Incumbent Mayor Ken Welch, meanwhile, didn\u2019t raise anything to his affiliated political committee, St. Petersburg Progress<\/a>. It retains less than $9,000.<\/p>\n Crist\u2019s committee has outraised Welch\u2019s every reporting period since both existed. This is the second time in a month Welch\u2019s committee has reported nothing raised, with the finance report Aug. 14 showing no fundraising activity. For the period covering Aug. 15-21, Welch\u2019s PC raised just $1,000. From Aug. 22 through Aug. 28, his committee brought in $8,500.<\/p>\n While Crist\u2019s committee also did not raise funds on Aug. 14, it has raised more than $40,000 in every period since.<\/p>\n Crist\u2019s committee has also been enjoying more in-kind support than Welch\u2019s. Crist reported more than $5,000 in support from in-kind contributions in the most recent reporting period, and has received nearly $34,000 worth of in-kind support since the committee\u2019s inception.<\/p>\n Welch\u2019s PC has only reported $1,000 of in-kind support, at the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n Finance reports for political committees were due Friday. Campaign finance reports<\/a>, which are filed with the City Clerk, aren\u2019t due until Sept. 18<\/a> and will cover campaign finance activity from Aug. 29 through Sept. 11. The most recent reports available, covering activity through Aug. 28, show a similar advantage for Crist.<\/p>\n Crist\u2019s campaign has raised more than $169,000 and has more than $94,000 still on hand. Welch\u2019s campaign has raised less than $94,000 overall, and has less than $16,000 on hand.<\/p>\n Between both committee and campaign accounts, Crist maintains nearly $383,000, while Welch has less than $25,000.<\/p>\n Cash on hand offers voters a snapshot of what to expect as the campaigns progress toward the Nov. 3 General Election runoff. With a major advantage, Crist will have extensive resources to share his message with voters across a variety of platforms. Welch, with funds dwindling, will have limited ability to share his pitch.<\/p>\n Crist\u2019s consistent spending advantage is also paying dividends, with polling showing him in strong position for the General Election.<\/p>\n A St. Pete Polls survey<\/a>\u00a0taken Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 among 509 likely St. Pete voters shows Crist with 52% support in the race, while Welch trails at 27%.<\/p>\n Crist\u2019s positioning above 50% suggests that even with winning all undecided voters, Welch may not have a clear path to victory in November. And data from the poll show Crist has improved his position among several demographics, including erasing Welch\u2019s advantage among Black voters and Democrats while gaining ground among both Republicans and independent voters.<\/p>\n Crist\u2019s polling has continuously improved since March, while Welch\u2019s has generally declined. Welch polled at 31% support in a head-to-head against Crist in March, with his strongest showing in late June at 32% support. Welch\u2019s current 27% is his lowest yet. Crist, meanwhile, polled at 36% support in\u00a0March<\/a>, jumping to 40% in\u00a0June<\/a>, 44% in\u00a0mid-July<\/a>, 45% in\u00a0late July<\/a>\u00a0and now 52%.<\/p>\n Endorsements could be playing a role. Two of the four mayoral candidates who did not make the runoff,\u00a0Kevin Batdorf<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Maria Scruggs<\/a>, have already endorsed Crist.\u00a0Jim Large, the city\u2019s former Fire Chief, said he doesn\u2019t plan to endorse a candidate at all, while City Council Member\u00a0Brandi Gabbard\u00a0has not indicated whether she\u2019ll make an endorsement.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Ed. note:\u00a0Michelle Todd Schorsch\u00a0is the Chair of St. Pete Shines, a political committee backing Crist for St. Petersburg Mayor. Todd Schorsch is married to\u00a0Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Gov. Charlie Crist\u2019s affiliated political committee has raised another $50,500, bringing its total raised as of Sept.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3347,2346,202,204,3303,18455,203,37378,199,201,200,102069],"class_list":["post-399557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-charlie-crist","tag-ken-welch","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-mayors-race","tag-st-pete-mayoral-election","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-pete-shines","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-st-petersburg-progress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399557","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=399557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789401968_493_UCF-Gaming-728x90-1.gif\")
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