That recall was a tax revolt on paper. Property taxes had jumped 22% one year and 13% the next. But everyone knew what it was really about: the city was spending $85 million to build a domed stadium for a baseball team that did not exist.<\/p>\n
A band of 14 activists, led by former state Rep. Dennis McDonald, wanted the whole Council gone. One of them was my maternal grandfather, Howard Bennett, a friend of the late Connie Kone, who would go on to serve on the St. Pete City Council and whose state Senate campaign was one of the first legislative races I worked on (doing so led me to The Mallard Group, in fact.)<\/p>\n
Another, Richard Preston, gathered more than 8,000 signatures demanding a referendum the Council refused to hold, and gave the effort its epitaph: \u201cIf there is a baseball team it will be in Tampa or Orlando. Mickey Mouse has more clout than St. Petersburg.\u201d<\/p>\n
The recall went nowhere. The dome went up anyway. Preston was wrong for 30 years before he was half right.<\/p>\n Baseball was already the family religion. My paternal grandfather was a master brewer at Anheuser-Busch, and when Gussie Busch \u2014 who bought the St. Louis Cardinals in 1953 and built his winter estate on Pass-a-Grille<\/a> to be near their spring training home \u2014 decamped to St. Pete Beach, the Schorsch family found its way there too. My grandfather knew two things cold: beer and Cardinals baseball.<\/p>\n As a boy, I went to spring training games at Al Lang Stadium, where the Cardinals and the Mets both played. In the spring of 1986, I sat in Vince Coleman\u2018s car while the reigning Rookie of the Year signed an autograph for me.<\/p>\n So, with an almost genetic disposition to baseball and an early exposure to politics, I have followed every home run and strikeout of the Stadium Saga. For two decades, it was nearly all strikeouts. The Twins said no in 1983. The A\u2019s drifted away in 1985. In 1988, the White Sox were as good as packed until Illinois lawmakers stopped the clock<\/a> \u2014 literally \u2014 past a midnight deadline to fund a new Comiskey Park.<\/p>\n The 1991 expansion went to Denver and Wayne Huizenga\u2018s Miami. In 1992, Vince Naimoli had the Giants bought for $115 million until National League owners blocked the sale<\/a> and took $100 million from a San Francisco group instead.<\/p>\n Baseball finally relented in 1995, and on Opening Day in 1998, few residents of St. Petersburg were more excited than I was.<\/p>\n Unlike so many others, I stayed excited through the franchise\u2019s most difficult years. I loved watching baseball at the ThunderDome, the Trop, whatever the stadium was named that season. I saw Cal Ripken Jr., Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter play there. I didn\u2019t care that it wasn\u2019t Wrigley or Fenway. It was major league baseball, and I walked in every time thinking what Ernie Banks always said: Let\u2019s play two.<\/p>\n I followed the team\u2019s politics as closely as its box scores, and living in New York taught me the hard lesson. There are literally millions of Yankees fans. There are maybe 100,000 Rays fans \u2014 call it twice that in a good September. How could Tampa Bay ever compete?<\/p>\n Eventually I came to a conclusion I still hold: the Rays exist, in part, so the Yankees and Red Sox have somewhere warm to play televised away games. The last decade of Rays baseball proves this is no Washington Generals operation. It\u2019s a business model.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s why I have long believed the true value of this franchise is not in a stadium. It could be in a studio. The absolute best stadium anyone could build for the Tampa Bay Rays is the most gorgeous television studio ever to host a sport.<\/p>\n Which brings me to something of an apology.<\/p>\n Seventeen years ago, I helped lead the campaign that kept the Rays from building a new ballpark at Al Lang<\/a> \u2014 the same field where I once sat in Vince Coleman\u2019s car. We beat a multimillion-dollar campaign with about $40,000 worth of grassroots activism and yard signs. Our message: why spend a billion dollars to move the team 16 blocks?<\/p>\n I deeply regret that work.<\/p>\n The Stadium Saga has not improved since. In fact, it got a lot worse when the hurricanes tore the roof off Tropicana Field. If it wasn\u2019t clear by then, the Rays were eventually going to move: to Tampa, or Orlando, or Nashville, or the lunar surface. The gaping hole in the Trop was a stark reminder that the team\u2019s destiny no longer lay in St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n And so it was bittersweet Friday to watch the Rays ink their deal with Tampa and Hillsborough County. County Commissioners voted 5-2 to approve their $796 million share<\/a>, a day after the Tampa City Council said yes 4-3<\/a>, binding both governments to a roughly $2.36 billion ballpark and redevelopment district at Hillsborough College, with the Rays covering the rest and aiming for Opening Day 2029.