Peter Schorsch
Four critical local races this cycle are taking place within the confines of the hurricane-ravaged parts of southern Pinellas County, shining a spotlight on the incumbents who are currently representing them and the candidates who are running to replace them (or in one case, just the candidates since there is no incumbent).
Florida Politics does not usually make endorsements, and with the exception of one race (more on that below, but I’m backing Torrie Jasuwan in St. Pete City Council District 5), I’m keeping it that way. Unlike the Tampa Bay Times, we do not have an editorial board to shield our reporters from the bias that inherently follows voting recommendations. So these observations — and the sole endorsement — are offered by me alone based on personal observations and reporting from our reporters and other local outlets.
The four races I’m watching most closely locally are those in Florida’s 13th Congressional District, House District 60 and St. Pete City Council Districts 3 and 5.
Here are race observations I think any voter would be well-served to know.
CD 13
This race pits incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna against first-time candidate and Democrat Whitney Fox. It would be a waste of my endorsement to weigh in here — the GOP has a solid advantage in the Pinellas County-based district and Fox is facing an R+6 electorate.
For a while, it looked like Luna might be in trouble — her vote against funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency sat like sour milk in the pits of residents’ stomachs after being ransacked by not one, but two major hurricanes. And Fox has been running a strong campaign, earning an endorsement from the Tampa Bay Times and being added to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s coveted “Red to Blue” program, the only Democrat running in Florida to make that cut.
But Luna likely salvaged her campaign by magnanimously appearing with President Joe Biden when he visited St. Pete after Hurricane Milton. Additionally, her constituent services have been strong throughout both Milton and Hurricane Helene, with regular text message, email, social media and other engagement informing constituents of resources available to them as they recover. It’s the kind of earned engagement that a challenger simply cannot muster, though Fox has done a great job of getting her hands dirty helping voters throughout the district as they clean up from both storms.
HD 60
State Rep. Lindsay Cross is facing a credible challenge from current St. Pete City Council member Ed Montanari in the district. While I will not go so far as to offer an endorsement in this race, I will openly share that I will be casting my ballot for Montanari.
First and foremost, he has been a longtime family friend for more than two decades. He was a guest at my wedding with Michelle. That’s enough to earn my support.
But he’s also proven to be the ultimate statesman as an elected official, and throughout the course of facing two hurricanes in just a couple of weeks, he’s been hard at work searching for solutions to problems facing the city, particularly on housing as thousands of St. Pete residents find themselves displaced due to storm damage or flooding. And that’s even as he navigates his own recovery after experiencing significant flood damage to his home and vehicles.
That said, Cross is one of the most effective Democrats in the Legislature. As an environmental scientist, she is uniquely qualified to champion water quality challenges, climate change and resilience issues and other environmentally prudent concerns. She’s proven adept at working successfully from the minority and if more Democrats in the state served as she does, the state party might not be in the dire straits for which it finds itself in recent years.
If she wins re-election, Montanari would be the first person to congratulate her. I will be the second.
St. Pete City Council, District 3
In the race to replace Montanari on St. Pete City Council, Pete Boland and Mike Harting emerged from a crowded field of candidates as the top two vote-getters in the August Primary (who else thinks that feels like 17 years ago?).
This is a race in which I find myself considering the choice between two friends. I’ve dined at Harting’s restaurants, and his kids have attended school at the same school as our beloved Ella Joyce. He’s one of the most thoughtful independent candidates I’ve seen in a long time.
He’s also a man with a big heart. During COVID-19, Harting used his massive beer brewing resources to bottle hand sanitizer as residents everywhere were confronted with empty shelves elsewhere, all for no charge. And he’s employed that same spirit following Hurricanes Helene and Milton, hosting a hugely successful donation drive and using his political platform since Helene not for politicking, but to spread information about resources and other citywide impacts such as boil water notices and bridge closures and openings.
Boland, meanwhile, is also a personal friend and a welcome presence at Schorsch Christmas parties. Like Harting, he has displayed incredible grit and leadership throughout the storms and recovery process, including opening his home to linemen as they worked to restore power to residents and organizing volunteer cleanup efforts.
Residents of St. Petersburg would be well-served with either man taking the reins from Montanari.
