Winners and losers emerging from St. Petersburg’s election (and other Tampa Bay races)

It’s easy to look at St. Petersburg and declare that Charlie Crist won and Ken Welch lost. A 62%-38% result does not leave much to argue about.

But the true winners and losers in a Mayor’s race, particularly one as bitter as this one, carry more nuance. The city’s first Black Mayor lost his bid for a second term by 24 points, and the people who stood with him, pastors and police unions among them, have some explaining to do. At the same time, voters approved a $600 million infrastructure bond and every other question on the city ballot, filled two open City Council seats, and, along with the rest of Florida, passed a property tax amendment that will squeeze City Hall’s budget no matter who sits in the Mayor’s office.

And while Crist’s coalition won, not everyone in it won equally. A few people on the losing side came out of it just fine.

Even still, there are players across the entire process who won despite losing, or who lost despite winning. Let’s take a look at how that all shook out.

Biggest winner

Michelle Todd Schorsch — I believe she was the biggest winner of the night, and yes, I am married to her. About 10 years ago my wife, known in this business for her steadfast loyalty, walked off the field, Barry Sanders-style, at the top of her game, to raise our daughter. Then Crist asked her to run St. Pete Shines, the political committee behind his campaign, because he knew he could trust her, and he asked at the moment Welch’s own committee was coming undoneover a Treasurer who stole $207,000 from it. In the course of a year, Todd Schorsch built a juggernaut and ran what was arguably the best down-ballot campaign in Florida in 2026. There was not one area of campaigning she did not dominate. She personally raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Crist, meeting one-on-one with dozens of donors, from billionaires to grassroots supporters. She deployed the first generative artificial intelligence television ads in a local race, and wrote the scripts herself. She assembled and synthesized a team of some of the best consultants in the state: Eric Johnson, Kevin Sweeny on field and several Republican consultants who wanted to help their old friend Charlie but did not want to show up on a campaign finance report. She developed much of the campaign’s policy, meeting with current and former elected officials from Republicans like Rick Baker and Bill Foster to Democrats like Rick Kriseman and Lisset Hanewicz. She organized a team of dedicated volunteers. She built a social media operation that eclipsed what had been one of Welch’s strengths, even with MDW Communications, one of the best digital shops in the state, on his retainer. As more than a few people put it, Todd Schorsch made the 70-year-old Crist cool again. She even had a balloon drop ready for Election Night. The only question now is what she does next. She could go inside as Chief of Staff or Deputy Mayor, join a lobbying or public affairs firm, or get back on the trail and help Bob Buckhorn down his increasingly arduous path back to Tampa City Hall. The real question is how she keeps her one-man wrecking crew of a husband under control.

Winners

Darryl Rouson — There may not have been a more critical moment in the Mayor’s race than when the Senator walked back his support for Welch and got behind Crist. Rouson had endorsed Welch early. In June he added Crist in a dual endorsement that satisfied no one. Then on July 9 he put the ambiguity to rest in an ad, telling voters that “elections come down to a choice” and his choice was Crist. Call it the local version of James Clyburn endorsing Joe Biden before South Carolina in 2020. Crist’s campaign did not need saving the way Biden’s did. It was a turning point all the same. Rouson is one of the most prominent Black politicians in Tampa Bay, and his word carried two ways at once. It told Black voters who were souring on the city’s first Black Mayor that it was all right to say so. And it gave White Democrats permission to vote against him. The polling moved accordingly. Welch went from a 39-point lead among Black voters in March to 4 points behind by late October. Rouson’s support did not end with the ad. The Senator was at Crist’s side at events across the city and walked door to door with him through the Fall. He leaves the Senate this month after 18 years in the Legislature. He is not leaving St. Petersburg politics.

Jason Mathis — The CEO of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership did what the St. Pete Chamber could not. He read the room. The Partnership is a private, shareholder-funded nonprofit with five decades of downtown deals behind it, and it does not endorse. It didn’t have to. Mathis unofficially backed Crist, and the Partnership walks into the Crist era already seated at the table for the one decision that matters most downtown, the 86 acres under Tropicana Field. It paid for the first phase of the Urban Land Institute study of the site. It hosted the Ellison Development briefing on the Gas Plant proposal and put its own downtown land-use concepts out at its 2026 Development Summit. Crist has said he will reevaluate the Gas Plant proposals, including Welch’s pick. When he does, Mathis is already in the building. The Chamber is still searching for the door.

The former Mayors — Baker, Foster, Kriseman and Bob Ulrich have not agreed on much in 40 years. Three are Republicans and one is a Democrat. Kriseman beat Foster in 2013 and Baker in 2017, two of the rougher races the city has seen. Foster and Kriseman both backed Welch five years ago. This year, every living former Mayor put the old differences aside and endorsed Crist. Baker went first. Foster and Ulrich followed two days after the Primary. Kriseman completed the sweep in late September, saying the four of them had more confidence in Crist’s ability to move the city forward than in the incumbent. Welch’s response was to call the timing curious and point at a city contract a Kriseman client didn’t get. Voters had their own response: 62%-38%. Crist said the sweep made a statement about the nonpartisanship of the race. It also made one about Welch.

