With 2 weeks before Election Day, Pinellas Dems are at risk of losing even more ground on County Commission

Pinellas County Republicans successfully flipped the County Commission just two years ago, after trying to do so every election cycle since it went blue in 2014.

This year, Democrats have no shot at winning back a majority on the dais — only two races are up for election and both have Democratic incumbents. That means the party is solely on defense, trying to at least keep the seats the party already has.

Trends do not appear to be on Democrats’ side.

Let’s start with a brief history lesson on the Pinellas County Commission. A perennial swing county, the Commission had been red for years, until an electorate frustrated by the Tea Party movement and the ensuing fluoride battles that permeated the county building in downtown Clearwater led to a shift.

Democrat Pat Gerard in 2014 pulled off the flip, defeating now-state Sen. Ed Hooper after he crushed former Pinellas County Commissioner Norm Roche in the GOP Primary that year. Roche had led what turned out to be a nationally embarrassing effort to remove fluoride from the county’s drinking water, a push that relied on junk science and that was successful for just one year.

Before Roche lost his seat — he was the only Commissioner in 2013 to vote against returning fluoride to the water — the fluoride debacle led to two Republican County Commissioners losing their seats on the dais, which marked the beginning of Democrats’ return to power.

The two Democrats who flipped GOP seats in 2012 following the fluoridation vote are now at the center of Democrats’ quest to hold onto as much power this year in hopes of regaining momentum again in the next election cycle.

One of them, Janet Long, is retiring from office, leaving her seat an open race in which Republicans are confident they can earn the pickup. The other, Charlie Justice, faces a tough re-election battle against a well-known community activist to supporters and gadfly to detractors.

Of the two races, Justice is most likely to keep his seat blue. He’s running with the power of incumbency at his back and has been fundraising at about the same pace as his Republican challenger, Vince Nowicki.

Long’s seat seems more in peril. Cookie Kennedy, the longtime Mayor of Indian Rocks Beach, is the Democrat running to succeed her. She entered the race as a promising prospect — her leadership as a beach Mayor where GOP politics tend to dominate left her with an arsenal of cross-party support to lean on.

But while she has indeed posted some support from those across the political aisle, she has struggled to meet the fundraising momentum of her Republican opponent, businessman Chris Scherer.

Both Democrats this year — running in countywide seats — also face a voter registration disadvantage of about 35,000 voters.

It’s worth noting that total doesn’t account for voters moved to the inactive list, who are still eligible to vote. There are more than 43,000 Democrats on the inactive voter rolls and nearly 31,000 Republicans, meaning that when accounting for inactive voters, Republicans’ voter registration advantage shrinks to about 23,000 voters. And with more than 168,000 active independent voters, there is still plenty of room for both parties to find success.

So where do the races stand two weeks out from Election Day? Let’s take a deeper dive.

District 1: Cookie Kennedy (Democrat) vs. Chris Scherer (Republican)

Kennedy and Scherer are both trying to replace Long, who is retiring after only barely holding onto her seat four years ago. The narrow victory for Democrats gave the Pinellas GOP renewed hope of a possible flip. Long defeated Larry Ahern in 2020 by just barely more than a percentage point despite a major fundraising advantage — she neared the $200,000 mark while he barely broke $100,000.

Now the fundraising game is reversed, with Kennedy lagging far behind Scherer, who has raised nearly $280,000 between his official campaign account and affiliated political committee, Friends of Chris Scherer. Kennedy, meanwhile, has raised just over $141,000 and she maintains less cash on hand heading into the final stretch, with less than $18,000 compared to a little more than $56,000 for Scherer.

The spending power that comes with a six-figure lead in fundraising cannot be overstated in a local race, particularly when there is no incumbent in the contest. Scherer spent more than $11,000 from his campaign from Sept. 21 through Oct. 4. That includes nearly $2,700 for a text messaging campaign, and another $1,600 for voter data, which helps target those texts.

Throughout the campaign, Scherer’s political committee has sent at least $80,000 to the Pinellas GOP, contributions that buy him support from the party, meaning campaign activity benefiting him and other Republicans that are not directly attributed to Scherer’s campaign, a common political tactic in well-funded campaigns.

Earlier in September, Scherer spent nearly $7,000 on advertising managed by Election Management Solutions, a Tallahassee-based firm.

Kennedy’s spending, meanwhile, has been arguably less impactful. She spent nearly $37,000 — the most of any reporting period to date — from Sept. 21 through Oct. 4. Nearly $21,000 of that went to Statecraft Digital for a media buy — read: advertising — with another more than $14,000 to the same Orlando-based firm also for advertising.

While her campaign has spent previously on activity directly related to campaigning, much of her spending has been on overhead, such as campaign staff salaries, accounting, event costs and other items.

But while campaign finance isn’t everything — remember that Long only barely retained her seat four years ago despite a huge fundraising advantage — Scherer’s campaign is benefiting from a sort of coordinated campaigning that is churning out conservative endorsements in rapid-fire progression and streamlining messaging to voters.

But while Scherer’s endorsements are largely from area Republicans, Kennedy’s are bipartisan, and she earned a recommendation from the Tampa Bay Times, a nod that carries heavy sway.

