As 2015 winds down we took a look back at the year’s news in St. Pete and came up with a list of the top ten most prolific happenings. Whether the news evoked outrage in a community, excitement or even heart break, these are the top headlines of 2015.
No. 6 – Tampa Bay Times’ love affair with Rays
The Tampa Bay Times has been an icon of local news for decades. To this day residents can’t get through a single City Council meeting without hearing someone reference something they read in the Times.
But this year, that power proved to be potentially dangerous. In its quest to ensure baseball in the Tampa Bay area for years to come, well beyond the St. Petersburg use agreement tying the Tampa Bay Rays to Tropicana Field through 2027, the Times Editorial Board made a series of questionable calls.
At the end of 2014, Mayor Rick Kriseman reached an agreement with the Rays to let the team look outside of St. Petersburg at alternative stadium sites in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.
The deal would have paid out about $20 million if the team chose to leave the Trop before its use agreement expired. The Times leaped at the news.
But City Council didn’t. From that point on, the Tampa Bay Times launched an all-out crusade against anyone opposed to the deal – even after that deal was no longer on the table.
It started with Steve Kornell. The six-year incumbent was up for re-election in 2014. When it became clear he probably wasn’t going to draw a challenger, the Times called on someone, anyone, to run against him.
The result was Philip Garrett, a political novice. Garrett failed to raise money, filed a series of sloppy and mistake-ridden campaign finance reports and had a questionable financial past. Garrett ran on nothing other than not being Kornell and, instead, a God-fearing man.
But Garrett drew the Times endorsement despite all of that. Why? Because he said he supported reaching a deal with the Rays. That endorsement likely led to a much closer race than would have been expected. Kornell still coasted to easy victory, but with only a 12-point lead. Compare that with Charlie Gerdes who had a similar race against a fairly no-name candidate. Gerdes won by 28 points.
That’s a lot of influence to wield over just one issue.
But that’s not the only race the Tampa Bay Times tried to control. City Council member Wengay Newton is vacating office because of term limits. The race to replace him pitted Newton’s own brother, Will Newton, against community activist Lisa Wheeler-Brown.
Like the Kornell race, one candidate was in favor of the Mayor’s Rays proposal and the other wasn’t. Wheeler-Brown earned the Times’ endorsement on that alone.
But that’s not where it gets ugly. During the Primary Election, both the Times and The Tampa Tribune endorsed Wheeler-Brown over Newton. But then something happened.
After the Primary SaintPetersblog uncovered a series of questionable campaign finance claims. Wheeler-Brown had used $500 in campaign contributions to pay for personal dental work. She initially listed the expense as an office expense but later updated paperwork to reflect the actual use.
Then it was discovered she also failed to report several in-kind contributions and may have accepted those contributions from a nonprofit organization, a campaign finance law no-no.
The flurry of errors even led to an official elections complaint being filed, one still unresolved.
After those news stories, the Tribune rescinded its endorsement and instead put its weight behind Newton. The Times did not.
In fact, when the errors were first reported, the Times didn’t report on it until a few days later. They even went into damage control mode and began digging up dirt on Newton. The extent of their findings: a questionable tax bill that was paid off in 2012.
Wheeler-Brown ultimately defeated Newton handily with supporters largely rejecting the mistakes as just that. There also seemed to be a genuine distaste among voters of negative campaign mailers that largely targeted Wheeler-Brown. But having the Times in her corner couldn’t have hurt.
The entire issue is key for 2015 because it’s representative of the trouble the Tampa Bay Times finds itself in financially – layoffs, ballooning payments. They can’t afford to lose advertising revenue from a Major League Baseball team.
So now they’re influencing politics to ensure survival at the expense of other key citywide issues.
The Times still offers a lot to the community. Its Politifact work is great. Groundbreaking investigative pieces like the biking while black story this year and the more recent “Failure Factories” exposé are valuable resources. But it seems when it comes to political endorsements, the Times’ editorial board’s intentions have become suspect.
