Ken Welch (L) and Charlie Crist Credit: Photos via cityofstpete/Flickr and Charlie Crist campaign
The upcoming St. Petersburg mayoral race is getting dirty, personal and expensive.
This morning, incumbent St. Pete Mayor Ken Welch asked former governor and opponent Charlie Crist to condemn a recent post from Florida Politics publisher Peter Schorsch, who spread rumors that Welch had an affair with a former staffer, something Welch denies.
Welch shared a video to social media denying the rumors and asking Crist to condemn Schorsch. “Peter Schorsch, the husband of Charlie Crist’s campaign manager—the same guy who just last weekend introduced Charlie Crist at his office opening—has crossed a disgraceful line,” Welch said in the video.
“Charlie, Peter is your guy,” Welch continued. “Stop hiding. Condemn the lie publicly, and unequivocally.”
Schorsch is married to Crist campaign chair Michelle Todd Schorsch, whose political consulting business is the second largest recipient of funds from Crist’s PAC. Extensive Enterprises Media, the parent company of Florida Politics, has also received over $24,000 from Crist’s PAC, according to campaign finance records.
Florida Politics, which has been criticized in the past for “pay-to-play” policies, has not shied away from constant attacks on Welch.
Screenshots appear to show a now–deleted Facebook post on Peter Schorsch’s page made at about 10 p.m. last Thursday, July 23. The initial post contained nothing but the name of a former deputy mayor who resigned. Her resignation followed accusations from now-Florida Politics Senior Political Editor Janelle Irwin Taylor who accused the former deputy mayor of creating a hostile work environment.
Follow up comments in the screenshot appear to show Schorsch saying that Welch cheated on his wife with the former staffer. “Please (prove) me wrong,” reads a comment attributed to Schorsch in the screenshot. “Take me to court and let’s do discovery. Please!”
Schorsch—who deleted the post—has used his personal Facebook page to post frustrations and campaign fodder over the last several months. He’s also been the subject of attack videos portraying him as Shrek.
“This campaign cycle has been brutal,” Schorsch posted to Facebook on Saturday, in text overlaid on a picture of Matt Damon as Odysseus. “AI videos of me. Hurtful memes. Lies while calling me every name in the book. And so I’m at that moment, returning home, and being asked if I am bringing vengeance?”
“I AM BRINGING IT ALL,” Schorsch’s post concluded.
Last week, candidate Brandi Gabbard made a Facebook post saying that even though she’s running against Welch, she believes a Crist ad attacking him over hurricane response was unfair as Crist was in Minnesota during the 2024 hurricanes. Schorsch commented, calling her a “pick me,” a term typically used for women who deride other women for male attention. It’s unclear what he meant by this.
Peter Schorsch issued this statement to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.
“The video Welch posted today is as lackluster and as unfocused as his campaign.
Yes, I made a comment about Ken Welch and Stephanie Owens on social media. Yes, I deleted it. But ONLY out of a courtesy to a community leader who is neutral in the mayoral race who asked my wife to ask me to delete it in order to lower the temperature in the race. Yes, I lost my temper posting that comment because a County Commissioner was attacking my wife, while also diminishing my wife’s work in the mayoral race by inferring that I am more involved in the campaign than she is. It was incredibly upsetting to see someone, another woman no less, ignoring my wife’s accomplishments in furtherance of attacking me. Michelle deserves better, and I will always be her fiercest defender.
All of this said, I am not a politician. My name is not on the ballot. I am a news publisher. And Ken Welch is attempting to intimidate a media figure who has called out the Mayor’s lack of leadership in response to the devastating hurricanes that destroyed my neighborhood. I have questioned his leadership on many other issues. And now he is angry and desperate.”
St. Petersburg’s Mayoral Election could wrap on Election Day, Tuesday, Aug. 18 if any one candidate earns more than 50% of the vote. Otherwise, a fall runoff will take place between the top two finishers.
Since Crist’s entrance to the race, Florida Politics’ coverage has heavily criticized Mayor Welch and favored the former governor.
This month alone, the website—one of the largest political news sites in Florida— has published at least 30 articles tagged “Ken Welch,” with many slamming the mayor over his performance in polls, hurricane response and handling of the Rays deal. Others are personal complaints, like Welch refusing to shake Schorsch’s hand or how much of a “dud” Schorsch thought the July 4 fireworks show was.
Some of Schorsch’s articles are “drafted with assistance from AI”; a disclaimer says editorial judgement, sourcing and final review are performed by him and the website’s editorial team.
Peter Schorsch was the subject of an extensive joint investigation in 2023 by NPR and nonprofit newsroom Floodlight for running Florida Politics as a “pay-to-play” publication: soliciting money in exchange for news coverage, without providing disclosures on his website.
The investigation found that Peter Schorsch frequently requested ad buys from candidates across Florida. If they failed to pay up, coverage would often stop or become negative, according to the investigation.
“You always knew when he had a boat ride — presumably a cruise — coming up, because he’d hit you up for money,” an anonymous Republican lawmaker told NPR and Floodlight of Schorsch’s fundraising tactics. The Schorsches are known to embark on Disney cruises.