District 3: Charlie Justice (incumbent Democrat) vs. Republican Vince Nowicki

Justice was first elected to the at-large District 3 seat, which includes parts of west St. Pete and Lealman (though it is elected countywide), in 2012. He’s running against something of a firebrand in Nowicki, who is perhaps best known as a political agitator and whistleblower.

His personal investigation into former St. Pete City Council member Lisa Wheeler-Bowman led to her resignation in September. Nowicki hired a private investigator, who uncovered Wheeler-Bowman was residing outside her district.

He also filed an unsuccessful ethics complaint against Mayor Ken Welch over his appointment of James Corbett as City Development Administrator.

Justice narrowly held onto his seat the last time he was up for re-election, with barely more than 50% of the vote against GOP challenger Tammy Sue Vasquez. The county has only gotten more conservative since then, setting up a tall task for Justice.

But he seems to be holding his own, raising nearly as much as his Republican challenger and maintaining a positive presence among constituents through the back-to-back hurricanes that ravaged the county in late September and early October.

Justice has raised just shy of $100,000 since officially entering the race about one year ago. That’s just short of the nearly $104,000 Nowicki as raised, both as of Oct. 4. Neither have much left in the bank heading into the Nov. 5 General Election — Justice had about $9,000 left as of the most recent financial reports, while Nowicki had about $14,000.

And it’s clear Justice is working hard to reach voters. From Sept. 21 through Oct. 4, the most recent dates for which data is available, Justice spent more than $70,000, most of it to the firm Politicus for advertising. During the same period, Nowicki spent nearly $21,000, with the largest share going to Direct Mail Systems for mailers.

There’s also a potential bright spot for Justice in an opposition research packet compiled and circulated not by Justice, but through Nowicki’s former GOP Primary opponent, David Leatherwood, who withdrew from the race before the August Primary. It outlined several of Nowicki’s legal woes, all of which he denies.

Columnist Wendy March earlier this month reported on the issues alleged in the packet, noting that Nowicki was fined $3,500 plus $461 in investigative costs after a 2018 state complaint of unlicensed activity as a general contractor, presenting someone else’s license as his own, according to Department of Business and Professional Regulation records. Under the terms of the settlement of the complaint, he did not admit or deny the charges.

Now, Nowicki’s real estate license is listed as probationary. Nowicki told the Tampa Bay Times the status relates to a failure to update his business address in state records.

The packet also mentions theft and forgery charges against Nowicki 11 years ago in Baltimore. But prosecutors declined to prosecute, and Nowicki has said the accusations were wrongly levied by a disgruntled employee he had fired.

Further, Nowicki was also the target of a lawsuit filed in 2020 by Brett Vickers and his wife, Lisa Speer Vickers. The couple are real estate agents and philanthropists, and she is the daughter of the late Roy Speer, a wealthy entrepreneur who founded Home Shopping Network.

The couple alleged Nowicki failed to properly account for $50,000 they had invested in a business deal he proposed. He denied the accusation and the lawsuit was settled with a nondisclosure agreement on the terms.

The bottom line

It’s widely believed that if Republicans flip even one of these seats it will be next to impossible for Democrats to recover and regain a majority within the next decade. If Democrats hold them, strategists believe taking back a majority could be possible within a cycle or two.

There are a lot of matters at play that are more difficult to quantify as well.

Election results from two years ago — when Gerard lost her seat and Republicans picked up the majority on the Pinellas Commission — were part of a massive red wave in Pinellas County, neighboring Hillsborough County and throughout much of the state.

Gov. Ron DeSantis won the Governor’s race overwhelmingly against Democrat Charlie Crist, including by nearly 10 percentage points in Pinellas County. Gerard’s loss was painful, at a nearly 8-percentage-point margin.

With this year’s contests falling on a Presidential Election year, turnout will almost certainly be higher, something that tends to benefit Democrats. Democrats also may enjoy a bump if voter engagement is heightened by two statewide constitutional amendments on the ballot — Amendment 3 to legalize recreational pot for adults and Amendment 4 to enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution.

Former President Donald Trump will also be on the ballot again, something that could — emphasis on could — lead to Republican voters disenchanted with the former President’s rhetoric to sit this election out, or for Democrats to turnout in greater numbers in protest.

Keep in mind that while Trump won Pinellas County in 2016 by a little more than 1 percentage point, he lost it in 2020 by a little more than two-tenths of a percentage point. That’s not a ton of movement, but a shift from four years prior could indicate — again, emphasis on could — an ongoing trend.

Other variables could go either way, such as how storm response impacts individuals’ voting decisions.

And there’s one other thing to consider, something that may be good news for Democrats as they face a tough challenge in Commission races this year. A poll out this week from St. Pete Polls found Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 3 percentage points and Democrat Whitney Fox tied with incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna in Florida’s 13th Congressional District.

That’s an important poll to consider because its respondents, from CD 13, include voters in most of the county. The part of the county not included is in South St. Pete and parts of downtown, which are heavily Democratic. That means those margins would likely be higher for Democrats had those areas been included.

Still, like the presidential race nationwide, outcomes two weeks from now are anyone’s guess.