{"id":308005,"date":"2026-06-15T15:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T15:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/308005\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T15:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T15:28:09","slug":"charlie-crist-pac-drops-latest-ad-brutally-attacking-ken-welch-over-moffitt-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/308005\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Crist PAC drops latest ad, brutally attacking Ken Welch over Moffitt loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

The political committee supporting Charlie Crist for St. Petersburg Mayor is out with its latest ad, this one directly attacking incumbent Mayor Ken Welch\u00a0over his decision<\/a> not to move forward early in his tenure with a Moffitt Cancer Center-related development.<\/p>\n

The St. Pete Shines ad features Crist, a former Florida Governor and former U.S. Representative representing parts of St. Pete, describing the drive from St. Pete to Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwenty-three miles, 45 minutes of traffic right here,\u201d Crist says to open the ad as a rendering of a world class Moffitt Cancer Center appears on screen, only to disappear again. \u201cThis is where Moffitt was going to build a cancer center until Ken Welch\u2019s fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his first year in office, Welch\u00a0axed\u00a0a project<\/a>\u00a0that would have created a Moffitt Cancer Center campus in downtown. At the time, he said the proposal didn\u2019t include enough affordable housing. Under that rejected plan, the city would have sold land to the Moffitt team, including development partner TPA, at a significant discount.<\/p>\n

The Moffitt proposal was subject to review under the Community Benefits Advisory Council (CBAC) as part of the city\u2019s then-version of the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) process, which has since changed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At the time, Welch lamented that the Moffitt proposal began with just 10% affordable housing as part of its total project. Through negotiations, that number rose to 15% and later to 17.5%, though Welch was still not satisfied.<\/p>\n

Crist has directly rejected Welch\u2019s reasoning, leaning into a missed opportunity to give those who live in St. Pete and surrounding areas a closer option for cancer-related care. It was a primary talking point last week at the first debate<\/a> of the mayoral election cycle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the Moffitt Cancer Center. Their main purpose and goal \u2014 they\u2019re not contractors, not developers, they\u2019re not home builders \u2014 their purpose is to cure cancer. And we turned them down because they wouldn\u2019t build more housing units? What\u2019s going on? To me, that defies common sense,\u201d Crist said at the debate.<\/p>\n

He went on to describe the issue as personal, noting that everyone has \u201chad somebody we\u2019ve lost to cancer.\u201d The ad struck a similar tone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know what it\u2019s like to watch someone battle cancer firsthand. It happened in my family,\u201d Crist narrates as the ad shows an image of his late sister, Margaret Crist Wood, who died of cancer in 2015.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe last thing families need on the way to treatment is to have to fight traffic on the Howard Frankland, but Ken Welch didn\u2019t care about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ad ends on a final zinger, adding in another loss under Welch\u2019s tenure as Mayor.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe doesn\u2019t have the executive leadership to close the deal \u2014 not with Moffitt, not with the Rays, not for our city. St. Pete has been on pause. It\u2019s time to move forward,\u201d Crist says to close the 30-second spot.<\/p>\n

That dig, of course, references the deal with the Tampa Bay Rays to build a new stadium near downtown St. Pete that fell through after Hurricane Milton. The Rays are now in talks with the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County to build a new stadium on that side of Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n

The digital ad began running Monday on YouTube, promoted on Facebook and other social media channels.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Ed. Note:\u00a0Michelle Todd Schorsch\u00a0is the Chair of St. Pete Shines, a political committee expected to back Crist for St. Petersburg Mayor. Todd Schorsch is married to\u00a0Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The political committee supporting Charlie Crist for St. Petersburg Mayor is out with its latest ad, this one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3347,2346,48033,202,204,18455,203,37378,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-308005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-charlie-crist","tag-ken-welch","tag-moffitt-cancer-center","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-mayoral-election","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-pete-shines","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\/308005","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=308005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}