St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch defended his first-term record against four challengers who want to take his job Tuesday night during the first mayoral debate, hosted by the local branch of the NAACP.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will keep my promise to lead St. Pete to principled and inclusive progress in the second term,\u201d Welch said in his opening statement.<\/p>\n
Those challengers include former Florida governor and Pinellas congressman Charlie Crist, who says Welch failed to deliver on a promise to redevelop Tropicana Field and the Gas Plant District.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re running against this current mayor because we have some disappointments or concerns, a lot of people in the city do,\u201d Crist said. \u201cYou talk about what’s going on in the Gas Plant area. What’s changed in five years since you’ve been mayor?\u201d<\/p>\n
Welch countered that if not for the 2024 hurricanes, the Gas Plant Deal, which would\u2019ve committed more than $700 million in St. Pete funds to build a new stadium and mixed-use district, would be well underway, and the Rays would be staying in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe signed 12 agreements, and then after the hurricanes they came back and said, \u2018We need more money to stay here,\u2019\u201d he responded. \u201cI said, ‘ Not another dime.\u2019 We were a traumatized community.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. Pete councilmember Brandi Gabbard says she’s ready to lead because of what she did after the hurricanes flooded much of her district.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy office essentially served as a triage office for the permitting department for, well, we’re still doing it today,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat are we, 20 months after hurricanes Helene and Milton?\u201d<\/p>\n
While jail administrator Maria Scruggs touted her experience, saying, \u201cI am the only candidate that is sitting up here that has been certified by the state of Florida as a public manager,\u201d realtor Kevin Batdorf pivoted back to hurricanes, saying Welch failed in his response.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to have crews on standby to collect debris, just like Duke [Energy] has crews on standby to fix the electric power grid,\u201d Batdorf said.<\/p>\n
The mayor fired back, saying the city had to remove two million cubic yards of debris.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore debris than we’ve ever moved, and we got it done in 90 days,\u201d Welch replied. \u201cIt wasn’t a time for petty name-calling; it was a time to stand on principle, and that’s what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
The election is in August with a possible runoff in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch defended his first-term record against four challengers who want to take his job…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3347,2346,23856,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-302816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-charlie-crist","tag-ken-welch","tag-mayoral-debate","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}