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Money shows either positive support from constituents or stigmatic support from special interest groups.
By BRYAN GILMER and LEONORA LaPETER
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 18, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- Rick Baker's opponents point to his record-breaking fundraising total of $105,000 -- achieved a month before the primary -- and say it's proof he's in the pocket of the big-money downtown crowd.
"The good news is, there are more of us than there are of them," opponent Karl Nurse told a mayoral campaign forum audience last week, trying, as all nine candidates are, to shave a few votes off his opponents' totals and add them to his own.
But Baker says that's entirely the wrong way to read his contribution reports. He points to the number of people, not the number of dollars.
"Over 500 contributors," he says. "A quarter of them under $50."
Baker said it is so important to him to show he has support from people besides the 92 contributors that kicked in the legal maximum $500 that he has designated one person just to solicit contributions less than $50.
Sure enough, in the list with a $500 contribution from the Southtrust Bank Committee for Good Government, there's a $7 contribution from Seckhem Lach, a northwestern St. Petersburg resident, and one from DeDrick Mitchell, who lives west of downtown on Fifth Avenue S and gave $10.
And there's Manuel Sykes, a member of opponent Omali Yeshitela's campaign committee, who criticized Baker's decision to bring Gov. Jeb Bush to a fundraiser in town. Sykes said he gave Baker $25 because he liked Baker's answers to his questions when they recently sat down together.
Money is just one indication of support, but it may be the best available in a local campaign with no publicly shared polls. Votes are what count in the Feb. 27 primary, and the candidates will spend the last 10 days before then scrapping for as much more of both as they can get.
The candidates have to split the pile of primary ballots nine ways. Many campaigns envision a whisker-close finish, with the top three or four candidates separated by one or two percentage points.
"The way our fundraising works, it's as much political as it is fundraising, hopefully increasing our political base as well as raising money," Yeshitela said, recalling that a recent cocktail party at Saffron's restaurant in western St. Petersburg raised just more than $1,000 but was worthwhile because it got the message out to lots of new potential voters.
Yeshitela's supporters have staked out geography outside his near-southern St. Petersburg base, waving campaign signs to morning commuters at 38th Avenue N and Fourth Street or outside the Municipal Services Center on Central Avenue downtown.
City Council Chairman Larry Williams, owner of a medical imaging company, agreed that contributions show a lot of his support coming from his far-south side council district, which includes Pinellas Point and his Bahama Shores neighborhood.
But he said his 35 years of living in St. Petersburg where he raised a family, coached Little League and worked as a City Council member has earned him support from all over the city.
Like most candidates, Williams, 56, is holding far-flung fundraisers, from a home near Coffee Pot Bayou to a Little League field on the west side of St. Petersburg.
"My secret is still that if I can turn out people that we know and we've built relationships with over the past 35 years, I have a chance to enter the dance so to speak," Williams said.
Nurse says his base is the neighborhood association leadership crowd, whom he met working in his Old Southeast association and serving on the planning commission. He also knows people who, like him, have renovated historic houses and people he met working on several past campaigns for politicians like City Council member Rene Flowers, he said.
Now he's campaigning heavily in western St. Petersburg, hoping his message resonates enough there and in other outlying neighborhoods to put him in the top two in the Feb. 27 primary, moving to the general election on March 27.
"We have done a lot of door-to-door on the west side," he said. "The feedback on the west side is excellent. Ironically it's the same thing that resonates on the southside, government for the rest of us; "we want to be in the loop, share the mayor's attention and focus, and (get) our share of the resources.' "
Nurse acknowledges he has given up on neighborhoods like Snell Isle and the Old Northeast, where he thinks Baker and candidate and City Council member Kathleen Ford are too strong for him to make inroads.
Ford has attracted support from many of the well-heeled, longtime Old Northeast families that know her husband's family. Ford has been married for almost 20 years to lawyer Harvey Ford, a St. Petersburg native whose great-grandfather, C.A. Harvey, developed Bayboro Harbor.
But Ford is not raising the type of money that has ended up in Baker's campaign chest, and the $19,230 she raised through Jan. 31 has come from a considerably smaller number of people than Baker has reached. She has the fourth largest amount of money behind Baker, Nurse and Williams, but her campaign workers are enthusiastic and she has lots of signs visible on the city's north side.
"Folks are excited and they're ready for a change," Ford said. "We know we don't have the big-money special interest groups behind us, because I represent the people, not the special interest groups."