Two-term City Council member Brandi Gabbard said she will run for mayor of St. Petersburg, giving her more than a year to wage a challenge against incumbent Ken Welch, her one-time ally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe commitment to run for mayor is firm,\u201d she told the Tampa Bay Times on Oct. 14.<\/p>\n
Welch has not yet filed to run but has started campaigning. Gabbard endorsed him when he campaigned for mayor in 2021. Her bid to unseat him is the latest sign of eroding support for Welch as he positions for a second term.<\/p>\n
Gabbard said her decision to run for mayor is \u201cnot necessarily driven on opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s driven by unwavering commitment and vision of the city of St. Petersburg,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re at a critical time, and I think we have some hard decisions to make if we want to move forward to be a sustainable city in the future.”<\/p>\n
She also will face off against community activist Maria Scruggs, who is the only candidate who has filed to run for mayor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe core of my time on City Council has been working to tackle very complex issues. We still have a lot of work to do,\u201d Gabbard said. \u201cI believe that I am a collaborative leader who stands for accountability and transparency and very much believe that that is a very important leadership skill at this time in the city of St. Petersburg.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gabbard has represented District 2, which encompasses the neighborhoods of Riviera Bay, Gandy and the Gateway area, since 2018. She ran for reelection unopposed in 2021.<\/p>\n
She has been backed by the Pinellas Realtor Organization, whose political committee in August spent $36,725 for a \u201cSt. Petersburg July 2025 Municipal Poll,\u201d online records show.<\/p>\n
Gabbard was once seen as an ally of Welch\u2019s and has supported many of his initiatives, including a proposal for a Tampa Bay Rays stadium and surrounding redevelopment last year.<\/p>\n
But recently, Gabbard has broken with Welch\u2019s administration. She is against redeveloping the downtown waterfront into a cohesive \u201cCenter for the Arts.” She also pushed Welch to rekindle a deal that would help revive the Science Center, saying, \u201cWe really need a win as a city.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foreshadowing what was to come, Gabbard took shots at Welch Oct. 9 for \u201crunning in his own direction\u201d on how the city should react to a state ban on street art. She had criticized council member Gina Driscoll\u2019s approach to fly Pride and Black history flags with the city seal in honor of those murals.<\/p>\n
Welch showed up in the council chambers to \u201cset the record straight,\u201d he told Gabbard, \u201csince you made some accusations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe theatrics up here, I\u2019m not going to deal with it. OK? You\u2019re setting up division,\u201d Welch said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to move forward and make our city sustainable and respond to this strategically. So if you\u2019re going to call out the administration with something that\u2019s false, I\u2019m going to counter that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Welch provided a statement through a city spokesperson that did not directly address Gabbard\u2019s candidacy. In it, he spoke about how the city has strengthened its water and sewage systems \u2014 one of Gabbard\u2019s key issues \u2014 supported youth and education, improved public safety and \u201cbuilt a more inclusive and accountable city government.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy focus remains on doing the job the people of St. Petersburg elected me to do, and the results speak for themselves,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m incredibly proud of what we\u2019ve accomplished together, even through unprecedented challenges like the back-to-back storms of 2024. But there\u2019s still more work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two-term City Council member Brandi Gabbard said she will run for mayor of St. Petersburg, giving her more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3300,2346,596,9718,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-9898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-brandi-gabbard","tag-ken-welch","tag-pinellas-county","tag-pinellas-realtor-organization","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","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\/9898","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=9898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}