Rick Baker — He gets his own entry on top of the group. For nearly 13 years, the Mayor most credited with St. Petersburg’s renaissance got the cold shoulder from City Hall, first under Kriseman, who shut him out from the day he took office in 2014 and beat him in 2017, and then under Welch. That is unlikely to be the case under Crist. Baker was one of the very first Republicans to endorse Crist, in July, weeks before the Primary and before the sweep of former Mayors made it safe. And he stuck his neck out to do it, saying the city needed a Mayor “willing to show up for work every day.” There has been some talk since about Baker having too much of a hand in the forthcoming Crist administration. Stonewall Democrats raised his record on LGBTQ issues, and Welch asked whether people like him would have a voice in a Crist City Hall. I think Democrats worry too much about that. Baker is nothing if not a technocrat. He built Midtown, landed the Grand Prix and the St. Petersburg College campus, and ran the city with both parties at the table. He should be able to give Crist sound advice on the nuts and bolts of governing the Sunshine City, and after 13 years on the outside, he will be glad to be asked.

Ed Montanari — The former City Council member was ubiquitous during the campaign, often walking door to door with Crist. A Republican who represented District 3 from 2016 to 2024, Montanari offered cover to Republican voters who needed a reason to back a former Republican Governor running as a Democrat in a nonpartisan race. He helped raise money through Shumaker Advisors, where he joined as a Principal in January and where Kriseman is an Executive Vice President, which made the firm’s St. Pete office a two-endorsement shop by September. He helped bring over Gina Driscoll, the first sitting Council member to back Crist. And he backed Gabriel Hament, who won the District 2 seatTuesday. The question now is whether Montanari goes inside with the new administration or stays at Shumaker and makes bank. Montanari has a servant’s heart. That usually answers it.

Gershom Faulkner — Nobody spent more time with Crist during this campaign than his body man, with the exception of Crist’s fiancée, Chelsea Grimes. The former Marine ran outreach for Crist’s congressional office, came back in January as Vice Chair of St. Pete Shines, and then did the job that never shows up on a finance report. He was at the candidate’s side at every event and every door knock, early morning to late night. Unyieldingly loyal is the best phrase to describe Faulkner. He earned every mile.

Ben Diamond — The former Representative never ran for Mayor. In June 2025, Diamond message-tested a bid against Welch with a poll that told voters the Mayor had fumbled hurricane recovery. Welch, who had backed Diamond’s campaigns and had Diamond’s backing in return, said he was surprised. That poll was the canary in the coal mine. It said out loud what St. Pete was saying quietly: The incumbent was in trouble, and even his friends could see it. Diamond bowed out that August, citing his kids, and this July he endorsed Crist, the same week a St. Pete Polls survey put Crist 12 points up. Expect Diamond to play a major role in local politics under Crist. And it was a two-Diamond night. His wife, Christina Diamond, runs Ruth’s List Florida, which counted 27 wins Tuesday, including three House flips that helped end the Republican supermajority and Democrat Aileen Rodriguez’s pickup in Hillsborough. Not a bad night for one household.

The former candidates — Kevin Batdorf and Maria Scruggs both finished in single digits in the Primary. Both performed well in debates, sounding well-versed on policies and priorities, and both were far outspent, not just by Crist but even by Welch’s comparatively underfunded campaign. They gave well-timed endorsements aimed at key constituencies and stayed visible with Crist through the closing weeks of the race. Scruggs was a fierce advocate for Crist online, helping further Crist’s support among the Black community, while Batdorf helped the Crist operation keep Shore Acres organized. The flood-prone neighborhood ended up backing Crist with 85% of the vote.

Alan Suskey — Full disclosure, the Shumaker Advisors lobbyist was the best man at our wedding. His relationship with Crist goes back a couple of decades, and if Suskey was not the top fundraiser for the Crist campaign, he was right up there. The money is the smaller part of it. Suskey knows the players in St. Petersburg politics better than any other Tallahassee-based lobbyist, and it isn’t close. He came up as military aide to Bill Young, ran external affairs for SRI’s St. Petersburg institute and kept a St. Pete office when he built his own shop before folding it into Shumaker in 2021. He already represents a stable of clients who spent the last four years frustrated with the pace of development under Welch. Now they are about to have a Mayor who actually returns phone calls. Then there is the bench. His Shumaker colleagues Kriseman and Montanari endorsed Crist, knocked on doors for him, and will be very busy for the next four years. It is hard to think of anyone in Florida politics better positioned over the next decade.

St. Pete Polls — The local polling outfit got the numbers right. Its final survey of the Governor’s race, taken for Florida Politics in the last week of October, had Republican Byron Donalds at 48% and Democrat David Jolly at 46%. The RealClearPolling average that week had Donalds up 4. So did the New York Times/Siena poll. Donalds won by about 1.5 points. No public poll taken in the final week came closer. Closer to home, St. Pete Polls had Crist ahead of Welch in every head-to-head it ran from March on, and its last survey had Crist up 54% to 34% with leaners, and 60% to 34% among voters who had already cast a ballot. Crist won 62%-38%. St. Pete Polls also found the $600 million infrastructure bond ballot question drawing better than 2-to-1 support, with a third of voters undecided. The bond passed 74%-26%. Its City Council polling was on the number, too. It missed on Amendment 3, the homestead property tax measure, where its polling had the amendment falling short of the 60% it needed. It passed. But most other polls made the same miscalculation. Matt Florell’s outfit runs on automated calls and text messages out of an office on Central Avenue, and it keeps beating the shops with bigger budgets. In this town, the local shop has the city’s number.

