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A Times Editorial
In choosing Rick Baker as their next mayor, St. Petersburg voters turned to the candidate committed to building on the city's recent progress.
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 28, 2001
In Mangroves to Major League, author Rick Baker writes that "it is humbling to study the enormous contributions of the many people who, over roughly 150 years, have used their collective talents and energies to build a community which is truly one of the most beautiful and livable places on the face of the earth." Now Baker has been elected mayor of that place, St. Petersburg, and a new chapter of the city's history begins.
In choosing Baker on Tuesday, voters reflected some of the civic optimism he brought to the race. In contrast to his opponent, Kathleen Ford, Baker embraced the accomplishments of Mayor David Fischer, who did not seek re-election. His "Baker plan" stresses neighborhoods, public safety, economic progress and schools. Those issues are at the core of an agenda that can build on St. Petersburg's successes under Fischer.
Baker defeated Ford, but he didn't necessarily run a more effective campaign than she did. For the past four years, Ford has been a harshly divisive force on City Council, but her intelligence and energy were more evident than her sharp tongue for most of this race. Despite a huge fundraising disadvantage, she ran a tough campaign and raised issues about the management of city government that Baker and the new council need to take seriously.
This mayoral campaign reopened some old divisions that had begun to heal in recent years. Over the past decade, Fischer worked to give a stronger voice to community groups and reduce historic tensions between the neighborhoods and downtown interests. Yet Ford, Karl Nurse and some others in the large original field of mayoral candidates played to those old neighborhood resentments. In the aftermath of racial disturbances almost five years ago, Fischer and Police Chief Goliath Davis made a priority of improving relations between the police and St. Petersburg's African-American community. Crime is down, as are citizen complaints against the police. Yet Ford's four years of criticism of Davis from her position on City Council guaranteed that the police department would be an issue in yet another mayor's race. Both Davis and the police union made matters worse by injecting themselves so actively into the campaign.
Finally, this race produced the most openly partisan divisions in the history of St. Petersburg's nominally non-partisan city elections. Baker, long active in Republican Party politics, made an early misstep by bringing Gov. Jeb Bush to town as the centerpiece of his campaign's kickoff fundraiser. Baker also emphasized his GOP ties in subsequent mailings targeted to registered Republicans. Meanwhile, Ford relied on the support of some local Democratic Party officials and Democratic-leaning unions. The issues of city government, such as clean and safe neighborhoods, should be beyond partisan politics, and the injection of partisanship in this election served to muddle rather than clarify where Baker and Ford stood on the issues that matter to their city.
In any case, the heat of the campaign should not leave people with a distorted view of St. Petersburg. By most important measures of social and economic progress, the city is on the right track. The arrival of the Devil Rays closed a chapter on one long city debate. The quick success of Bay Walk after years of failed downtown development plans closed another. Mayor Fischer's Challenge program hasn't produced the economic benefits it promised, but the property values, appearances and safety of the city's poorest neighborhoods have been improved.
Thanks to the agenda established by Fischer, future mayors will inherit a commitment to economic development in areas of the city that historically have been neglected by City Hall. Both Baker and Ford promised to build on that effort. Baker, who helped to craft Fischer's Challenge plan, should make an early effort to fulfill that promise. He owes that much to the black voters who looked past his ties to Gov. Bush and, once again, played a pivotal role in entrusting the mayor's office to the candidate who offered the most progressive agenda for St. Petersburg's future.