<\/p>\n Actually, it was worse than bittersweet. I love the Rays. I love that they\u2019re staying in Tampa Bay. I hate that St. Petersburg couldn\u2019t make it work. And I\u2019ll never forgive Ken Welch for undoing what Rick Kriseman had in place to keep the Rays in St. Pete. Think about it: had Welch left that deal alone, we would have simply knocked down the stadium after the hurricanes, and it\u2019s not inconceivable that the Rays would be opening a new ballpark in St. Petersburg in 2027.<\/p>\n Friday may have been the darkest day in St. Petersburg since the hurricanes, one of the darkest in the city\u2019s modern history outside of the riots that followed the 1996 police shooting of TyRon Lewis. It didn\u2019t help those of us who love the \u2018burg that our leading private citizen, Bill Edwards, died in the hours before the critical votes<\/a>.<\/p>\n I won\u2019t lie. Several times this weekend I watched those Instagram videos built on Obi-Wan Kenobi\u2019s message to the surviving Jedi after Order 66, the ones asking how it feels to live in America right now, visuals of hope cut against darker ones. <\/p>\n I\u2019ve been toying with a St. Pete version. It would show the Rays\u2019 leadership celebrating their deal signing while Kenobi\u2019s words play over it: \u201cThis is a warning and a reminder for any surviving Jedi. Trust in the Force. Do not return to the Temple. That time has passed, and our future is uncertain.\u201d<\/p>\n But Kenobi\u2019s message doesn\u2019t end there. We will each be challenged, he says \u2014 our trust, our faith, our friends. But we must persevere. And in time, a new hope will emerge.<\/p>\n At City Hall, I believe that new hope will be a new Mayor. For the Rays, I believe it has already emerged. From what everyone tells me, it is CEO Ken Babby, described by people close to him as exactly the right person to manage not just the construction of a stadium in Tampa, but the transition from St. Petersburg to Tampa.<\/p>\n Still, there will be a gaping hole in the heart of St. Petersburg for some time, no matter how beautiful whatever replaces the Trop turns out to be. Like so much of St. Petersburg right now, something must be destroyed for something to be created.<\/p>\n I share all of this so you know my bona fides. This issue is as important to me as any I write about. It is, I believe, in my DNA. And I do not take lightly the responsibility of calling these balls and strikes.<\/p>\n So here are my considered ideas about who won and who lost the Stadium Saga.<\/p>\n WINNERS<\/p>\n Ken Babby \u2014 The new Rays CEO opened his tenure with the question his old boss at the Washington Post began every meeting with: \u201cWhat\u2019s the problem we\u2019re trying to solve?\u201d Then he solved one that had gone unsolved for two decades \u2014 walking the Dale Mabry campus a week after the sale closed, pitching the Drew Park CRA board himself<\/a> and holding the line on the team\u2019s share<\/a> of the bill. Stadium transitions run in the family: his father, Lon Babby<\/a>, was the Orioles\u2019 general counsel when the club left Memorial Stadium for Camden Yards. People close to Ken tell me he intends to treat St. Petersburg with that same respect.<\/p>\n Rays ownership \u2014 Patrick Zalupski\u2018s group was barred by the terms of the sale from even talking to local politicians until the deal closed last September<\/a>. Eleven months later, the franchise has a binding agreement that two decades of trying never produced. The new owners worked the community hard, listened and built coalitions instead of assuming support \u2014 a clean break from the old regime.<\/p>\n Dan Doyle Jr. \u2014 Five years before there was a deal, the DEX Imaging CEO \u2014 whose father was an original Rays owner alongside Vince Naimoli \u2014 sat down with attorney Fred Ridley and developer Chad Harrod over aerial maps at Harrod\u2019s office, hunting for a Tampa stadium site<\/a>. They ruled out Rocky Point and settled on the empty acreage at Hillsborough College. Doyle kept the idea to himself until last summer, when he drove Zalupski and Babby to the campus: \u201cGuys, this is your site.\u201d They agreed on the spot.