Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 20, 2009, at 3:51 pm
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.
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 Jul. 28, 2009, at 2:16 pm
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.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 13, 2009, at 8:13 am
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.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 29, 2009, at 1:41 pm
From the there’s-no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity-(or-polling) files comes this pitch to Scott Wagman supporters to pony up some bucks despite a pretty rotten showing in a recent St. Petersburg Times poll that placed Wagman tied for fourth, behind Kathleen Ford, Bill Foster and Deveron Gibbons and tied with Larry Williams.
For those not studied in the art of politics, this is called spin.
But before the Wagman haters chime in, let’s give some context to the poll. More than 60 percent of the voters surveyed said they didn’t have a preference yet, meaning that this is a wide open race and the poll was only an indication of a lack of voter engagement and existing name recognition, not a legit look at who will finish in what order. I don’t say this to defend Wagman’s poor showing; but the truth is not all of the campaigns have spent little or nothing in tems of direct voter contact (direct mail, television ads, radio ads, robo-phone calls, etc.) that is what gets voters ready to make decisions. At best, some of the campaigns have been walking door to door and using some new media advertising on Facebook and the like. That’s not enough to drive serious interest to an off-election year municipal election.
But Wagman felt his placement in the poll could be spun to his advantage with supporters and sent them this e-mail today: Read the rest of this entry »
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. Pete mayoral candidate Scott Wagman raked in the bucks during the first quarter of this year. Per a press release from his office (the complete text is after the jump), the candidate brought in $74,097.25, with 90% of the contributors being local. Not bad for a guy who was virtually unknown just a few months ago.
UPDATE: Fund-raising numbers for all the candidates appeared toay. As Mr. Schorsch points out in the comments, it’s not fair or balanced of me not to include the others in this post. So, after the jump you’ll now find Wagman’s press release and a rundown of all the candidates finances …
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 13, 2009, at 8:13 am
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.
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 Feb. 4, 2009, at 1:42 pm
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.)
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.
