Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 9, 2009, at 11:21 am
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:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 23, 2009, at 2:40 pm
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”?
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.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 11, 2009, at 11:19 am
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.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 19, 2009, at 12:19 pm
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:
It’s a month earlier than college basketball’s March Madness, but with both Rick Kriseman and Ken Welch deciding this week not to run for mayor of St. Petersburg, political observers are now left with a much clearer “playoff picture.” The race is still in the first round, but the paths to victory for some candidates are now better defined.
In my analysis, I thought only either Deveron Gibbons or Ken Welch could move forward by consolidating the African-American vote. Although it may be passe to view the black vote in such monolithic terms, Gibbons is now the default leader of an entire voting bloc.
The other big winner this week was Jamie Bennett (disclosure: I am a volunteer on Jamie’s campaign). With Kriseman’s withdrawl, Bennett was ceded a huge swath of political geography in the south and west districts of St. Petersburg. More importantly, he is now the standard-bearer for the city’s Democrat and progressive voters. And don’t discount the fact that he is also the only candidates still in office. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 14, 2009, at 2:21 pm
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.
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.