Colleen Wright — The Tampa Bay Times’ St. Petersburg reporter carried the lead byline on this race, and as I wrote in my rundown of the media’s winners and losers, she was especially fair. She always gave the Crist campaign the chance to respond, to share good news and to push back on the bad. My complaint was never with Wright. It was that the Times treated a multimillion-dollar Mayor’s race like a City Council contest, and I wish the paper had given it far more room, whatever anyone thinks about how Wright tracked it. She is a winner because Crist has a long history of openness with the press and a habit of picking up the phone and calling reporters himself. Starting in January, she covers him every day, and that disposition will make her job a lot easier than it probably has been under the notoriously anti-press Welch administration. Wright once rode along on a Welch trip to Southwest Florida to help with hurricane recovery, in a van full of City Hall and City Hall-adjacent people, yet few if any of them talked to her. That was Welch’s posture toward the Times in miniature. In the closing weeks, Welch’s campaign would not let a Times reporter follow it around at all. City Hall is now Wright’s oyster. Here’s hoping she finds a few pearls.

Heather Turnbull and Rubin Turnbull & Associates — One of the most powerful lobbyists in Tallahassee had her pick of Election Night parties. Donalds was celebrating at the Hard Rock in South Florida. Turnbull spent the night in St. Petersburg. It should not surprise anyone. Her firm was one of the largest supporters of Crist’s campaign, and the Managing Partner of a shop that clears $3.5 million a quarter does not show up for a Mayor’s race by accident. Rubin Turnbull already has reach in Tallahassee and, through its D.C. practice and its Brownstein alliance, in Washington. What it has not had is a foothold in Tampa Bay to match. With a friend in St. Pete City Hall and a Governor-elect the firm knows well, expect Rubin Turnbull & Associates to be a lot more involved in the region’s affairs.

Stephanie Cardozo — The Southern Group lobbyist is having a year. She ran the local side of the Rays’ stadium deal in Tampa, negotiating with county and city leaders and every stakeholder in between. She got to watch the client play in the World Series. Then she turned around and, with her wingman Jon Stewart, the Southern Group’s veteran fundraiser, became one of the key money people behind the Crist effort. A lot of people wrote checks to support Crist this year. Not many of them can call themselves an FOM, a Friend of Michelle. If Todd Schorsch goes inside City Hall or stays adjacent to the Crist administration, the two of them working for the good of St. Petersburg will be a relationship worth watching.

Other winners

Mario Farias — The Farias Consulting Group founder quarterbacked the Harborage Marina referendum in St. Pete, and it passed with 75%, 74,307 votes to 24,637, the best showing of the five questions on the city ballot. The ask was modest. Extend the city’s submerged-lands lease to 30 years so the marina can finance about $2.15 million in new docks, boat lifts and restrooms at no cost to taxpayers, with the city owning the improvements when the lease ends. Modest asks still fail when nobody runs them. Farias has been the marina’s voice for the better part of a decade. He was its spokesperson when voters approved the 2018 expansion with 66%, and he worked the Sailing Center lease to 84% support the following year. Even the St. Pete Chamber was on the right side of this one. Scorecard: 3-0 on St. Pete waterfront referendums.

Robert Blackmon — The former City Council member never officially endorsed in the Mayor’s race. Blackmon was a prolific fundraiser for Crist, and the man who lost to Welch in the 2021 runoff is never at a loss for ideas to improve St. Pete. Expect a good many of them to get a hearing at City Hall over the next four years, which is more than they got in the last four.

Campaign daughters — You may not know their names, but Elle Houston and Natalie Ruhlman, Michelle’s “campaign daughters,” could have a bright future in politics, if they want one. The young duo was responsible for implementing Todd Schorsch’s plans for social media, events and canvassing, which is to say the parts of the campaign voters actually saw. Their “Mayor’s School” video series was so popular that some folks thought Natalie was a candidate herself.

Cedric Gordon and Al White — When the two retired St. Petersburg police leaders endorsed Crist in September, you knew he was going to do better than expected with Black voters, if not win them outright. Gordon rose to Assistant Chief and White to Sergeant in careers that spanned the department’s hardest years on race. For decades they were the two men South St. Pete knew to call when something went wrong. Their word travels in neighborhoods where a yard sign does not.

Lisset Hanewicz and Mike Harting — Sitting Council members rarely take sides in a Mayor’s race against a sitting Mayor. Council Chair Hanewicz did it in September, and the District 3 member and 3 Daughters Brewing founder followed a week later, giving Crist three of the eight votes on the dais before a single ballot was counted. With Driscoll term-limited and Hament and Linsey Grove arriving in January, Hanewicz and Harting are positioned to anchor a broad working majority for the new Mayor. That is what an early endorsement buys you.

Helen Levine — A veteran of St. Petersburg city politics who spent 30 years in City Hall, at USF St. Petersburg and in Tallahassee before opening Corcoran Partners’ St. Pete office, Levine knows every longtime stakeholder in the city, and she connected Crist and his campaign with a good many of them. Most had one thing in common: They want St. Pete taken off pause.

Frank Peterman — The former Representative and Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary was Crist’s first and most prominent endorsement, a faith leader with deep roots in South St. Pete who signed on before it was safe to. He was with Crist through the end, even after suffering a tragic loss in his family. That is loyalty, and Crist does not forget it.

