Former Gov. Charlie Crist, long expected to run for St. Petersburg Mayor, has officially filed for the race.

Crist filed to run Monday, setting up a competitive challenge to incumbent Mayor Ken Welch. A host of other candidates, who so far have significantly less cash on hand and have lower name recognition than the former Governor, are running as well.

“St. Pete has always been a city on the rise,” Crist told the Tampa Bay Times, who broke news about the official filing Monday. “I feel frankly, for the last four years or five, that the city’s been on a pause.”

Crist enters the race flush with cash in an affiliated political committee. St. Pete Shines raised more than $475,000 in the first quarter of 2026, bringing the committee’s total collections to more than $1.2 million. Of that haul, he had $1.1 million still on hand as of the end of March. 

Welch, meanwhile, raised just under $220,000 in the first quarter of 2026, leaving him so far underfunded for his re-election bid this year. The incumbent entered April with just under $193,000 on hand.

But Welch isn’t the only opponent already lagging behind Crist in the August Primary. Others running include former Shore Acres Neighborhood Civic Association President Kevin Batdorf, St. Pete City Council member Brandi Gabbard, former Fire Chief Jim Large, Orange County Corrections Administrative Supervisor Maria Scruggs and Paul Congemi, a candidate who previously ran and made headlines for telling an opponent to “go back to Africa.” 

Scruggs qualified for the race by petition Monday, the same day Crist filed. 

While the field is crowded, political onlookers expect the race to come down to Crist or Welch. The question seems less about who will make a runoff in November than whether Crist or Welch can seal the deal in the Primary by earning more than 50% of the vote. Doing so in a large field is uncommon, but early polling suggests it’s possible. 

A survey in late March found Crist leading the field with 23% support, compared to 19% for Welch. No other candidate approached double digit support, with Gabbard landing at 6% and Scruggs at 5%. The lower-polling candidates collectively secured 17% support. But when you consider that 42% of voters said they remained undecided, either Welch or Crist could still crack 50%. 

Crist has been mulling a bid for Mayor since late last year. He confirmed in mid-October that he was considering running after rumors had been churning for several weeks. This will be Crist’s eighth bid for public office in about two decades, including failed bids for U.S. Senate in 2010 and Governor in 2022. He lost the latter race to incumbent Republican Ron DeSantis by nearly 20 percentage points.

Crist’s political career dates back to the early ’90s, when he served in the Florida Senate as a Republican from 1993 until 1999. He left his seat early to run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate. He served two years as Florida Education Commissioner, then an elected post, and as Florida Attorney General from 2003 until he was elected Governor in late 2006.

Crist later lost another U.S. Senate bid in 2010, when he ran as an independent. He ran again for Governor in 2014, as a Democrat, losing to Republican Rick Scott. Crist won election to Florida’s 13th Congressional District in 2016, defeating then-Republican incumbent David Jolly, who is now running for Florida Governor as a Democrat. Amid unfavorable redistricting, Crist resigned his seat in Congress to run again for Governor, losing in 2022 to DeSantis.

Crist’s priorities for St. Petersburg include improving communication between St. Petersburg’s government and local residents, addressing affordability issues, improving hurricane response, smart economic development and creating pathways to long-term success through education.

Although the race is nonpartisan, both candidates are known Democrats and have supported one another in the past. Still Crist pulled no punches in the Tampa Bay Times article, criticizing Welch for poor communication and the termination of a deal to build a Moffitt Cancer Center campus downtown.

Crist said he can do better than Welch — a claim echoed by nearly every challenger in the field. But for the first time, Welch no longer leads the pack in the race for his own seat, with the former Governor’s official filing marking the true start of a high-stakes “Game of Thrones” for St. Petersburg’s most powerful seat.

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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.