<\/p>\n Will Weatherford \u2014 The Rays\u2019 secret weapon and a hometown hero. The former House Speaker joined Zalupski\u2019s ownership group and gave the franchise something it never had: a principal who knows Tampa Bay\u2019s political terrain because he helped draw it. When the deal needed doors opened \u2014 at City Hall, at the county, in Tallahassee \u2014 Weatherford knew which ones. Now, Will, please don\u2019t steal the Rowdies to USF.<\/p>\n Ken Hagan \u2014 Nobody in local government has spent more years chasing a Rays stadium than the County Commission Chair. Hagan was one of the biggest players in making the entire thing happen, and Friday\u2019s 5-2 vote paid off a pursuit that has spanned most of his public career. Even he didn\u2019t see the winning site coming: \u201cI drove by that campus every day, and the thought had never occurred to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Ken Atwater \u2014 Maybe the most obvious winner of all. The Hillsborough College president\u2019s aging Dale Mabry campus, carrying millions of dollars in deferred maintenance every year, is now the anchor of a $2.36 billion redevelopment, with a modernized footprint coming and a partnership no other higher education institution in the country can claim: a direct link to a Major League Baseball team. Atwater called it a generational opportunity<\/a>, then went out and helped win it.<\/p>\n Ron DeSantis \u2014 The Governor kept insisting the state doesn\u2019t fund stadiums, and technically, it doesn\u2019t. What it funds is everything around one: $50 million already budgeted<\/a> to rebuild Hillsborough College\u2019s campus, with more promised \u201cto spruce up the campus,\u201d a land deal that made the site\u2019s economics work, and a $100 million pledge for Lithia Pinecrest Road. A former college ballplayer raised 20 miles from the Trop, DeSantis made himself indispensable to the deal without ever writing a check to the Rays \u2014 which is exactly how you get a stadium built in a state that says it doesn\u2019t build them.<\/p>\n Bill Carlson \u2014 No notes needed, but here are some anyway: Carlson drew the red lines<\/a> that reshaped the city\u2019s side of the deal, pushing the $100 million CRA contribution into a transparent CDD structure, keeping Tampa\u2019s money pointed at public infrastructure and winning the city a bigger share of future tax growth. Plenty of politicians vote for big deals. Very few redesign them first. And Carlson\u2019s Kalshi stock for winning Tampa Mayor? Dramatically improved.<\/p>\n Alan Clendenin \u2014 The City Council Chair was a huge factor from the beginning and stayed engaged when the outcome was far from certain. His \u201cwin-win-win\u201d standard \u2014 the Rays, the city, the county \u2014 became the deal\u2019s measuring stick, and his stewardship of the four-vote majority<\/a> gave wavering colleagues something to point to.<\/p>\n Christine Miller \u2014 Credit where it\u2019s due: few yes votes came at a higher personal price. The District 4 Republican took a beating for supporting the deal \u2014 much of it from her own party\u2019s activists \u2014 and supported it anyway. Political courage is easy to praise in the abstract. This is what it looks like.<\/p>\n Bonnie Wise and Julia Mandel \u2014 Rockstars representing Hillsborough County. The pair were tough negotiators \u2014 ask anyone who sat across from them \u2014 but tough in service of a deal that\u2019s fair to both sides, one that kept tilting further toward the public<\/a> as it neared the finish. They gave up countless nights, weekends and vacations to get the agreement into good posture before Friday\u2019s vote. With $796 million in county money on the line, taxpayers should be glad someone this relentless was guarding the store.<\/p>\n The Southern Group \u2014 Call it a Tampa Bay grand slam for Stephanie Cardozo and Sydney Ridley<\/a>, who went two-for-two winning city and county approval for a new home for the Rays. Cardozo ran the local side of the deal \u2014 county, city and every stakeholder in between \u2014 while Ridley negotiated the land swap, secured the state\u2019s transportation contributions and worked the region\u2019s next generation of leaders. Assists go to Seth McKeel and Jon Stewart<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nicole Travis \u2014 The former City of Tampa COO and development chief joined the Rays\u2019 side of the table for the deal\u2019s trickiest terrain: the CBA and CRA issues that could have swallowed the whole thing. Travis brought institutional knowledge of how City Hall actually works and the relationships to go with it, translating between the team and the officials she used to sit beside. Deals like this need a translator. Travis was it.