The Political Whore

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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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:

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It’s just like the old days for campaign consultant Peter Schorsch, a favorite whipping boy for some on the St. Petersburg Times‘ blogs. Before disappearing from the local scene for a few years after getting into legal troubles, Schorsch was very active in the blogosphere and a favorite target for critics, who he regularly engaged in comment wars on various blogs. Now Schorsch, who is helping manage St. Petersburg City Councilman Jamie Bennett’s camapign for mayor, writes on his own blog that he will no longer comment on or read the Times‘ Bay Buzz:

I am not giving up the BB because of what is written about me, although no one would be surprised by my decision if that was the reason. The libelous, offensive comments that are posted by anonymous writers are so hurtful that I would be lying if I said they did not effect me. There are also several pricks on there who do nothing but re-post my mugshot from when I am was in trouble. And there are the douchebags, like Jim Donnelon, on there who do nothing but tear everyone down. And that’s his and their right, but I would never sit next to them at a bar. I would never have them over to my house. They’re losers. They’re dorks. I would beat the shit out of them, in a heartbeat, if there were no repercussions. I don’t want to be associated with anonymous dorks.

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