St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch is flailing as his re-election campaign continues to fizzle and it becomes increasingly clear that his days in office are numbered in months, not years.

From using his office to campaign to ill-advised brag-fests about the Tampa Bay Rays, Welch’s desperation is on full display, even as he continues to project confidence in an election whose path to victory closed long ago.

Let’s start here, with Welch’s latest city-sponsored get-out-the-vote campaign. On Thursday, the Mayor posted a video reel to Facebook encouraging residents to vote and offering information about how and when to do so. He introduced himself as Mayor and filmed the reel from the steps of City Hall. The video’s color scheme, especially at the very end, matches his trademark orange-and-green campaign palette.

The video breaks no election law, but it is a clear example of Welch using his office to campaign, an optics problem even if not a legal one.

“The most important thing is to make a plan that works for you and make sure your voice is heard. Let’s vote St. Pete,” Welch closes in his campai… err … Mayor’s Office video.

There’s also his “City Hall on Tour” series, in which the Mayor pulls city employees away from their jobs to share information about city projects. The current topic is the Historic Gas Plant District and Welch’s pick to redevelop it.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with constituent outreach. Any Mayor should do it. Welch launched City Hall on Tour in 2023, when a credible re-election challenge probably seemed impossible to him. At the time, it was a reasonable effort to reach residents with useful information and a decent attempt to make City Hall more accessible to the people.

But there’s a problem. For all the city resources and staff time that go into these events, no one shows up. It’s a failed experiment.

Take a gander at this photo and note the total absence of people. Or this video. At first glance, there seem to be plenty of people milling about. Look closer, and it’s mostly employees mingling with one another at the City Hall equivalent of a high school pep rally no one wants to attend.

But I get it. For Welch, this is the way. At this point, it’s the only way. What else is he supposed to do when he’s flat out of money? His own debate watch party featured cheap lemonade and bargain wine.

Welch’s political committee, St. Petersburg Progress, is not making the progress its name promises. The committee brought in nothing in the most recent reporting period, Oct. 3 through Oct. 9. The week before, it raised just $8,500, and Welch didn’t reach five figures between the committee and his campaign account.

The committee has a little more than $10,000 left for the final stretch, while Welch’s challenger, former Gov. Charlie Crist, sits on well over $400,000.

Welch’s campaign account was down to less than $14,000 as of Oct. 2, so it’s not as if he has money parked there, either.

It’s the homestretch. Candidates should be burning through what’s left to make their final pitch to voters. They should also be refilling their coffers to, and this is important, KEEP making that pitch right up to Election Day. Welch is not only running out of cash, he’s making zero progress toward getting more.

At one point, I wondered whether Welch’s money problem was simply that he isn’t a good fundraiser. Now I think it’s entirely possible he IS working hard at it, and no one wants to fork over hard-earned cash to a campaign in distress.

Or one that delivers this level of cringe.

On Thursday, Welch penned an extended comment on Facebook, sharing an article in which MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred praised him for doing “an unbelievable job getting” Tropicana Field repaired after Hurricane Milton tore it apart in 2024. The post ignores how much the city had to pour into a stadium the Rays are abandoning, and that the bill ran so high because Welch’s administration gambled on cutting the Trop’s insurance coverage to save a few bucks, an ill-advised decision that cost the city millions. It also glosses over the fact that, you know, he lost the team.

He can’t even get his facts straight. Welch writes in the post that there were “more than 40,000 fans a night” at the Rays’ home playoff games this week. Nope. Game 1 of the American League Championship Series at Tropicana Field drew 35,361 fans. The following night drew just over 32,000. Empty seats spotted during the broadcasts sparked criticismover attendance, even though Game 1 was a sellout.

As Welch likes to say, facts are stubborn things, but I guess 40,000 looks better, facts be damned.

As if it couldn’t get worse, Welch also used Facebook, the only tool he seems to have left in the toolbox, to show off his campaign’s phone-banking operation. There were plenty of yard signs and stacks of literature at Welch HQ, but I counted just four people on the phones. No wonder Welch’s campaign declined to let a Tampa Bay Times reporter attend its phone banking or canvassing. It’s an embarrassing display of an understaffed campaign.

The race isn’t over until the votes are counted, and Crist will no doubt campaign until the last ballot drops and the last precinct locks its doors. But it’s clearer by the day that Welch is about to join former Mayor Bill Foster’s “club of one-timers.” Polling this week showed Crist, whom Foster and every other living former Mayor of St. Pete has endorsed, with a 21-point lead over the broke incumbent.

See you soon, Nov. 3.

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Ed. note: Michelle Todd Schorsch is the Chair of St. Pete Shines, a political committee backing Crist for St. Petersburg Mayor. Todd Schorsch is married to Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics.