Ken Welch is a clear and present danger to the city of St. Petersburg.

That is the conclusion I have reached after a career of following and writing about St. Pete politics and a year of intensely monitoring city government.

This column is not about documenting that position. My previous writing, either on this website or on social media, and the reporting of other outlets offer an abundant record of proof.

No, this column is an open plea to the St. Petersburg City Council and to the dedicated employees of city government: Do whatever you legally can to slow down, mitigate, and perhaps even disrupt the final days of the failed Welch administration.

Instead of a deep state, think of yourselves as the deep city.

I understand “clear and present danger” is an extreme phrase, as if Welch were an existential threat to the city and its residents. Fortunately, that’s not St. Petersburg. As I noted before so many times, St. Petersburg succeeds despite its elected officials.

But as we barrel toward Election Day, Welch continues to make the kind of decisions that damage the city, while doing nothing to stop the bleeding.

It may seem silly to point to this as the reason I am writing today, but the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s Emma Behrmann and Erik Spanberg reported Wednesday that St. Petersburg will lose the Women’s Tennis Association headquarters after 35 years.

The WTA, founded by Billie Jean King in 1973, has been based in St. Pete since 1991. More than 50 of its employees work in Tampa Bay. Charlotte landed the WTA Finals for 2027 through 2029, and the headquarters move came with the deal. Charlotte’s city and county governments each put up $2.5 million, North Carolina kicked in an undisclosed sum from a major events fund financed by sports betting taxes, and WTA Chair Valerie Camillo praised the city for a “clarity of purpose and shared ambition” she said no other site matched. 

Meanwhile, the St. Pete Economic Development Corp. was not immediately available for comment.

Think about that. The WTA has been in St. Pete for three and a half decades, and all of a sudden it is leaving town. I’m sure there are reasons beyond Ken Welch’s incompetence. But it is another example of Welch and his allies at the St. Pete Chamber of Commerce being asleep at the wheel.

We lost the Rays. Jabil put a $500 million plant and nearly 1,200 jobs in North Carolina instead of here. These are city-defining losses.

Those are private businesses making decisions, and obviously Welch can’t control them. But just look at what his administration, under City Administrator Rob Gerdes, is doing with the Mahaffey Theater.

Four entertainment firms, including Live Nation, a national giant, want to manage the city-owned theater, Behrmann reported this week. Vinik Sports Group prepared a 23-page proposal and was told not to submit it, Ruth Eckerd Hall wrote the Mayor a letter, and Live Nation sent a term sheet that included a $2.5 million capital investment. The city rejected the lone bid from its first go-round and promised in April to reissue a request for proposals “as quickly as possible.” It never did.

And yet the administration is determined to give that deal to The Florida Orchestra, under a draft term sheet that has taxpayers paying $438,000 a year and covering all of the building’s insurance and overhead. 

No one outside Welch’s bubble understands that decision or the logic behind it.

Just like no one could understand Welch’s recent snubbing of Cathie Wood on the Deuces Rising project, where the administration chose what sources called the weakest of seven proposals for the 22nd Street South site: 126 housing units on a 99-year lease at $55,000 a year, over a competing plan with 320 units and a $5 million purchase price.

The sum of all of these terrible decisions leads to a few conclusions.

First, Ken Welch has never been an executive leader. He is a bureaucrat. He is, to borrow from Col. Kurtz, an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill. 

Welch would rather tinker with his motorcycle in his garage than lead this city.

Unfortunately, he’s the Mayor for another three and a half months.

I wrote in my column about the Rays leaving that I have taken to quoting Obi-Wan Kenobi’s message to the surviving Jedi after Order 66. 

‘Do not return to the Temple … Trust in the Force … And in time, a new hope will emerge.’

That new hope has already emerged. It is St. Petersburg’s favorite son, Charlie Crist. 

The last St. Pete Polls survey of the Mayor’s race showed him up 25 points. Welch’s political committee has less than $9,000 in the bank, and his campaign account had less than $16,000 as of its last report. That’s less than $25,000 combined. 

Even if Welch had a record to defend and a message to communicate it, he does not have the resources to deliver it.

Welch is going to lose. But Welch will still be in charge of the city until January.

So I am publicly begging the members of the City Council who are not aligned with Ken Welch (you don’t even have to have endorsed Charlie Crist) to delay as much as you can. Bury his initiatives in committee. Don’t move forward with any more of his projects, and don’t fund any of his new requests. They will be undone, if not by the next City Council, then by the next Mayor.

And to the city employees who read this — I am going to pay to boost this post so that it is geofenced to the blocks around City Hall and the Municipal Services Center so that they do — slow it all down. 

Yes, keep showing up for work. But you know how to take a project that could be done in a week and drag it out for a month. You know how to paper over a decision, how to layer, how to use the bureaucracy to run out the clock on a Mayor who, one could be forgiven for suspecting, is a Manchurian candidate sent here from Tampa or Orlando to undo the progress of the last three decades.

Welch’s remaining supporters, Rene Flowers and Deborah Figgs-Sanders among them, will undoubtedly take umbrage at the call of this column and at its admittedly mean-spirited tone. I will not apologize for it. I am pissed.

Every day, we wake up to a new headline about something breaking in the city of St. Petersburg. The only response is Ken Welch’s gobbledygook of acronyms, or another Pillars for Progress statement. 

Does anyone know what the f*ck Welch is even talking about?

And again, this is not about the campaign. That is all but settled. Vote-by-mail ballots go out in about a week. Ken Welch is not going to change the minds of the nearly 80% of voters who picked someone else in the Primary. He is not going to win back the half of the city that disapproves of the job he is doing. But he can continue to do damage.

So please, those of you who truly love St. Petersburg, the people who have worked in City Hall for decades and whose names never show up in the newspaper: Become the deep city.

Trust in the Force.

—

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.