Honorable mention

Jim Rimes — Twenty years after quarterbacking Crist’s run to the Governor’s Mansion, the Republican consultant may have played a critical role in Crist’s final campaign. Maybe. Sort of. Just don’t ask him. He will have to deny it, and he has practice: Rimes signed the letter of former Crist staffers who endorsed Ron DeSantis over their old boss in 2022. What he cannot deny is consulting on the re-elections of Gus Bilirakis, who outran the Republican ticket on both sides of the county line in a redrawn CD 12, and of Nick DiCeglie, the Senate’s new Majority Leader. Not a bad year for a man who was never there.

Eric Johnson — The South Florida Democratic consultant has worked on and off with Crist for years, and his Primary night this year required more than one victory speech, as I noted in August. But this campaign may have been his most challenging, because he was asked to do two jobs. The first was helping Crist win. The second came from Michelle: keep a certain news website publisher in line. As I wrote on Election Day, I all but insisted that St. Pete Shines hire an outside consultant so she would get the best counsel possible and so I wouldn’t just wear her down. Johnson’s most important role may have been vetoing my many bad ideas. Did I ever tell you about the Hold Your Nose political committee I wanted to launch, encouraging Republicans to literally hold their noses and vote for Crist over Welch? You haven’t, because Eric Johnson did his job.

Kevin Sweeny — The St. Augustine-based consultant ran field for Crist, and he has been preaching the same gospel for a decade. After carrying a St. Johns County referendum in 2015, he told Florida Politics that “you’ve got to get out there and sweat, and knock on doors.” Crist won by 24. Now I see what the fuss is all about. Field wins.

Susan McGrath — The former Chair of the Pinellas County Democratic Executive Committee was one of the first names I listed in July when Welch’s coalition started crumbling. A former Republican Governor running as a Democrat in a nonpartisan race needed partisan bona fides, and the woman whose job was once holding the county party together gave him hers. Then she did the unglamorous part, manning the front desk of a very busy campaign headquarters. Not every campaign gets a former party Chair to answer the phone.

Andy Oliver — The progressive minister’s endorsement was key to Crist’s coalition. Wait. Oliver didn’t endorse. But anyone who heard the Allendale United Methodist pastor from the pulpit, or read his op-eds and social media posts, knew he was unhappy with the Mayor he vocally supported in 2021. In July, Oliver took to the Times to say Welch had misled voters about the city’s 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which Welch had called an order from the Governor. “‘We had no choice’ is not leadership,” Oliver wrote, and as I put it at the time, it read like a eulogy from a friend. His positions on the ICE agreement and against the city’s Flock cameras were intellectual firepower against Welch, and Oliver was among the progressive leaders who gave white urban Democrats permission to vote against the Mayor. He never had to say the name.

Brian Ballard, Ron Book and Nick Iarossi — Three of the biggest names in the governmental affairs business wrote early and significant checks to Crist for no reason other than relationships that go back to his years in state government, long before anyone needed anything from a St. Petersburg Mayor. Ballard Partners’ $60,000 to St. Pete Shines was the largest contribution from any Tallahassee shop. Their Tampa Bay surrogates did the rest. Ana Cruz for Ballard and Justin Day for Iarossi worked tirelessly to raise money for the campaign.

Jonathan Stanton — Five years ago he was one of Welch’s biggest supporters in the developer community. This year he switched to Crist, and the switch was validation of the argument that ran through the whole race: Welch just didn’t call folks back. Look for Stanton to build a lot of fire stations in the years to come.

Mixed bag

Thompson Whitney Blake — Right now, Blake is in the driver’s seat. Welch picked his team’s Burg Bid in July to redevelop the 86-acre Trop site, choosing it over eight other proposals, including the Cathie Wood-backed plan that started the whole scramble. The pitch is big. A $275 million offer for the city’s land, the most of any bidder, with a 13-acre park at the center, a permanent home for the Woodson African American Museum, more than 3,600 income-restricted housing units on and off the site, and $8 billion in projected investment over a 15-year buildout. Blake, a St. Pete native who has been buying and building downtown since the early 2000s, stayed pure during the campaign, with no endorsement and no checks to either side. That was the smart play, and it is why he is still standing. But there is a reason this isn’t a clean win. Welch’s selection is not a done deal. It kicked off roughly a year of negotiations that end with term sheets in front of the City Council, likely next Summer, meaning the Mayor who picked him will be out of office. Crist campaigned on a blue-ribbon review of Welch’s pick, with more parks, more green space and more Council involvement. In this town, every resident has an idea for what to do with that land. I’m not even sure it stays the Gas Plant District. Blake told the city in July that “we could have 10 more Mayors, 10 more RFPs and 10 more processes.” He is about to find out how right he was. I would not be surprised to see him dramatically revise the plan to suit the new Mayor’s vision, and he would be wise to get there first. Blake is on the clock like no other figure in the city.

