St. Petersburg mayor<\/p>\n
Six St. Petersburg mayoral candidates faced off in the Aug. 18 primary. Charlie Crist led with more than 35% of the vote. He now faces current Mayor Ken Welch, who placed second with 20.73%. The winner is elected to a four-year term and can serve up to two consecutive terms. The job pays $255,152 a year. Welch received a roughly five-year term because a voter-approved charter amendment moved city elections to even-numbered years.<\/p>\n
In the primary, Brink recommended Crist. Gallaty recommended Brandi Gabbard. Since Gabbard did not make the runoff, Gallaty has now recommended Crist in the two-person race.<\/p>\n
Gallaty’s choice: Charlie Crist<\/p>\n
Brink’s choice: Charlie Crist<\/p>\n
![\"Charlie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/tampa_bay_times_articles_917\/940baa8cf1046ee4c5b19a838a5b06b8.jpg\"\/)
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Here’s what Brink wrote about the race in July, with a few minor updates:<\/p>\n
Recommendations usually explain why you should vote for a candidate, not why you shouldn’t.<\/p>\n
This one is different.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Mayor Ken Welch won the election in a blowout. He inherited a city on a roll, riding in on a wave of optimism. He had wide support. Everything seemed possible.<\/p>\n
He won endorsements across the city, including from the Tampa Bay Times editorial board. As part of that board, I wrote that Welch was “the best choice to maintain the city’s momentum.”<\/p>\n
Back then, he was. He had the maturity, experience and cohesive agenda for improving the city. He was the better candidate.<\/p>\n
Not anymore. He’s had 4 \u00bd years to prove otherwise. His track record isn’t awful. But that’s not the right measure. St. Pete deserves better than “not awful.” Too often he chose poorly, communicated poorly or wasn’t around enough.<\/p>\n
And now it’s time for a change.<\/p>\n
The receipts<\/p>\n
Welch’s honeymoon barely lasted the first budget cycle.<\/p>\n
Early in his tenure, Welch rejected a plan for a new Moffitt cancer research center, residences and a hotel, saying the proposal did not includeenough affordable housing<\/a>. The decision stunned the business community. One of the world’s premier cancer fighters wanted to open a 75,000-square-foot outpatient cancer center downtown \u2014 and the deal died over a few dozen affordable housing units. Welch did a poor job of explaining why he didn’t like the deal, and residents were left wondering about a lost opportunity.<\/p>\n Then came the workplace scandal. Welch’s handpickeddeputy mayor resigned<\/a> amid credible allegations that she had fostered a hostile environment, including a culture of bullying. A mayor cannot control every employee in a government as large as St. Pete’s \u2014 but this was his deputy, the woman who co-ran the city. The harassment happened under his nose, and when it surfaced, Welch defended her at a tone-deaf news conference. Leaders own failures before they explain them. Welch waved this one away as a misunderstanding.<\/p>\n It fit a pattern. A month later, theTimes reported<\/a> that Welch had badged into City Hall on only 34% of workdays during his first eight months in office. Mayors shouldn’t spend every day at City Hall, but 34%? No wonder he didn’t notice the bullying. During Hurricane Ian, he went home after declaring a state of emergency instead of staying at the emergency operations center, breaking with what previous mayors had done. And leaders in the city’s Black community \u2014 some supporters of Welch \u2014 complained<\/a> that they could not get a meeting with the mayor. They questioned his commitment to improving Black neighborhoods after seeing little progress in the first 18 months.<\/p>\n His administration also had transparency problems. Routine public records requests and inquiries for basic information lingered for days and weeks, or were denied; when the Times asked for Welch’s key card data, officials initially refused to hand it over. Easy things should be completed easily. If an administration can’t do the simple things well, why trust it with the hard ones?<\/p>\n Welch deserves credit for landing a stadium deal with the Tampa Bay Rays. But even that win curdled. His administration handed out $250,000 in bonuses to high-level city employees who worked the deal, kept City Council members in the dark about it for weeks until the Times broke the story, and then had to claw the money back when it turned out the bonuses violated state law. It was the kind of blunder made by an eager-to-please junior staffer, not a sitting mayor. (Of course, the Rays deal crumbled a few months later, but that’s more on the Rays than Welch).<\/p>\n After the 2024 hurricanes, critics chastised Welch for failing to clean up the city quickly enough, dubbing the mounds of debris in people’s yards “Welch piles.” Whether Welch deserved the blame, he could not get ahead of the story. That’s a pattern: Not just the failure itself, but the fumbled response.<\/p>\n