The race to replace Rick Baker will finally be decided next Tuesday. Ten candidates vied for attention throughout the summer, and now it's come down to this: a race between two policy wonks with experience in city government.
It's also the story of how two complex people have become prisoners to their images, or rather their caricatures, as perpetuated by their opponents and the media — images best summarized as the wicked shrew (Kathleen Ford) vs. the religious zealot (Bill Foster).
There's more to both of them than that, of course — and even though both served on City Council, their respective approaches to the prospect of governing St. Petersburg are quite distinct.
Despite a recession that has hit the city hard the past couple of years, in some ways things have never looked brighter for the business and professional establishment in Florida's fourth-largest city. And Bill Foster has attempted to position himself as the logical choice for those content with what Mayor Baker has accomplished over the past eight years.
But another significant block of the electorate has embraced Ford's call for a new direction in City Hall. The platform of change resonates, as it did a year ago at the national level.
Daryl Paulson, USF-St. Petersburg political science professor emeritus, calls the 46-year-old Foster the status quo candidate, which he says generally is not the place to be in most campaigns. But, he adds, "To a great extent, most voters are satisfied in St. Pete, because property taxes have been rolled back and downtown has been relatively thriving."
Paulson says Ford's change theme still works, though, "unless Foster can convince enough voters that they don't want change."
But political strategist Mitch Kates, whose candidate in the primary, the liberal-leaning political novice Scott Wagman, finished fourth in the 10-person field, disputes the notion that this is a change election. "One of the things that we saw for the most part at a municipal level," he observes, "people were not looking for a sea change. That's not what was on the minds of most voters."
Elected after the city changed to a strong-mayor form of government, Rick Baker has arguably been the most powerful leader the city of St. Petersburg has ever seen. Certainly in the aughts he has dominated public life in St. Pete — but critics say he was elevated by an acquiescent City Council that followed his lead in lockstep.
CHARACTER STUDIES
Enter Kathleen Ford. Part of the aforementioned narrative of this campaign — promulgated by Bill Foster and promoted incessantly by the editorial board of the St. Petersburg Times — is that the former councilmember (who lost to Baker in the race for mayor in 2001) is simply unsuitable for office, more so for her demeanor than her policy prescriptions, which they also don't like very much.
In their editorial supporting Bill Foster for mayor, the Times seemed to question why anyone would even consider the 52-year-old Ford as an alternative.
The paper wrote: "Ford creates confrontations and attacks City Hall as though she is more intent on avenging her last election loss than in setting a course for a brighter future." The paper also said that her frequent and sarcastic references to Foster's controversial support of intelligent design bordered on "intolerance."
In the waning weeks on the campaign trail, Foster has complained that Ford's comments on the issue were "disheartening" and "insulting," and said he wouldn't apologize for his faith.
Ford's notable debate line — "I've evolved, and my opponent doesn't believe in evolution" — plus her distribution of toy dinosaurs at the debate could at least be seen as making light of Foster's religious views. But even some of his closest supporters admit that the letter Foster wrote to the Pinellas County School Board arguing in favor of creationism was a colossal mistake for someone who already had declared his intentions of running for mayor. It was a gift that any politician would likely exploit, and Ford has certainly done that.
Because of that letter to the school board, supporter and former City Councilmember Jay Lasita says that Foster has had to tread some of the same lines that John Kennedy did in 1960 in trying to convince the country that as the first Catholic president, he wouldn't set up a private phone line to the Vatican. As evidence of Foster's bona fides regarding the divide between church and state, Lasita uses the example of Bayfront Medical Center.
In 1997, Bayfront entered into an alliance with several Catholic hospitals to consolidate services and save money. According to directives of that alliance, patients were restricted from receiving a variety of legal medical procedures, including abortion, sterilization, emergency contraception and artificial insemination.
Lasita, Ford and Foster all served on Council at the time, and Lasita said they all worked equally hard to unwind that agreement, even though Foster is pro-life.