Adrienne Bogen — You could easily hang an L around her neck. She chaired Welch’s most recent political committee, St. Petersburg Progress, and his previous Pelican Political Action Committee. She was the Welch campaign’s chief advisor, strategist and surrogate, and her candidate lost by a painful 24 percentage points. But Bogen comported herself with decency and resolve in the face of an unrelentingly negative situation, and that counts for something in this business. She was dealt a losing hand from the start. The committee she inherited had been robbed of $207,000 before the campaign even began. Her candidate was outraised better than 4-to-1. By the end, there were whispers that Welch was reluctant to even campaign, and she somehow managed to at least keep the lights on. A look at the finance reports leaves me wondering whether she even got her final paycheck. It is not clear what else Bogen could have done to right the ship. Bogen is no rookie. She ran field for Crist’s 2014 race for Governor and for Kriseman’s 2017 re-election, then ran statewide field for Philip Levine in 2018. Her husband, Scott Kosanovich, a capable operative who was Florida State Director for Michael Bloomberg’s 2020 campaign and ran Florida House Victory before that, did about as much as a person can do from the sidelines. Both of them will work again. Neither should have to answer for this one.

Copley Gerdes — Yes, the District 1 Council member endorsed Welch, and the Mayor who endorsed him two years ago just lost by 24 points. But the Gerdes family is to the west side of St. Petersburg what the Starks are to the North. His father, Charlie Gerdes, held the same City Council seat for eight years. Copley took it in a 2021 Special Election and ran unopposed in 2024. That is not a seat a new Mayor wants on the other side of the dais. If Crist can pull Gerdes to his side, and Gerdes has every reason to let him, then Gerdes, Hanewicz, Harting and Hament are the core of a working majority on the City Council. Backing the loser costs you nothing when the winner needs your vote.

Deborah Figgs-Sanders — The District 5 Council member was one of Welch’s most ardent and visible supporters. She endorsed him in March, citing his “steady hand” on the Gas Plant District, and she was still standing with him in September, when I noted she was among his remaining supporters as most of the city’s Democratic establishment moved on. Her candidate lost by 24. But Figgs-Sanders remains on the Council, and with Gerdes, Hanewicz, Harting and Hament as the likely core of a Crist majority, she represents what could be the key fifth vote on a long list of Crist and Council priorities, from the Gas Plant to how the $600 million bond gets spent. South St. Pete is her district, and the new Mayor’s success there runs through her. Figgs-Sanders needs to get over Welch’s loss quickly, mend fences and take advantage of her position. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Biggest villain

Yolanda Brown — It is hard to put into words how much damage one person did to Welch’s campaign. Brown was the Treasurer of The Pelican Political Action Committee, the committee built to re-elect the Mayor. Between Aug. 6 and Oct. 30 of last year, she moved $207,500 out of it in eight transactions, including two transfers totaling $125,000 on the first day, to a company she controlled. The committee did not catch it until January. When it did, Brown sent a receipt showing the money had been wired back. It never arrived. The theft left the committee with just over $30,000 at the moment Welch was gearing up to run, and he was effectively broke for much of the campaign that followed. In September, Brown pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud in Philadelphia for a scheme that ran from 2022 to 2026 and took more than $1.4 million from roughly 20 clients, a Pennsylvania congressional campaign among them. She faces up to 20 years when she is sentenced in January. The money was the smaller part of the damage. No piece of negative mail and no television ad from the other side hurt Welch as much as the message this sent. A Mayor already being hammered for swiping into City Hall 34% of the time had been asleep at the wheel while someone walked off with his supporters’ money. Making it worse, Welch is an accountant. The committee’s Chair later praised Welch for coming forward and helping expose the wider fraud, and that is fair. It is also beside the point. Devastating is the only word for it.

Biggest loser

Rene Flowers — Not sure there is a bigger loser out of the St. Petersburg Mayor’s race who wasn’t on the ballot than the Pinellas County Commissioner. Flowers went into this race widely regarded as one of the leading figures in the community, not just the Black community. She is the first Black woman on the County Commission. She’s a former School Board member. She previously served as President of the Florida League of Cities. And since June, she has been the President of the Florida Association of Counties (FAC). But she woke up Wednesday with FAC having lost Amendment 3, which passed with 62% and which the association itself pegged at a $3.6 billion hit to Florida’s 67 counties in its first year. The loss will be devastating to Flowers’ colleagues on County Commissions throughout the state. That is the part that wasn’t her fault. The rest is. She spent the entirety of the Mayor’s race posting several times a day for Welch, whose campaign and political committee were paying her consulting firm for community outreach. She filmed Black Santa standing near a Welch sign and claimed him for the Mayor. Santa was there for Crist. She posted two critics’ profile photos under the caption “Smile, you made Rene’s page!” and called them racists without showing the comments, which became a written complaint to her six fellow Commissioners about one of their own. Back in March, I told her it was fine to support Welch, just don’t feign surprise when he draws a challenge. She didn’t take the hint. If it gets to the point where someone like Ed Hooper has to come online and warn you to knock it off, that’s when you know you’ve gone too far on social media. Welch lost by 24 points. Flowers is still a Commissioner, for now. It is widely speculated that her antics in this race will draw her a Primary challenge in 2028.

