ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has filed to run for St. Petersburg mayor.<\/p>\n
He filled out the paperwork Monday afternoon at City Hall.<\/p>\n
Crist was governor from 2007-11, then served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2017-22. In that role, he represented the state\u2019s 13th District.<\/p>\n
He talked Monday about his ties to St. Pete and said he doesn’t consider the mayor’s post a downgrade.<\/p>\n
“I would never consider being in St. Pete a step down. I think it’s a step up,” he said. “I think it’s the most beautiful city in the world. My family lives here. As I said earlier, I grew up here. It’s where I went to high school. And I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for St. Pete to move forward faster and better.”<\/p>\n
Crist has represented both the Republican and Democratic party, and also served as an independent.<\/p>\n
Incumbent Mayor Ken Welch has filed to keep the post. He took office in 2022, replacing Rick Kriseman.<\/p>\n
St. Pete Councilwoman Brandi Gabbard has thrown her name into the running, along with community activist Maria Scrubbs.<\/p>\n
Kevin Batdorf, Paul Congemi and Jim Large have also filed to run.<\/p>\n
The election will be on Aug. 18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has filed to run for St. Petersburg mayor. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3140,274,115,596,99,275,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278],"class_list":["post-330328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-politics","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330328","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=330328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}