Voting in the General Election, which includes the St. Petersburg mayoral race, has begun.

Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Julie Marcus mailed ballots to military and overseas voters on Sept. 18. On Tuesday, her office begins mailing ballots to the domestic voters who requested one,.

St. Petersburg votes by mail. That makes Election Day basically now. Nov. 3 itself is left mainly to Republicans, who have followed Donald Trump away from voting by mail.

The race has also taken a nasty turn.

A friend who used to work in City Hall asked me Saturday, the day after the Tampa Bay Breakfast Club forum, whether I’m trying to get Ken Welch to jump off the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. “Because if that’s your goal, I think you’re close to accomplishing it.”

Welch got to that forlorn position without Charlie Crist going negative on him. There is no negative television running against Welch, no negative mail headed to voters’ mailboxes, and no negative digital. Crist is a happy warrior and has stayed one. Welch can’t go negative in paid media because he doesn’t have the money. Yet, the race feels as negative and contested as any congressional or legislative race, and there is none of the paid negative media you see in those.

Case in point: the forum itself. The Times’ Colleen Wright led her recap with the final question of the morning: What do you admire most about your opponent?

Crist went first and answered quickly: Welch’s kindness. He reminded the room that he endorsed Welch, voted for him, and campaigned for him in 2021.

Welch paused. He said it was hard to say. He settled on Crist’s “passion to be in public office.”

He looked angry for the entire forum. And here is another case of Welch not being able to get out of his own way, because the question has an easy answer. You say: I disagree with Charlie’s reasons for running and with the fixes he’s proposing for problems I don’t think we have. But nobody doubts Charlie is a devoted son and a devoted brother, and I admire that about him. Then you smile and move on.

Welch couldn’t even do that.

So here are five other things I think I think about that forum and the current shape of the race.

Welch did pretty well on home turf

The Tampa Bay Breakfast Club is a live podcast with a following in St. Petersburg’s Black community. The moderator, I’m told, is a close personal friend of Welch’s. Both candidates were given the questions in advance.

Welch’s supporters dogged Crist for reading from his notes. That was a silly attack. Crist said he does his homework. He had the questions, so he wanted concrete answers to them.

Crist isn’t as fluent in City Hall acronyms and bureaucracy as Welch. Welch has that in spades. But he doesn’t connect with voters by deploying phrases like “intentional progress” and “equitable development.” I’ve been saying for more than a year that it sounds like something he picked up at a municipal officers conference. Nobody knows what equitable development means. It sounds like a neo-Marxist or socialist construct.

Welch did get in some good digs. He was also clearly upset by the news that broke that morning: Rick Kriseman, who endorsed Welch from the steps of City Hall five years ago, endorsed Crist, joining the other three living former Mayors. It took Welch by surprise. Wright noted it. Kriseman told us he wanted his endorsement to have maximum impact. Ballots are going out right now. The No. 1 process story of the race is that Kriseman and every other living former Mayor have endorsed Crist over Welch.

Welch doesn’t call people back

At one point Crist repeated something the rest of us hear over and over: residents can’t get a call back from the Mayor. Welch didn’t want to hear it. He wanted names and examples. Crist didn’t take the bait.

Shannon Ligon, a former Welch supporter now backing Crist, posted the exchange on Facebook, and a few people came out of the woodwork in the comments. Leah McRae said she worked for Welch and couldn’t get a meeting. Maria Scruggs, who ran against Welch in the Primary, said she’s still waiting on a coffee that was supposed to happen. Lewis Stephens Jr. said he brought young people to Welch’s youth events and was then asked to write a one-page letter to get a meeting.

Outside of hurricane response, this is the No. 1 criticism I hear about Welch. One of his largest donors, someone who bundled checks and hosted a fundraiser for this campaign, raised $30,000 for Welch and never heard from him again. That’s the same donor who received the “(Maybe Governor down the road)!” fundraising text I wrote about last month. The part that didn’t make that story was the donor’s complaint that the only time they hear from Welch is when he needs money.

There may be more coming on this one.

Debates do not matter

I can’t be more clear about this. Debates will not save your candidate, whatever race you’re working.

There is a mistake being made this cycle. Because of what happened to Joe Biden in the June 2024 CNN debate, which ended his candidacy within a month, people have convinced themselves that something is going to come out of a debate that changes the trajectory of the St. Pete mayoral race, or the Governor’s race, or one of the competitive congressional races.

I do think it’s a mistake to do what David Jolly did and preemptively call off every debate with Byron Donalds, the Times’ Michael Van Sickler reports. Jolly had accepted invitations from the Tampa Bay Tiger Bay Club and CBS Miami before reversing himself and citing Donalds’ “repeated lies and bad faith,” WUSF’s Douglas Soule reports. It will be the first Governor’s General Election in Florida without a debate since 1974.

But the idea that there is a big pool of undecided voters in these races just waiting for Wheel of Fortune to be preempted by a local station’s debate is silly. By the time we get to these debates, 90% of the cake is baked. The Bay News 9 debate between Crist and Welch is Oct. 13. Pinellas ballots will have been in mailboxes for two weeks by then.

I see Welch’s supporters, who watched him have a good morning at the Breakfast Club, imagining that a series of Lincoln-Douglas debates would eventually erase the deficit he’s in. No debate is going to save Ken Welch.

The Times gave Democrats permission

Breaking Sunday morning, and as expected: the Times recommended Crist. The paper split its recommendation in the Primary, with Graham Brink backing Crist and Conan Gallaty backing Brandi Gabbard. With Gabbard out, both now recommend Crist.

The advantage is that it gives white Democratic voters who supported Welch in 2021 permission to “unelect” him in 2026.

The editorial is a damning indictment of Welch, built from things we have been saying for a long time: the Moffitt decision, the deputy mayor, the badge-in data, leaving the emergency operations center during Hurricane Ian, the debris piles, the water bills, and the political committee mishaps. Brink’s summary: “St. Pete deserves better than ‘not awful.’”

Some good news for Welch, believe it or not

We end with good news for Welch. For the first time since Crist entered the race, Welch’s political committee outraised Crist’s.

Only the committees had to file for the Sept. 12-18 period. St. Petersburg Progress took in $36,250. Of that, $25,000 came from John Catsimatidis, the New York billionaire behind the 400 Central tower, who committed to Welch a long time ago. Another $10,000 came from Blue Sky Communities, the affordable housing developer.

St. Pete Shines took in $22,000: $10,000 each from Dennis Mehiel and Ballard Partners, and a pair of $1,000 checks. It spent $33,028, nearly all of it on direct mail. Welch’s committee spent $8,007.

I feel good about this for two reasons. First, Welch’s campaign staffers and consultants, some of whom are friends of mine, will get that last paycheck. From the expenditures, it doesn’t look like any of them have been paid on a regular schedule since the Primary, unless I’m misreading the reports. By my math, the committee has about $37,000 left. The lights stay on through Nov. 3.

Second, and I say this somewhat tongue in cheek, Crist can now send out a fundraising email that says Ken Welch is outraising him.