It’s all a mess now. No second second-chance. I left New York a year to the day after I left St. Petersburg. I felt rejuvenated, restored. In my first weeks back, I lectored at my church, joined the Friends of North Branch Library, saw old acquaintances never forgotten. Life was grand. I wrote an article for Creative Loafing. I won the fang-and-claw at Tiger Bay. I was back. I mean baaaccckkk. Then He came knocking. My old friend Politics. For…
St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Jamie Bennett is pitifully ignorant or disappointingly complicit when it comes to a series of campaign mistakes and second-rate dirty tricks. He has fired the campaign manager he never should have hired, but if he stays in the race that will not end the questions or remove the stains. Sorting out who knew what when between Bennett and his former campaign manager, Peter Schorsch, may be an exercise in futility. But some of their maneuvers cannot…
This was an unwise marriage, the too-easygoing City Council member running for mayor of St. Petersburg and the wild-card political consultant. Now it’s an ugly divorce. After James Bennett’s campaign got caught handing out tickets to the city’s suite at Tropicana Field for political purposes, Bennett and adviser Peter Schorsch parted ways, blaming each other. In turn, Schorsch went public over the weekend with a laundry list of dirty campaign tricks and violations that he says Bennett knew about. Bennett…
I’ve been asked about 200 times what I think Jamie Bennett should do next. My answer is unquivocal: he should announce that he will stop running for Mayor of St. Petersburg. Put aside his actions or involvement in “Ticketgate,” although that is pretty hard to do. Bennett was fully aware that the tickets were being distributed to advance his political campaign. Him saying he had no knowledge of this or that is an insult to the voters of St. Petersburg.…
So, like, I totally disagree with Bill Foster’s politics. In fact, if Bill is for something, I’m probably against it. And vice-versa. What’s worse is, Bill’s consultant, Jack Hebert, is my mortal enemy. So I haven’t missed a chance to bust Bill’s balls at every opportunity. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like Bill Foster. In fact, I really like Bill Foster. The guy is hilarious. I’ve run into him several times on the campaign trail and he’s been a…
Less than a dozen people actually care which one of the St. Pete mayoral candidates would be featured in the Sunday edition of the St. Petersburg Times — the edition with the broader distribution than the rest of the week’s. But I do care because my guy is not in the Sunday edition, instead it was Scott Wagman. Is it a coincidence that the article was written by Adam Smith, who, in the past, has been in the bag for…
It’s refreshing to see so much attention paid to the public arts debate, but Luis Perez’s article yesterday, in which he features Kathleen Ford, should not have made it past his editor’s desk. To give Ford that kind of coverage, on an issue she has no involvement with, is unfair to the rest of the field of candidates for mayor. The argument from the Times is that Kathleen’s charge that Rick Baker acted illegally set her apart from the rest…