Losers

St. Petersburg’s Black community — This one is difficult to write. The city’s first Black Mayor losing his bid for re-election is not the hard part. The hard part is that the Crist-Welch race deeply divided the Black community, and not only at the ballot box. Start there, though. In March, Black voters gave Welch a 55% to 16% lead over Crist. By late June it was 42% to 30%. In the Primary, Welch’s wins were concentrated in the majority-Black precincts of South St. Pete, and even there Crist was taking a quarter to a third of the vote. The last St. Pete Polls survey before the General Election had Crist ahead among Black voters, 45% to 41%. Precinct results will likely show he won the Black vote outright, and they will certainly show he carried several precincts that are at least half Black. The race played out on social media, in community forums and at events throughout South St. Petersburg. Many, but not all, of the city’s Black elected officials were with Welch, especially early. Then Rouson, a man the community trusts as much as anyone, gave a dual endorsement in June and by July was in an ad saying he would vote for Crist. That told other Black elected officials that they too did not have to be with Welch. What followed was all but heartbreaking. Social media became a battle zone of insults between factions inside the Black community, neighbor-against-neighbor, church-against-church, with a County Commissioner calling residents racists for backing the other guy. Call it a civil war. It is already a difficult situation in South St. Petersburg. There needs to be a lot of healing after this election within a very proud segment of this city, and it has to start now, because the next Mayor’s success in those neighborhoods depends on it.

Esther Sanni — The President of the St. Petersburg NAACP branch oversaw the first debate of the Mayor’s race in June, and it was a terrible one. Five of six candidates spent several hours in a library auditorium next to one empty chair. Jim Large skipped it over what he called Sanni’s continued insinuation that he is a racist. Afterward, the branch graded the candidates. Welch got an “A-.” Crist finished fourth of five. Large got an “F” for not showing up. Voters watched the same debate and reached a different conclusion. Crist took 35% in the Primary and 62% in the General Election. Sanni spent the months in between as a frequent, and often unhinged, critic of Crist. The branch has been here before. Its 2016 report card gave Crist an “F” and Jolly an “A” in their congressional race. Crist won that one, too. Hopefully her members undo her as President soon.

J.C. Pritchett — The Reverend took the pulpit at Mt. Zion Progressive Missionary Baptist Church in June, at the event where Welch rolled out his faith leader endorsements, and said of Crist: “He’s built his career on the back of Black and brown people supporting him.” With friends like these, who needs enemies, he asked. Many of the pastors in that room had gathered in the same sanctuary four years earlier to back Crist for Governor. It has been downhill for Pritchett ever since. In July, as Executive Director of the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club, he opened the forum Crist skipped by noting that “one of the candidates chose not to participate.” That candidate won the Primary by nearly 15 points and the General Election by 24. By late October St. Pete Polls had Welch trailing among the very Black voters Pritchett claimed to speak for. Pritchett has joked lately that he is buying a house outside the city. For Tiger Bay’s Executive Director, that might not be a bad idea.

Jim Large — The former St. Pete Fire Chief had a surprisingly strong Primary finish, but did nothing to capitalize on it in the General Election, leaving him likely with no role in the upcoming Crist administration. Large declined to endorse Crist, though he also declined to endorse Welch, arguing he didn’t think he should tell voters whom to vote for. It was a foolhardy calculation. Large ran a competent campaign that did well at attracting Republican voters uncomfortable with casting a ballot for any of Crist, Brandi Gabbard or Welch in the Primary. Crist wound up winning most of those votes anyway, but Large left an opportunity on the table to negotiate for his endorsement, which could have handed Crist Republican support quicker and with fewer resources put into it. Had he done that, he would have likely been looking forward to having a voice in city politics for the next four years. Now, it’s more likely the retired Fire Chief stays retired.

Doyle Walsh — Walsh can earn his way out of this column. If he smooths the path to a seamless transition between now and January, he will have done the city a service, and I will say so. But as Chief of Staff to Welch, he carries the stain of the Mayor’s 24-point loss and, more than that, of a City Hall that came to be perceived as ineffectual. Walsh took the job in September 2022, when Welch eliminated the Deputy Mayor title after his first one resigned, and he was the man running the building through the Rays deal that collapsed, two hurricanes, the 34% keycard number and a campaign year in which the administration seemed to answer every problem with another acronym. Chiefs of Staff get the blame when the boss is out of the building. The next 10 weeks are his chance to be remembered for something else.

Chris Steinocher — The St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce and its President and CEO were among the biggest losers of the night. Steinocher has run the Chamber since 2011, after 17 years at the Tampa Bay Partnership, and he spent much of the last two years carrying water for Welch despite the warning signs. The Chamber called the Welch-Rays Gas Plant deal a grand slam. Steinocher told the City Council that the Chamber’s support for the Mayor and his deal was unanimous. Then the deal died and the team pointed itself across the Bay. Welch lost 62%-38%, and Steinocher must now build a relationship from scratch with Mayor-elect Crist while the Downtown Partnership and the St. Petersburg Economic Development Corporation are already well positioned. Amendment 3 compounded the damage. Steinocher made defeating it his personal mission and pushed the Chamber board to oppose it over the objections of several volunteer leaders; the “no” recommendation went out to members over his signature on Oct. 7. The amendment passed with 62% support. None of this is new. Back in 2018, I asked whether a handful of members on a Tallahassee trip was really the best the Chamber could do with USF St. Petersburg’s independence on the line. As a former Speaker once said, “The St. Pete Chamber is irrelevant.” It looks like that will remain true for some time.

Michele Rayner — The soon-to-be former Representative who lost her Senate bid in August put in lots of effort, but didn’t see a lot of results. Rayner gave up her House seat to run for Senate District 16 and lost the Primary to Fentrice Driskell, nearly 60%-40%. She backed Welch hard and stayed with him to the end while most of the city’s Democratic establishment moved to Crist. She also backed Democrat Angie Nixon in the U.S. Senate Primary, and Nixon won it before losing to Republican Ashley Moody by 3 points. Rayner leaves the House this month after her own loss, a loss in the Mayor’s race and a loss in the U.S. Senate race, her one local win being Hament in District 2.

