A couple of days ago, Phil wrote about the big money in the St. Petersburg mayoral race. Relative to the history of mayoral races in St. Petersburg, the numbers are record-breaking:
In the two-week period of Sept. 28-Oct. 11, Foster added $28,875 to his campaign. The incumbent — who is currently running about six points behind in the polls — now reports receipts of $237,116.
Combined with Kriseman’s $263,443 in contributions, the money for the city’s top job stands at $500,559, all for a job that pays around $158,000 a year for a four-year term.
No one has ever seen fundraising figures like this, in what will be the costliest race for mayor of St. Petersburg has ever seen, as Mark Puente in the Times noted today.
There are those who will lament the influence of money in politics — I am one of them — but let us make sure we understand one thing: this is about more than just the money. Much more.
Welcome to the world of professional campaigns in St. Petersburg.
There are those who would lament that, right along with the big money, as well, but not me. I think professionally run campaigns speak well not only to St. Petersburg, but to the region as well.
This is not a new alchemy created in St. Petersburg. It was started with the Obama for America — now Organizing for Action. The folks who were able to take both the common principles of organizing and seamlessly mesh it with data were people like Steve Schale, who used it so effectively, he tipped Florida to Obama in ’08. The same organizing principles turned Florida blue again in 2012.
Looking a little closer to home, in 2011, political consultant and attorney Johnny J. Bardine, and his business partner Shari Hazlett used the same principles of organizing with the best data they had and got Charlie Gerdes elected to the St. Petersburg City Council.
“We need to understand that this is a community on the brink of major transformation,” Bardine told me. “It became clear to me early on that Charlie could be that kind of transformative leader. And so Shari and I wanted to give him a campaign he, and the people in our community, could be proud of.”
Why is it so important that campaigns be run professionally, that they be taken seriously?
Said Bardine: “We have some big challenges coming down the pike and need to elect serious, big-thinking people to solve them. That means treating the campaign as seriously as we treat the job.”
In 2011, when political watchers were expecting a 9% voter turnout on Election Day, Bardine and Hazlett helped turn out 14.7% — a record in an off-year. The turnout for 2007, the previous off-year election, was 9.8.
The mayoral race has gotten the lion’s share of the attention, but it is worth noting that City Council candidate Darden Rice has run a professional campaign as well, breaking fundraising records (more than once), and staying dominant in the polls.
Please make no mistake: it is more than just organizing and big money. Candidates matter. Issues matter. Some might scoff, but I still think the ability of a candidate to tell a good story about themselves matters, though it’s really more about the people and community they want to serve.
No matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on, we can surely agree that St. Petersburg and this region is on the precipice of great change. We are growing in diverse and exciting ways. New businesses spring up, new ideas mix with the common sense of folks who have lived here for generations, and we’re all better for it. Slowly — though maybe faster than we care to admit, sometimes — we are becoming a Mega-Region of the kind described by Richard Florida.
Our region is modernizing — growing, changing, evolving, moving ahead. Why wouldn’t our political campaigns?