Peter Schorsch isn’t shy about his involvement in Crist’s campaign. He recently published a column on the death of former state senator Jack Latvala, who resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment and trading legislative favors for sex.
“Everything I know about campaigning — almost every tool I am deploying right now to help my wife in her effort to elect Charlie Crist Mayor of St. Petersburg — I learned, in part, from Jack Latvala, some 25 years ago,” Schorsch’s column reads.
Schorsch goes on to recall boarding a Disney cruise when he got a call from Latvala denying the accusations, a lie Schorsch said he will “never forgive” the late senator for telling.
Florida Politics might still publish pro-Crist articles even if the Schorsch household wasn’t receiving money from the Crist campaign. Michelle Todd Schorsch was Crist’s aide when he was governor, and the Schorsches have long been supporters of the St. Pete High grad who was senior class president and starting quarterback for the school in the mid-’70s.
Peter Schorsch, who is a Republican, told NPR and Floodlight that he is more likely to focus on coverage when the subject matter is a donor or a friend. Every newsroom and every reporter has some bias—even though some legacy outlets may want to claim they’re objective—but few fail to make a distinction between opinions they’ve developed organically as people familiar with politics and those they’ve been directly paid to promote.
In an article he published last month, Peter Schorsch criticized the Tampa Bay Times for starting up a marketing company. “How can a publishing company court marketing clients—such as the businesses and developers it covers—while also covering them objectively?” Schorsch wrote in the article.
He wrote that the move was hypocritical, as the Tampa Bay Times had previously accused Florida Politics of being pay-to-play.
“The news relies heavily on editorial decisions — the choices that determine which stories get covered, which get killed and what angle is worth pursuing,” Schorsch’s article continues. “Adding a marketing agency into the mix, simply put, thins the wall between revenue generation and news coverage.”
Schorsch told NPR and Floodlight his publication was “setting new rules” by soliciting advertising from the subjects of Florida Politics’ coverage. Pay-to-play is not a new business model, but an outdated one; advertiser-influenced editorial coverage was the norm until newspapers established codes of ethics.
Former Crist ally: ‘This is not the Charlie Crist of old’
Stephen A. Smith (no relation to the ESPN anchor), executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, is an eyewitness to the influence of money on Florida politics. Smith told CL he praised Crist for standing up to electric utilities as Florida’s attorney general decades ago. Crist’s funding and involvement with Schorsch have led Smith to recant his praise.
Electric utilities are one of the top sources of money and lobbying in Florida politics, spending nearly $80 million on political contributions alone from 2017-2025 according to a report from the CLEO institute. Some of that money has found its way into the pockets of Peter Schorsch. An invoice he shared with reporters from NPR shows that Florida Power & Light paid Schorsch at least $43,000 in 2021 alone.
Since then, Schorsch has published a number of articles in support of investor-owned utilities. Two of his articles are heavily promoted by the Pinellas Energy Alliance, a dark money group connected to Duke that uses the articles as “expert opinions” justifying a contract renewal with Duke.
Smith has been on the opposing side of utility money for decades and said he is disappointed by the influence he believes the money now has over Crist’s campaign.
“We were hoping that the Charlie Crist that we’d known over the years and worked for would be who was running for mayor in St. Pete,” Smith told CL. “Someone who had been a champion for consumers and for citizens has, it appears, lost the fire in his belly to protect the consumers and is, in turn, cashing in on relationships.”
“This is not the Charlie Crist of old,” Smith said. “This is a compromised version of Charlie Crist.”
Smith criticized St. Pete Shines, Crist’s PAC run by Michelle Todd Schorsch, calling it a “fundraising machine” that shakes down corporate interests for money. Peter Schorsch routinely boasts Crist’s fundraising advantage over Welch as a positive, despite a large portion of it coming from large donations from PACs, lawyers and industry interests.
Much of the money donated to Crist’s campaign goes back to the Schorsches. St. Pete Shines has paid nearly $140,000 to Michelle Todd Schorsch’s political consulting business, All Too Strategic LLC. This makes her firm the PAC’s second largest single expenditure, behind media production firm Waterfront Strategies. An additional $33,000 has gone to Michelle Todd Schorsch directly in reimbursements.
Over $24,000 has gone to Extensive Enterprises Media, the parent company of Florida Politics. Over $16,000 went to direct mail, more than $4,000 went to media production, and $120 went to “yard sign placement.”
“This is a love triangle, so to speak, of money and grift that people need to be aware of before they go to the polls,” Smith told CL. “This is the kind of stuff that does not lead to electing somebody who is looking out for the people. It’s somebody who’s looking out for corporate interests.”
Charlie Crist did not respond to a request for comment.
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UPDATED 07/27/26 5:11 p.m. Updated Janelle Irwin Taylor’s title at Florida Politics and make clear that she accused Welch’s former deputy mayor of creating a hostile working environment.
This article appears in July 23 – 29, 2026.
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