St. Pete City Council, District 5
Here’s where I am offering a rare, full-throated endorsement for Jasuwan. This endorsement is not a dig on incumbent Deborah Figgs-Sanders — she has served capably — but rather a message to Mayor Ken Welch.
It’s no secret that Figgs-Sanders is a top Welch supporter and, while she may dispute this publicly, she’s pretty much a rubber stamp for the Mayor’s administration. Obviously, Welch has endorsed her.
To be clear, Welch is a good Mayor. In particular, he deserves credit for finally ushering in a stadium deal with the Tampa Bay Rays (ignore for the moment what the team losing its roof on Tropicana Field means for that whole project). But there are weak spots that hopefully can be addressed.
Welch has shuffled through staff, which is never a great sign for an administration. And even though people have a hard time putting their finger on exactly what they don’t like about him as Mayor, there’s a general sense that the administration has a lack of responsiveness.
Never has that been more clear than in recent weeks as the city prepared for and then launched into recovery for back-to-back hurricanes, each of which caused significant devastation throughout the city. In a lot of ways, getting an extra year on his term — city elections are being moved from odd-numbered years to even years, meaning he’ll face voters in 2026 instead of 2025 — seems to have perhaps created some level of complacency, a less hungry version of the Welch voters elected a few years ago.
That sentiment is likely to only get worse, with criticism growing that the Welch administration didn’t adequately inform residents about storm impacts.
It came out after Hurricane Helene that the city has known since at least 2022 — when Welch was Mayor — that its Northeast Water Reclamation Facility couldn’t handle 7 feet of storm surge. That’s what ultimately prompted the city, during flooding from Helene, to pull the plug on the plant, requiring households served by the facility to avoid letting any water at all reach their drains, lest sewage backup into their homes.
There is also mounting criticism about the crane that fell on the Tampa Bay Times building from ongoing construction at The Residences at 400 Central. There, the sentiment is that Welch favored developers over resident safety.
Now, residents are still staring at mounds of debris from both storms, often contents of entire homes stacked as what seem like semipermanent monuments to the lives people once had, before record-breaking storm surge. People are likely to take that frustration with them to the ballot box.
That’s why come 2025, when new and returning Council members are sworn into office, the Welch administration will need as many checks on it as possible.
That’s where Jasuwan comes in. Unlike Figgs-Sanders, she will not be a rubber stamp. That’s not to say she’ll never align with the Welch administration, but when she does it will be out of merit, not obligation.
Beyond that, and personally more important, is Jasuwan’s ability to lead. She is one of the best first-time candidates I’ve seen in my 26 years of political work. She’s brilliant AND empathetic. She worked with lawmakers to make diapers tax free and she started a nonprofit to provide free diapers to those in need, called Babycycle. Throughout her campaign, she has done everything a good consultant hopes for in a candidate, going to every forum and answering every questionnaire.
To put that into even more perspective, even though she knew she had zero chance of earning support from the local NAACP, she still went to their forum. Because Jasuwan knows that, if elected, she serves everyone, even those who didn’t back her.
And there’s another big thing. If I’m being honest, Jasuwan could have bought this election. She is, by any measure, a wealthy woman. She could have dropped $1 million blanketing local airwaves and ensuring enough support to pull off what has been an elusive feat in St. Petersburg — unseating an incumbent. It hasn’t been done since 2005 when Leslie Curran defeated Virginia Littrell, a race I had a hand in. But she has, for the most part, been raising money the same as any other candidate not named Rick Scott.
The biggest thing, though, is hurricane response. It’s not that Figgs-Sanders has not responded, but her response hasn’t been as impassioned or as helpful as Jasuwan’s. A look at the incumbent’s social media throughout both storms shows surface level efforts, posts pointing to events, drives and various resources, not efforts to organize or participate in them herself.
Jasuwan, meanwhile, has been rolling up her sleeves and working on the ground with storm survivors. From ramping up Babycycle to provide diapers to those in need, to collecting items needed for cleanup, and schlepping debris to curbs, Jasuwan has been out there showing her servant’s heart.
So while I make this endorsement with full acknowledgement that Figgs-Sanders has served her constituents well, I hope voters will join me in supporting Jasuwan to continue the work the incumbent has started and keep City Hall on the right track by providing a check on the Mayor’s administration.
