Charlie Crist greets people outside the African American Research Library and Cultural Center on October 28, 2022 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Credit: (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Charlie Crist, the former governor, state lawmaker and congressman, will have to wait until November to see if he can add the title of mayor of St. Petersburg to his lengthy political resume.
Crist netted the most votes in a six-way race to lead the city, pulling in 35 percent, ahead of incumbent Mayor Ken Welch’s 20 percent, according to unofficial returns. With no candidate clearing the 50 percent mark, the top two vote-getters will proceed to a runoff in November’s general election.
Incumbent Mayor Ken Welch will face off against Crist. Photo courtesy of the city.
Crist, a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat who also previously served as the state’s attorney general and education commissioner, has lived more political lives than almost anyone else in Florida politics. Earlier in his career, he earned a reputation as a watchdog who went to bat against the state’s powerful electric companies and “sent shivers through the entire utility system.”
Now, the political committee backing his campaign for mayor has taken in a stream of donations from Tallahassee powerbrokers linked to Big Tech firms and the investor-owned utility companies eager to make Florida an attractive destination for the energy-intensive data centers they rely on. The spending on Crist’s mayoral campaign by some of Tallahassee’s most prominent lobbyists comes at a critical time: as St. Petersburg considers breaking free from its power supplier, Duke Energy, and creating its own city-run municipal utility.
The city’s next mayor could play a key role in whether St. Pete takes back control of its power supply – something no Florida city has done in two decades.
Welch has criticized the campaign donations flowing in for his competitor from powerful interests, while Crist and his supporters have said his record-breaking fundraising is due to his decades-deep relationships in Florida politics.
Kate Payne is The Florida Trib’s state government reporter. She can be reached at kate.payne@floridatrib.org.
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Kate Payne is The Florida Trib’s state government reporter.
She’s spent her career in nonprofit newsrooms in Florida and Iowa and her reporting has run the gamut, from interviewing presidential candidates on the campaign trail to middle schoolers in the lunch line.
Kate has won awards for her political reporting, sound editing and feature writing and was named 2024 journalist of the year by the Florida chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Kate’s previous newsrooms include the Associated Press, Iowa Public Radio and WLRN Public Media in Miami. Her stories and photographs have been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR and PBS, and her reporting on the death penalty has been cited in a filing at the U.S. Supreme Court.
You can reach Kate at kate.payne@floridatrib.org