Ashley Bauman — The Mercury Public Affairs Managing Director handled communications for Welch while splitting her time with Buckhorn’s comeback campaign for Tampa Mayor, and she should thank her lucky stars she has the Buckhorn race to look forward to. Bauman is good at what she does. She ran communications for the City of Tampa under Buckhorn and Jane Castor, and she knows every reporter in the market. That was the problem. For long stretches of this race, all Welch had going for him were the stories Bauman could gin up with reporters who need her for other items, and it did not go unnoticed how she used that access. It is a card you can play only so many times before people start counting. Buckhorn’s path back to City Hall gets harder by the month, and the people writing about it are the same ones she spent a year working.

The police and firefighter unions — The Sun Coast Police Benevolent Association (PBA) and the St. Petersburg Association of Fire Fighters, IAFF Local 747, stood with Welch at City Hall the day he filed for re-election in February. The PBA’s Sasha Lohn called him a “reliable partner.” Local 747 President Rick Pauley was “proud to endorse.” When Crist pledged a 0.4-mill property tax cut in June, the unions’ leaders warned it could hurt staffing, equipment and emergency response, and in July they put their names on a Times op-ed vouching for the current Mayor on public safety. Backing the wrong horse is survivable. The problem is the math. Amendment 3 passed with 62%, and the property tax dollars it takes off the table are the dollars that pay for police and fire. Public safety already accounts for a quarter of the city’s operating budget, and both unions locked in three-year contracts last Fall with 5% and 6% raises running through 2028. Whoever won on Tuesday was going to be looking hard at those numbers. Now the man doing the looking is the one they spent a year campaigning against.

The Realtor mafia — The Suncoast Tampa Association of Realtors threw in late for Gabbard, and I thought at the timethe surge might carry her into the runoff. It didn’t. Gabbard finished fourth in the Primary, a fraction of a point behind Large. A few local Realtors did worse damage to themselves. Dan Casper, Jim Longstreth and Bobby Poth, among others, were so vicious toward Crist online, for months, that they should be worried about how they are now perceived in an industry that runs on public reputation and word of mouth. Sixty-two percent of the city just voted for the man they spent the year insulting. Those people buy houses, too.

The Woodson Museum — Amendment 3 passed. The Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum of Florida still does not have its forever home, seven years after Kriseman handed it $1 million, 5.5 acres and a $27 million fundraising assignment. It has raised $7.7 million and paused fundraising in 2024. Its path to a new building now runs through Blake’s Burg Bid, which pledges $10 million for the museum only if the city finishes negotiating a deal Crist has promised to put under review. And the museum’s Executive Director, Terri Lipsey Scott, spent the campaign as one of Welch’s most outspoken defenders and one of Crist’s most outspoken critics. She was standing up front at the first debate in June alongside Flowers, the two of them working the room for the Mayor. Her building now depends on a developer deal in limbo and a new Mayor whose election she campaigned against, in a city that just lost property tax revenue. Do the math.

Shane Strum — I don’t want this to go unreported. Of all the prominent former Crist staffers, the most prominent one who neither donated to Crist nor reached out to help was his former Chief of Staff. Strum ran Crist’s Governor’s Officeand was still there when Crist left the Republican Party in 2010. He went on to the same job under DeSantis, and he is now making a small fortune running Broward Health, about $2.43 million last year in salary, bonuses and a car allowance, with Memorial Healthcare System added to his portfolio in September. Plenty of people who worked for Crist a long time ago found a way to send a check or make a call this year.

Around the bay

While this column is St. Pete-specific, what happens elsewhere in Tampa Bay often affects the city. So let’s take a look at some winners and losers around the rest of the region.

Winners

Tampa Bay Rays — The team had already won big when the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County approved a stadium deal for a new ballpark to be located at the existing Hillsborough College Dale Mabry campus. Election Day delivered more wins. The only two “no” votes from the Hillsborough County Commission on the stadium deal came from Commissioners Joshua Wostal and Donna Cameron Cepeda. Cameron Cepeda lost her seat in the August Primary to fellow Republican Stacy Hahn, and Hahn went on to lose to Democrat Neil Manimala. Rodriguez ousted Wostal. If there are going to be any last-minute shenanigans to knock the Rays off track on their stadium saga again, those defeats likely won’t be the reason.

Danny Burgess and Nick DiCeglie — One of the first decisions made anywhere in Florida after the polls closed was Senate President-designate Jim Boyd’s naming of his leadership team on Thursday, and two of the five names were from Tampa Bay. Burgess, the Zephyrhills Republican, is the new Rules Chair, the job that decides which bills reach the floor and which die in a drawer. DiCeglie, the Indian Rocks Beach Republican, is Majority Leader, the job that runs the floor once the bills get there. Boyd is a Bradenton guy, so the gavel itself is in the neighborhood. But neither Pinellas nor Pasco has a Speaker or a President of its own in the pipeline, and after Boyd, the Senate line of succession runs to Panama City. Having two Senators at the leadership table is the next best thing, and it is extraordinarily important for the region this cycle in particular. DeSantis is expected to call a Special Session before he leaves office in January to write the implementing language for Amendment 3, the measure every local budget is about to feel. Whatever that bill looks like, and whatever room it leaves cities like St. Petersburg to maneuver, it goes through Burgess’s Rules Committee and across DiCeglie’s floor.

