St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch was the center of attention during the first scheduled debate Tuesday night at the Barack Obama Library. The debate, which was sponsored by NAACP St. Petersburg Branch 5130, included some spirited exchanges.
Former governor and Congressman Charlie Crist attacked Welch for several major projects that he termed as "failures." Those included missed deals to bring a branch of Moffitt Cancer Center to St. Petersburg, getting new private managers for the city-owned Mahaffey Theater, and having the Tampa Bay Rays back out of a deal to redevelop Tropicana Field.
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"I think it's important to understand what's happened during this current administration," Crist told the audience of about 100 people. "It looks like the effort to keep the race has failed. It looks like the Moffitt Cancer Center coming to St. Petersburg has failed. It looks like we have dropped the ball on the Mahaffey Theater. It's failing. These are a history of failures in the last five years of this current administration that I think a lot of people are tired of."
Welch said he understood the need for his challengers to try to cloud his record. The Rays, for instance, cancelled a deal after Hurricane Milton shredded the Tropicana Field roof and asked for more money.
He said the other candidates are looking past all of his accomplishments.
“I’m really going to push back on folks talking our city down, and of course, they have to have something to run on, and they have to say how bad it is,” he said.
"No other candidate on this stage has led this city or any city in the times like we've faced the past few years," Welch continued. "There's a difference between running for office and running a city."
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Welch, the city's first black mayor, is coming off a first term defined at first by COVID-19 — he was sworn in wearing a mask — and then two devastating hurricanes. Several of the candidates blasted the city's preparations for those storms and the shutdown of critical wastewater treatment plants as Hurricane Helene swamped the city.
Welch attacked Crist for not even being in the city when that hurricane struck.
"You were not even in the state during these hurricanes," he said, "so what specifically are you talking about?”
Crist replied he was with his fiancée, Chelsea, in the low-lying Shore Acres neighborhood, which saw severe flooding.
“Chelsea’s here and we were on Shore Acres, that’s just the truth, and that’s my rebuttal, and I’m disappointed in you, mayor,” Crist said. “You've got to be more candid with folks, and be more honest, and be more straightforward, and take care of places like Shore Acres and Southside.”
Kevin Batdorf said he chose to run for mayor after witnessing the destruction Helene wrought while he was the president of the Shore Acres Neighborhood Association.
"If I know that we have a storm surge of 12 to 15 feet coming, I'm staying in the emergency center until we're done with that," he said. "Second, I'm going to prepare the city for a 12 to 15-foot storm surge, not a 7 or 8-foot storm surge, where you have to call neighborhood leaders at 9 o'clock and say, hey, we're shutting it down, and we're going home. Don't flush your toilets. And then sewage spills into our streets."
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City council member Brandi Gabbard was asked how she would differ with Welch if another hurricane strikes.
"Transparency, a clear path to how they can recover, and then a mayor who will actually respond whenever they need you the most," she said. "Showing empathy, I believe, is a strength, not a weakness, and making sure while you are helping people through one of the worst times of their life, you are doing it through the lens of empathy and compassion."
Maria Scruggs is a jail administrator in Orange County, where she commutes daily. She says she would have had a better working relationship with neighborhood associations to begin with.
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"Because we did not have those relationships in place prior to this disaster, it made the recovery a lot more complicated," she said. "And my approach would be that once I become mayor, one of the collaborative processes that I will have in place is the building of working relationships with our 42 distinct neighborhoods, recognizing that our concept of equity starts and recognizing that all of our neighborhoods are not at the same level."
Welch said he was proud of creating the "Hometown Haulers" program to clean up after the hurricanes.
"They moved more than 5,000 loads of debris off of our streets and injected more than $1.5 million into our local economy, with local business folks doing it," he said.
When asked if they would support recent moves by the city to start its own utility to replace Duke Energy, only Gabbard sounded enthusiastic about the possibility. Gabbard said she was proud to be known as the “Dump Duke” candidate.
Welch, a former Duke employee, said he would wait on the report commissioned by the city council before making a decision. Scruggs agreed with him, while Batdorf said the city can barely run its own wastewater treatment system.
Asked if he had any regrets while in office, Welch said he would have rethought his move to hand out bonuses to city employees who worked overtime to secure a long-term deal with the Tampa Bay Rays. The $250,000 in bonuses was rescinded after the Rays backed out of the deal after Hurricane Milton.
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Another candidate for mayor, former Fire Rescue Chief Jim Large, chose not to participate in the debate. He said it was because of comments directed at him by the president of the St. Petersburg NAACP branch.
Welch placed Large on administrative leave three years ago, after several anonymous complaints that he made sexist, racist and homophobic remarks. The mayor reinstated him shortly afterwards, after saying there was no evidence for the complaints.
The primary election will be held on Aug. 18. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will be on the ballot in November.
Another debate will be held on June 18 at 6:00 p.m. at the SPC Gibbs Campus Music Center, located at 6605 5th Ave. N. It will be hosted by the League of Women Voters of the St. Petersburg Area and co-sponsored by Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists, SPC's Center for Civic Learning & Community Engagement, CONA St. Pete (Council of Neighborhood Associations) and Interfaith Tampa Bay.
