At Tuesday night’s Suncoast Tiger Bay forum, Ken Welch said something remarkable. In a week already overstuffed with noteworthy statements, the Mayor offered this:
“The way that someone runs their campaign is the way they will run the Mayor’s Office.”
For one of the first times this campaign, I agree with Ken Welch.
How someone campaigns is a good indication of how they will govern. So apply the Welch Standard to the man who established it.
Ask anyone who watches St. Petersburg politics: Welch has run a disastrous reelection campaign, one that matches his disastrous time in office.
Start with the political committees. Plural. You’ll need a scorecard to keep track.
Committee No. 1, Pelican PAC, was shut down by the state in September 2024 after failing to file required financial reports. Its treasurer of record was Yolanda Brown. That must have been an uncomfortable pink slip to hand over.
Except there was no pink slip. The Mayor’s operation brought her back — and I promise I am not making this up — as a compliance consultant. Welch re-hired the same person responsible for beefing his first committee, the same person who failed to comply with state campaign finance rules and, even after several warnings, still could not get it right. And he tapped her with “compliance.”
But wait, there’s more.
By last Summer, Brown was treasurer and chair of Committee No. 2, the Pelican Political Action Committee. Between August and October, $207,500 walked out the door in eight “unauthorized” payments to a company registered to none other than Yolanda Brown.
The committee says it referred the matter to state and federal law enforcement. The money never came back. The committee was left with about $31,000.
Undeterred, Welch launched Committee No. 3, St. Petersburg Progress. And in June, that committee missed another reporting deadline.
Three committees: one closed by the state, one looted by its own hand-picked treasurer, and the third can’t get its paperwork in on time. Adding insult to injury, Welch used to work as an accountant. He does, or at least should, know better.
The campaign is bleeding more than money. Welch has watched former allies like Ben Diamond and Darryl Rouson switch their allegiances to Charlie Crist. He has seen other allies, such as Pastor Andy Oliver, criticize his policies.
Meanwhile, the committee backing Crist — which, full disclosure, my wife manages; more on that in a moment — raised a record $725,000 in its first seven weeks and has since blown past $1.6 million.
So let’s flip the Welch Standard about a campaign reflecting future service as Mayor. If how Crist has campaigned is an indication of how he’ll run City Hall, Ken Welch just made the closing argument for Crist’s election.
If I’m being very honest, Crist entered this race as something like the lesser of two evils. The residents of St. Petersburg are clearly over Welch and his failures, but there was no one on the local political scene who could topple him, at least in part due to his diehard base within the Black community. Enter Crist. And a lot of folks — at first — went along with his candidacy reluctantly.
Then something happened along the way.
Crist has been sharp, organized, and, as always, a prolific fundraiser. He has earned endorsements from the broadest coalition to back a candidate for Mayor since Rick Baker ran for reelection in 2005. He has detailed policy positions on his website and in responses to candidate questionnaires. He has been the most visible candidate on social media. His events have been the best attended, and probably the most diverse.
As for this latest chapter of Welch v. Schorsch: I’m not going to get into the specifics of my accusations here. I’ll even acknowledge they’re explosive. And since the Mayor keeps bringing it up: yes, my wife, Michelle Todd Schorsch, leads Crist’s campaign. I don’t work for it. That hasn’t stopped Welch from labeling me one of Crist’s “lieutenants.”
Fine. Let’s judge lieutenants.
Where has Welch been while his own lieutenants attack my wife on Facebook?
Where was he when they cooked up grotesque memes of me looking like an ogre on social media? And where was he on June 8, when J.C. Pritchett — who is married to Welch’s cousin — stood at a Welch campaign event and declared that Black political influence “is being chipped away by the Supreme Court, the redrawing of congressional districts and allies like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Charlie”? For a man “who has built his career with the votes of Black and brown voters,” Pritchett said of Crist, “it is curious and disappointing.”
Crickets. Every time.
While Welch has become a troll on Facebook, Crist is doing exactly what he should be doing — staying focused on what matters to voters and staying above the fray.
William Shakespeare wrote in “Romeo and Juliette” of the fictional town of Verona that is was “where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.” Or, as Finley Peter Dunne’s character Mr. Dooley put it a few centuries later, “politics ain’t beanbag.”
Nobody in this fight has spotless hands. Mine included.
But if the Mayor of St. Petersburg wants to set the standard that how a candidate campaigns is how they will lead this city, then Ken Welch may be the best surrogate Charlie Crist has.