Josie Tomkow — It may be surprising to see someone who lost a Senate race on the winners list, and Tomkow lost the same one twice. Democrat Brian Nathan beat her by 409 votes in the March Special Election for Senate District 14, a race the prediction markets had her winning 94 times out of 100, and then by more than 4 points in Tuesday’s rematch, with more than $1.8 million on hand and the Republican Senate machine behind her. That is a brutal year by any measure. But if you know Tomkow and her husband, Tom Piccolo of SIMWINS, you know there is a development in the Tomkow-Piccolo household that matters more than any seat in Tallahassee, and it is going to make their lives so much better. Tomkow was 22 when she won her House seat and 27 when she was running the PreK-12 budget. Wilton Simpson once said she was like a niece to him. She is well respected inside the process, and I expect her back on the horse sooner rather than later. In the meantime, she has a better reason than most to sit one out.

Max Goodman — The Sarasota consultant was my Top consultant of the Primary in August, and he closed the year the same way. Goodman quarterbacked Sydney Gruters to a win in Florida’s 16th Congressional District, the newly drawn seat that runs from Manatee and Sarasota up into downtown and south St. Petersburg, on a night when the blue wave was hitting congressional Republicans across Florida. The new map was supposed to net the GOP four seats. It netted none. Democrats flipped CD 22, and five Republicans woke up Wednesday clinging to leads of 2 points or less. Gruters won by more than 4, 51% to 47%, over former Sarasota Mayor Kelly Kirschner, in a district the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had listed as in play and where Kirschner carried Pinellas. She got there by winning a contentious three-way Primary, taking 64% over Eddie Speir and Ed Pope, and then a General Election that tightened the moment the national environment turned. Goodman’s television ads were some of the most inventive and creative in the market, and he hammered Kirschner relentlessly, a candidate who, as I noted in September, posted his own wish list of ads on his website for national Democrats to pay for. Goodman did all of it in his first year of fatherhood. I would say it is a good time for Max to take a nap. But as one of the chief advisers to Joe Gruters, who is likely to be re-elected Chair of the Republican National Committee in January, there is no rest for the weary.

Anna Paulina Luna’s coaching tree — Luna herself survived, holding CD 13 over Democrat Leela Gray by less than a percentage point districtwide in a seat the new map was supposed to make safer. That alone would have been enough for the week. Then her district director, Sam Wilson, won big in the runoff for Clearwater City Council Seat 5, taking nearly 55% over Mark Bunker, the Scientology critic attempting a comeback, with his boss’s backing and endorsements from Bilirakis, every Republican on the Pinellas County Commission, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri and Clearwater Mayor Bruce Rector. Wilson will resign from Luna’s office to take the seat. In a county that just voted for Jolly and Nixon at the top of the ticket, the Luna operation went 2-for-2.

Losers

Danny Alvarez’s bank account — Democrat Ashley Herrmann, backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), upset the Republican Representative in House District 69, a Hillsborough seat he carried with 58% two years ago. The margin was 2,237 votes. Herrmann will become the first DSA member of the Legislature. He finished the race with more than $626,000 sitting unspent between his two accounts: more than $437,000 in his political committee, Friends of Danny Alvarez, and more than $189,000 in his campaign account. He thought he didn’t need it. Spend half of it on mail and early-vote turnout, and he is probably headed back to Tallahassee. Instead the money sits there, and so does he.

Michael Owen — The Apollo Beach Republican sponsored HB 4029, the bill that put Referendum 2 on the Hillsborough ballot. The referendum kills the three countywide seats, expands the Commission from seven to nine single-member districts and redraws every line before 2028. The Hillsborough GOP put it on the slate card, and Republican Commissioners Chris Boles, Ken Hagan, Christine Miller and Wostal backed it even after the county’s own Charter Review Board declined to recommend it. Owen wrote in the Times that it would bring government closer to the people. Democrats called it a partisan power grab. Presumably the Republicans behind it assumed a 5-2 GOP board would be drawing nine districts in its own favor. The referendum squeaked through with 52%. Then the rest of the ballot came in. Democrats won all four Commission races, with Wostal losing his countywide seat to Rodriguez by a dozen points, Manimala taking the open seat Cameron Cepeda lost in the Primary and Democratic incumbents Harry Cohen and Gwen Myers winning re-election, giving the Democrats a 4-3 advantage. That majority will hold the pen when the nine districts get drawn, with a deadline of Oct. 1, 2027. Oops.

Moms for Liberty — The Pinellas County School Board was supposed to be the group’s beachhead in Tampa Bay. In 2022, DeSantis and Moms for Liberty helped elect Dawn Peters and Stephanie Meyer to the Board. Four years later, Meyer chose not to run again, and Peters, who spent her term distancing herself from the group and did not seek its endorsement this time, lost the countywide District 3 seat to Curtis Campogni by 712 votes and waived the recount. Campogni ran with backing from the teachers union, SEIU and the Times. The Board that Moms for Liberty was going to remake now has none of its 2022 class left on it. The group’s candidates have been losing ground in Florida since the 2024 Primaries. In Pinellas, the ground is gone.