for Mayor of St. Petersburg this Monday, March 2nd at Pioneer Park

St. Petersburg – Bill Foster, a former St. Petersburg City Councilman with a rich history of civic involvement, will publically (sic) announce his candidacy for Mayor of St. Petersburg Monday, March 2nd at 12:00 noon at Pioneer Park in downtown St. Petersburg ( 98 Beach Drive , across the street south of the St. Petersburg Yacht Club, east of Bayfront Tower ).

The slogan, at least according to his new website, appears to be “Foster in a New Era.”

I vote instead for “Foster in a spell-checker.”

By Peter Schorsch
PoHo contributor
Peter Schorsch is a political consultant and writes St. Petersblog 2.0.

There is a mis-editorial in yesterday’s St. Petersburg Times claiming that early, mail-in voting is causing frustration in several municipal elections in Pinellas County:

Some candidates were surprised, too. Local election campaigns don’t typically kick into high gear until about six weeks before Election Day. But in mid-January candidates, started hearing from residents who had ballots and were frustrated that they had seen no information about the people running for office. Candidates scrambled to try to connect with those voters, and in some cases had to order more campaign materials — and incur extra costs — for a campaign season that grew by weeks.

I’m sorry but if the only frustration with Supervisor of Election Deborah Clark’s promotion of voting by mail is with candidates caught off guard by early balloting, then spare me the hand-wringing. Serious candidates for local office should hire political consultants and staff knowledgeable enough to help prepare them for the accelerated election calendar.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kathleen Ford, the former St. Petersburg City Councilwoman who took Rick Baker to a mayoral runoff election back in 2001, will file her paperwork to run again now that Baker is term-limited for this year’s elections.

Ford is expected to give a news conference at 11:45 a.m. on the steps of City Hall coinciding with her dropping off her campaign paperwork.

She joins this lineup already in place: Councilman Jamie Bennett; St. Pete College trustees Chairman Deveron Gibbons; former City Councilman Bill Foster; business owner Scott Wagman; and lesser-known candidates Paul Congemi and Sharon Russ.

Ford has a long history of raising hell in the city — more hell than most folks cared to hear, especially if those folks are the city’s ruling class. She has worked against the downtown waterfront ballpark for the Tampa Bay Rays and been critical of Baker’s police department.

Scott Wagman, one of a handful of top-tier candidates running for the mayor of St. Petersburg, has launched a new website and features this video explaining his early campaign focus: I’m listening.

(Disclosure: One of Wagman’s political consultants, Larry Biddle, is the partner of Cl Editor David Warner. David does not participate in editing or making editorial decisions when I report on the mayor’s race to avoid any conflicts of interest.)

Pinellas County commissioner let supporters know via e-mail late last night that he has decided against a campaign to succeed Mayor Rick Baker in St. Pete. He let his Facebook friends know, as well, changing his status late yesterday to “Ken Welch is remaining on the County Commission, and looking forward to the challenges ahead…8 hours ago.”

The field now seems set, and the major players are real-estate broker and philanthropist Scott Wagman, City Councilman Jamie Bennett, Amscot Veep and St. Pete College trustees Chairman Deveron Gibbons and former City Council members Bill Foster and Kathleen Ford.

h/t to Jim Johnson at The State of Sunshine.