The Political Whore

As I reported earlier today, State Rep. RIck Kriseman, a St. Petersburg Democrat, is not going to run for the mayor’s office later today. He posted this on his website this afternoon:

For quite awhile now, people I respect have encouraged me to run for mayor of St. Petersburg. I’m always honored and humbled when someone approaches me about it because the job of mayor has never been more important. I personally have a strong desire to see St. Petersburg shine through this period of economic downturn, and to thrive again as a safe, diverse community, with strong neighborhoods, a vibrant arts scene, a sense of place, and a government which is open and accessible.

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With the simple and unelaborated headline “Running for Mayor” on his personal website early this AM, the legislator shakes up the field drew some attention for St. Petersburg’s mayoral election later this year.

Will Kriseman announce he is running, after seeming like he wasn’t while awaiting a Ken Welch candidacy? Or is the headline prelude to his explanation that he won’t run?

UPDATE: It’s the second scenario from above. A source with knowledge of Kriseman’s decision says the representative is not running. Expect his website to add that info at some point today or tomorrow.

h/t to Jim Johnson.

First it was a Tweet from St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler:

HowardTampaBay My Sunday column: St. Pete mayor’s race. Wanna take bets on Kathleen Ford entering? Who do you like?about 1 hour ago from web

Then BayBuzz weighed in with this:

The buzz around town is that former city council member Kathleen Ford has reconsidered and will run for mayor.Ford declined to comment on her mayoral ambitions, but confirmed that numerous community leaders have approached her about running.

“There are a lot of people concerned about the issues facing the city and the lack of leadership to address the crime problem, the decline of Baywalk, the outrageous property taxes collected over the past eight years,” she said. “Folks want an open, honest, accountable and affordable government. We are tired of the secret deal making.”

I said on WMNF’s Radioactivity on Wednesday that Ford’s name had dropped out of the murmurs about who’s in and who’s out, but that there wasn’t another candidate running from the ranks of the, for lack of a better term, revolutionaries in St. Petersburg, many of whom have taken up under the umbrella of POWW on the baseball issue. The absence to date on the mayoral ballot leaves that sector of St. Pete politics wide open for a Ford run.

He’s certainly out and running hard, as I detail in my story for the print edition of CL this week. It starts:

The 60 or so people who gathered at the Piccadilly Cafeteria on a recent Wednesday night represent one progressive wing of the Democratic Party in St. Petersburg. This is a solidly working-class gang. The conversations are intense. The personalities are unique. The 10-oz. Angus chopped steak dinner is $8.49.

That is to say that the St. Petersburg Democratic Club and its meeting location on 34th Street N. are perfectly representative of vast swaths of the city, of the fed-up residents who are not part of the downtown condo boom or the funky bohemian art scene or the Chamber of Commerce: antiestablishment retirees, outspoken activists and others devoted to their take-no-prisoners vision of how the city could be better. Not exactly a gathering of the Mayor Rick Baker fan club.

Read the rest here.

Deveron Gibbons, an AMSCOT veep and Republican civic appointee running in this year’s St. Petersburg mayoral race, has released his list of big-name supporters and finance chairmen, and it is top heavy with a congressman, Florida legislators and other well known politicians.

Read the full announcement after the jump or you can download a .pdf of it:

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I will be sitting in with WMNF journalist Mitch Perry on 88.5 FM’s Radioactivity starting around 1:05 p.m. Wednesday to talk about the activity in the St. Petersburg mayor’s race that I’ve been writing about for the past week or so (here and here).

Join us. It’s a live call-in show, so you can add your question or thoughts as well. (You can listen online here.)

The Pinellas County commissioner appears to be inching closer to getting into the race to succeed Mayor Rick Baker in St. Petersburg. As I wrote about last week, he is getting pressure/support from some powerful civic and business leaders to get into the game. Welch sent this out over the weekend to his friends and supporters:

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Jamie Bennett, left, is introduced Wednesday night by Democratic Club President Jim Donelon

Just before the St. Petersburg Democratic Club meeting convened last night, I caught up with St. Petersburg City Council (past) Chairman and mayoral candidate Jamie Bennett. The councilman was set to address the club of about 60 hardcore progressives at the start of the campaign, which ends in voting this fall. The first thing that came up? Reports that Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch is reconsidering his previous stance that he would not run in the race.

“He’s in. He’s out,” Bennett said. “Nobody knows.”

The affable councilman continued, pressing his case for mayor: “I think you need to know [if you want to be mayor]. You have to have that fire in the belly. I feel confident, no matter who gets in. I think I need to be reckoned with. I’m in it for real.”

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