<\/p>\n Police and firefighter unions \u2014 Tampa PBA President Brandon Barclay, Fire Fighters Local 754 President Nick Stocco and Local 2294 President Tim Pearson had a seat at the table from day one, and they used it, negotiating community benefits into the deal<\/a> that will directly support public safety as the district rises around the ballpark. In a $2.36 billion project where first responders are usually an afterthought, the union presidents made sure their members weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n Associated Builders and Contractors \u2014 The construction trade group and its Gulf Coast chief, Steve Cona, got out front early and stayed there, consistently making the economic development, construction and workforce case for the project. That steady drumbeat sold the deal and gave political cover to elected officials willing to take a tough vote. When 11,900 permanent jobs<\/a> are the argument, it helps to have the builders making it.<\/p>\n Lawrence McClure \u2014 The Dover Republican was a trusted advisor to all parties while the process played out, no small feat when the parties include two governments, a ball club and a Legislature with interests of its own. When everyone on every side of a $2.36 billion negotiation trusts the same person, that person is doing something right.<\/p>\n Cody Farrill and Justin Hall \u2014 The pair helped the Rays, the city and the county navigate state support and state-level issues, and always answered the call. In a deal with this many moving pieces between Tampa Bay and Tallahassee, the people who pick up the phone at 9 p.m. matter more than any org chart shows.<\/p>\n Tyler Hudson \u2014 Every ninth inning needs a closer. Hudson came in on the Rays\u2019 behalf in the final weeks to negotiate the deal\u2019s most difficult land issues \u2014 exactly the kind of late-stage snag that has killed Tampa Bay stadium deals before \u2014 and got them settled before either vote could slip.<\/p>\n Anthony Pedicini \u2014 Every winning baseball team has its A.J. Pierzynski: the ultimate agitator, the guy opposing fans loathe and teammates are glad to have in their own dugout. Pierzynski won a World Series playing that role. Pedicini played it here \u2014 an agitator by reputation who was also a trusted advisor and steady voice to many of the County Commissioners, helping them navigate a complex deal all the way to Friday\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n Mercury \u2014 Lisa Kauffman was a rockstar on the communications side of the house. One of the firm\u2019s Senior Vice President<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a Valrico native who came up through the press shops of the Florida Senate and House \u2014 worked seven days a week and 12-plus hours a day, and her background knowledge of Tampa meant the tone was always spot on. She represented the firm extremely well.<\/p>\n JP Petersen \u2014 Relentless is the word. Petersen kept pushing when the deal wobbled and helped bring Carlson to the table \u2014 and without Carlson, there is no city deal. Some winners show up in the photo op; others make the photo op possible.<\/p>\n Jesse Mendoza \u2014 On the media side, Florida Politics\u2019 own was out front reporting this deal, taking readers from broad strokes to binding terms<\/a> while much of the press corps was still figuring out where it was headed. Readers who knew where things stood before the votes were cast can thank his notebook.<\/p>\n MIXED BAG<\/p>\n Jane Castor \u2014 The Mayor lands in the middle almost by definition. She gets the legacy: the deal closed on her watch, and the Battery-style district she has championed is coming to Dale Mabry. But the story of how the city\u2019s side got fixed runs through the Council \u2014 Carlson\u2019s red lines, Clendenin\u2019s stewardship \u2014 not the administration. And Castor still can\u2019t say exactly how Tampa will fund its $80 million share. \u201cIt may be a line of credit,\u201d<\/a> she offered. She\u2019ll be out of office long before the first pitch.<\/p>\n Tampa Sports Authority \u2014 Yes, the Sports Authority can land in the Mixed bag \u2014 barely. The Authority let board members with no standing over the deal use their positions to snipe at it anyway, making things difficult at every turn and forcing the city and county to spend money on studies nobody needed. To the good: Eric Hart came around and was helpful down the stretch. Bottom line: The TSA board needs term limits.