When St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch officially selects Blake Investment Partners’ The Burg Bid for the Historic Gas Plant redevelopment project, he’ll be giving the finger to Cathie Wood, and laying the foundation for his own potential political demise.

Multiple sources said Welch would be selecting The Burg Bid, one of four proposals short-listed after a six-month process that saw plenty of pushback, including a St. Pete City Council resolution calling on Welch to delay selection until after a site study is complete.

Welch ignored the resolution. And in selecting Blake, Welch is opening the door for a new campaign cudgel, even as he will no doubt pitch the selection as a win for St. Pete delivered by his administration as he asks voters to install him as Mayor for another four years.

But try though he might to turn this lemon into ice cold, delicious lemonade, the situation is more likely to be sour and leave a bad taste in developers’ mouths.

That’s where the Cathie Wood snub comes in.

While you won’t see her name or any of her direct business interests listed in Welch’s campaign finance records, sources tell Florida Politics Wood has donated a significant amount of money to Welch’s affiliated political committee. With Wood’s pitch through the Ark Ellison Horus collaboration denied, you can bet that money train will head back to the station.

But in its place, watch for there to suddenly be an influx of cash from entities related to Blake Investment Partners. If true, the negative campaign mailers write themselves.

“Ken Welch works for developers, not you.”

I can also hear the television ads.

“Ken Welch sells out to the highest bidder. Voters can’t trust him with their tax dollars.”

None of this even touches on the unfortunate calculation Blake seems to have made in betting on Welch. If ever the phrase “win the battle, lose the war” is ever relevant, it’s here. The team may have earned Welch’s selection, but it’s becoming more and more unlikely that his selection will not matter.

While Welch had hoped to finalize a development deal before facing voters for re-election, the St. Pete City Council learned in April that a final vote on development plans for the Tropicana Field site would not happen until next Summer, after the mayoral election has been decided. With Welch trailing both in polls and in fundraising, it’s entirely possible a new Mayor will be installed before the City Council’s vote.

If Blake Investment Partners believes a new Mayor will stick with a development team that worked to elect their opposition, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell them.

Exhibit A: Welch himself scrapped development plans for the site established under his predecessor, former Mayor Rick Kriseman. Welch never said it was because it was Kriseman’s idea, but it was pretty clear.

And back to Wood. She’s not a person you want to cross.

Wood founded Ark Invest in 2014. She moved the $30 billion global asset management firm from New York to St. Pete in 2021. The firm has celebrity status among the investor class and technophiles, taking on aggressive investments sometimes seen as risky bets.

As a billionaire running a multibillion-dollar investment firm, she also has the sort of influence that Mayors need in their corner. And for Wood, giving back to the community she now calls home is a top priority.

This is, after all, the same woman who included Moffitt Cancer Center as a strategic partner in the Ark Ellison Horus pitch for the Gas Plant site. Moffitt was included long after Welch scrapped plans to bring Moffitt to St. Pete. Under Wood’s pitch, Moffitt would have been part of colocation space allowing entrepreneurs and startups to encourage cross collaboration between digital health and cancer research innovators.

It wouldn’t have been quite the same as the plan Welch had axed in 2022, but it would have delivered a win for cancer research on this side of Tampa Bay. What made the juxtaposition between Welch’s scrapped Moffitt plan and the one included in Wood’s development pitch most interesting as it relates to this year’s mayoral campaign is that Welch killed the first plan over a lack of affordable housing.

Yet last year, the City Council approved a plan to instead build two 31-story towers with a total of 824 apartment units, none of which will be designated as affordable housing. While it was far less than the 120 affordable units Welch had sought in the deal, Moffitt’s proposal had included 35 affordable units. That’s much better than none.

Taken individually, none of these things cripple Welch’s campaign. Taken together, evidence is growing that Welch’s campaign is in crisis mode.

Wheeling and dealing with developers in politics is nothing new. But the concerns so often hurled at politicians by those seeking campaign finance reform — that elected officials become beholden to their top donors — aren’t usually so well supported by a candidate.

Welch’s actions are, essentially, saying the quiet part out loud. He got a bunch of cash from Wood and her various entities, then went looking for more. With the checks already Wood cashed, Welch can now look to Blake.

The pattern is becoming clear. The Welch administration makes a knee-jerk decision, then pivots after they see the writing on the wall.

Look no further than the start of this developer selection process last October. Welch initially opened a proposal window of just 30 days, a time frame developers said wasn’t adequate to fully develop pitches, especially not with the lack of criteria or benchmarks provided in Welch’s announcement.

And scrapping development plans is its own pattern. Moffitt wasn’t the only project to fall victim to Welch’s scrutiny. Welch also canceled Kriseman’s selection to build a new municipal services center (MSC) across the street from City Hall. It’s still unclear what the future of the city’s current aging MSC building is since Welch announced restarting the process in his first year.

To sum it all up, Welch has made a selection that will only stick if he’s re-elected, which is becoming increasingly in doubt. He’s made an enemy of one of the city’s top boosters. And he’s adding to frustration among the development community that promises made are not always promises kept.

All three are, on their own, easy negatives for opposition to exploit. Taken collectively, they’re all but disqualifying.

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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 Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics.