Today is the first day of the rest of the St. Petersburg mayoral campaign.
There’s been a first debate.
There’s now a baseline poll.
The Supervisor of Elections will mail ballots to early voters in four weeks.
So, after Tuesday’s debate and the latest polling, what do we really know?
Here are five things I think I think about the St. Petersburg mayoral race:
1. On the surface, the survey from St. Pete Polls — showing the former mayor leading the current mayor by five points — had good news for both Rick Baker and Rick Kriseman.
For Baker, it’s a five-point lead.
For Kriseman, he’s only down by five points after earlier head-to-head polls showed him trailing by double-digits.
But there are two reasons this poll should trouble Kriseman: A) He’s an incumbent who has avoided any real scandal (policy issues, like problems with the sewer system, are not scandals), yet he’s never topped 40 percent in a poll that included Baker in the survey; B) Kriseman just spent at least $42,000 (likely more) on an early TV ad buy and, again, he’s still trailing.
An argument can be made that Kriseman spent that money to narrow the polling gap to five to eight points. OK. But Kriseman ONLY has about $300K cash-on-hand, compared to Baker’s approximately $500K.
How does Kriseman catch up once Adam Goodman launches Baker’s air coverage?
2. As in the last four mayoral elections, the black vote will likely decide the winner of the race writ large.
In the St. Pete Polls survey, Baker had 38 percent of black voters’ support, while Kriseman received 36 percent. That’s a big part of the margin of difference between the two candidates.
However, if you ask Baker’s camp, the number for their guy is far too small. They think Baker could win as much as sixty percent of the black vote. If he does, the race will be over in the first round.
3. I did not attend the debate at Mt. Zion church, but instead followed it on Twitter and watched it on Facebook Live. I agree with the assessment that Baker won the early rounds, Kriseman caught up in the middle one, with Baker finishing stronger.
4. When you have a debate between two candidates with extensive records as elected officials, there’s going to be a lot of policy talk and substance. That said, Baker and Kriseman each had a couple of cringe-worthy moments.
For Baker, not taking responsibility for the Police Department’s raid on an outdoor homeless camp in January 2007 is revisionist history at best. Trying to shift blame to others for the tent slashing is exactly the type of criticism he’d level at Kriseman. No one believes then-Mayor Baker didn’t know exactly what was going on when city officials ripped those tents without warning.
For Kriseman, there were actually several statements he probably wishes he could redeliver, but criticizing Baker on education issues was extraordinarily misplaced.
Kriseman said school performance in the city went downhill after they were allowed to “resegregate,” something he said happened a decade ago on Baker’s watch. That’s such a Democrat’s way of looking at the problem.
It also assumes black kids need white kids in their schools to succeed (several black residents who were in the crowd were taken aback by the logic of Kriseman’s ‘resegregate’ comment).
But here’s the real rub: NO ONE in St. Petersburg City Hall was paying attention to education issues — and how the city could play a role in them — before Baker introduced his four-part Baker Plan.
5. If there’s one takeaway to be had from the St. Pete Polls survey, it’s this: It will be difficult, but not impossible, for Baker to win this race in the first round.
Yes, he’s at 44 percent. And once polling begins to screen for likely voters instead of just registered voters, Baker should get even closer to 50 percent. But he has to pick up more than 70 percent of currently undecided voters for him to reach the 50 percent threshold. That’s a tall order for someone who doesn’t exactly suffer from lack of name ID.
Now, if Baker begins to take votes away from Kriseman’s base, well, this whole thing could be over before Labor Day. Right now, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Meaning, the battle of the two Ricks could slog on into November.