<\/p>\n Tampa Bay Business Journal \u2014 Say this for the Business Journal: it broke real news on this deal, including the Rays\u2019 selection of a construction manager<\/a> and the filing of the final documents, and its explanatory work was useful. But the coverage grew more negative as the finish line neared \u2014 capped by a story treating the absence of square-footage guarantees as a scandal<\/a> when the guarantee had simply changed shape. The scoops put them in the Mixed bag. The framing kept them out of the winners\u2019 circle.<\/p>\n Tampa Bay Bucs and Tampa Bay Lightning \u2014 Both franchises know how to start flat and finish strong. The Bucs fell behind 17-0 in Atlanta<\/a> in December 2020 before Tom Brady rallied them to a 31-27 win on the way to a Super Bowl. The Lightning dropped the first two games of the 2022 Eastern Conference Final, then won four straight<\/a> to reach a third consecutive Stanley Cup Final. The Stadium Saga played out the same way. Behind the scenes, neither team was exactly thrilled about a third competitor setting up shop in town \u2014 across Dale Mabry from Raymond James, no less. But by the final whistle, both were on board: the Bucs congratulated \u201cTeam Tampa Bay,\u201d and the Lightning called the deal \u201ca major milestone for our community.\u201d<\/p>\n LOSERS<\/p>\n Josh Wostal and Donna Cameron Cepeda \u2014 The county\u2019s two no votes earned the top of this list. Wostal has been the Commission\u2019s loudest opponent from the start<\/a>: first the CIT was the problem, and when negotiators pulled city CIT dollars out of the deal, the problem became square footage \u2014 the goalposts never stopped moving<\/a>. He dressed up a hardline anti-tax worldview as scrutiny and used the deal to stump for Amendment 3<\/a> along the way. Cepeda followed him into the no column. Opposing a deal is legitimate. Refusing to engage with what the deal became is something else.<\/p>\n Ken Welch \u2014 Yes, the hurricanes changed everything. But don\u2019t let the storms take the blame. Welch scrapped the deal Rick Kriseman had in place to keep the Rays in St. Pete long before the hurricanes hit. He cut the Trop\u2019s insurance from $100 million to $25 million<\/a> to save $275,000 a year \u2014 then came the roof, and the $57 million bill. Once the Rays cross the bay, Welch is forever the Mayor who lost St. Petersburg\u2019s baseball team.<\/p>\n Andy Scaglione \u2014 The Tampa Sports Authority board member went to great lengths to derail the deal. In the end, the only thing he derailed was his own reputation. He made it personal, and when you make it personal, your true colors show. His did.<\/p>\n Sam Rashid \u2014 The conservative megadonor spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to tank the deal \u2014 and, along the way, to tie Stacy Hahn to it in hopes of knocking her out of her Primary. Neither worked. The deal passed twice, Hahn survived, and all that money bought little more than bruised relationships and unfairly damaged reputations. Money can buy plenty in politics. This time it couldn\u2019t buy a single vote.<\/p>\n Guido Maniscalco \u2014 Thanks to Carlson\u2019s rework, the city\u2019s deal should have been the easiest yes of Maniscalco\u2019s career. He told the Rays that if the CIT came out of the deal, he\u2019d be on board. The CIT came out \u2014 no city CIT dollars anywhere<\/a> in the final agreement. He voted no anyway. The question isn\u2019t what Maniscalco thinks; it\u2019s what Scaglione tells him to think.<\/p>\n Lynn Hurtak \u2014 The Rays\u2019 side says it met with Hurtak numerous times and tried to bring her into the community benefits conversation. She wasn\u2019t willing to collaborate. That\u2019s her prerogative \u2014 a no vote is a no vote<\/a>. What earns her this spot is what came after: she attacked her colleagues from the dais for supporting the deal, and it wasn\u2019t a heat-of-the-moment flash. The remarks were prepared. You can lose a 4-3 vote with your dignity intact. Hurtak chose otherwise.<\/p>\n The Ybor City Mafia \u2014 The boosters who spent years insisting the ballpark belonged in Ybor never had the acreage, the parking or the financing math to back it up. A stadium would never have prospered there \u2014 and now the district can get back to being Ybor.<\/p>\n Orlando and Raleigh \u2014 Obvious, but worth savoring. Both cities spent the past two years measuring the Rays for a relocation they were sure was coming. Instead, the team is locked into Tampa Bay for at least 35 more years<\/a>. The Orlando Dreamers put out a statement Friday<\/a> insisting their \u201cmission has never changed.\u201d Neither has the outcome. Better luck with the next franchise that flirts with leaving.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1788126729_774_FloridaPolitics.com_ColodnyFass_728x90.jpg\")
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