On June 1, 1987, 21-year-old British performer Rick Astley’s cringe-inducing single “Never Gonna Give You Up” was released, and would ultimately become number one in 25 countries.
At the time, another Rick — Rick Baker, then 30 — was an up-and-coming lawyer at a St. Pete law firm called Fisher & Sauls. Yet another Rick, Rick Kriseman, was 25, finishing up his juris doctor at Stetson and a successful state House campaign for Democrat Lars Hafner. He drove a red Toyota Celica.
Thirty years to the month later, Astley and his one-hit wonder have a solid place in the internet meme canon. The phenomenon known as rickrolling, in which people posting on the internet prank one another with unexpected in-text links to the song’s cheesy video, endures a decade after its inception.
The other two Ricks are on their own rolls.
The famously tall and mustachioed Baker, who turns 61 at the end of this month, hopes to recapture the mayor’s office, which he occupied from 2001 through 2009.
Kriseman, meanwhile, is rounding out his first term and fighting like hell for a second. The 55-year-old former state lawmaker is known for the catch phrase, “The sun is shining here.”
It’s an ostensibly nonpartisan (but totally partisan) seven-way race set to be decided August 29, after which the top two vote-getters will in all likelihood take part in a November 7 runoff. Mail ballots for the August election will start going out July 25.
In honor of what will likely be a summer-long Rickfest, here are 17 things to keep an eye on during the course of one of 2017’s most interesting elections.
1. A Pride of Ricks? In celebration of St. Pete’s 2014 Pride celebration, Kriseman flew a rainbow flag above City Hall — the first mayor to do in the city’s history. In November 2014, as Kriseman was rounding out his first year in office, the Human Rights Campaign awarded St. Pete a perfect score in its measure of LGBT equality among U.S. cities. Baker, a conservative Christian, never showed St. Pete’s large and influential LGBT community much enthusiasm while in office. In 2009, the LGBT publication Watermark characterized his attitude as “hostile indifference”; as equality advocates put it at the time, St. Pete Pride grew into the largest festival of its kind in Florida despite Baker. In an interview this week with CL, he was unclear on whether he planned on walking the parade route this year. (“I intend to attend some of the Pride events, yes,” he said.) Kriseman will definitely be there. Baker noted that he and his wife attended last year — mostly to show solidarity with victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. He added that he would sign a proclamation welcoming the event if he were to win — something he never did while in office.
2. HROs or noes? In St. Pete, it’s taken for granted that your sexual orientation and gender identity should never affect your employment status. But according to CL archives, Baker in 2001 opposed amending the city’s human rights ordinance to include protections against discrimination in employment, housing or accommodation on the basis of orientation — though he did not veto the amendment when it passed. But Baker said he hired numerous employees who happened to be L, G, B or T within his own administration, and believes in treating everyone fairly. During his first year, Kriseman hired the city’s first LGBT community liaison.
3. The outcome of this race may quite literally depend on the weather. If heavy rains mean the city’s water department is forced to decide between sending sewage out into the bay and letting it bubble up into the streets, it’ll be another summer of bad PR for Kriseman. Kriseman’s $300 million overhaul and improvements to the Southwest plant (which should offset the 2015 closure of the Albert Whitted plant) are going to take years to be completed.
4. The sewage battle seems to be more about politics than, you know, the environment or public health. If you support Rick Baker, you likely think the 2015 shuttering of the Albert Whitted the under Kriseman was the culprit, and the timing of the spills, the first of their kind in years, correlate with that. If you’re on Team Kriseman, you probably think Baker — what with his fiscal conservative bent and all — should have invested more in infrastructure upgrades. That’s just how politics are these days; we tend to decide what team we’re on and construct our realities around them. Yet neither analysis is totally accurate. Per a 2011 report in the Tampa Bay Times, talk of closing the plant — which is over 90 years old and in need of expensive upgrades to be in compliance with current state standards — began in 2002 and accelerated in 2011, when Bill Foster was mayor. And Baker’s administration did invest in upgrades to the city’s water system to the tune of $160 million, monies that went to repairing and lining sewer pipes, upgrades at treatment plants, etc. His administration had to, he said, to be in compliance with a Florida Department of Environmental Protection consent order that followed a major spill in 1999, before Baker was elected mayor. Not that there were never sewage spills during his tenure, because there were — they just weren’t as big was what we have been seeing. He has said restoring the Albert Whitted facility to full capacity so it can treat 20 million gallons per day would be a top priority. But some say the old plant’s limitations might not make the investment worth it, especially once expansions to the southwest plant are complete. One water department official likened it to repairing the sputtering engine of, say, a rusted-out 1987 Ford Mustang — it’ll get you to Publix and back, but don’t expect it to be capable of making it up to Atlanta.
5. If you didn’t see Baker’s candidacy coming from miles away starting about two years ago, you weren’t paying attention. We’d heard enough rumblings just beneath the surface to deduce that this was a likelihood way back during the second Pier debate. Media steadily speculated on Baker running for this seat or that, and his allies were groaning about Kriseman’s every move, whether it was the curbside recycling rollout, the Pier selection process, the ferry or the way the mayor chose to staff his administration.
6. Hillary redux? There are unmistakeable echoes of the Clinton campaign on Kriseman’s side. His campaign manager is a former Clinton staffer. His campaign HQ is in the same MLK Street North bungalow that housed Clinton’s south Pinellas ground game. Inflammatory but dubious headlines about Kriseman pepper social media. The Times’s Tim Nickens likened the two back in January in a rather damning editorial focusing on “unforced errors” and the specter of losing touch with voters — as if no other administration or campaign had ever been guilty of a miscalculation or two.
7. Zombie Trump? Baker bemoans the Kriseman camp associating him with Trump. But he hasn’t said whether he voted for the divisive figure. While the Donald may have a few fans here and there, St. Pete is not a Trump town, and many residents probably wouldn’t appreciate a prospective mayor opting for a Commander-in-Chief who wants to gut public housing and environmental protection while expanding offshore drilling.
8. But, party involvement, though. Even if he distances himself from Trump, Baker is still associated with the people who helped Trump get elected, everyone from wealthy GOP benefactor Mel Sembler to State Rep. and early Trump booster Larry Ahern (R-Seminole). And former Governor Jeb Bush (okay, not overtly a Trump guy) headlined his first campaign launch all the way back in 2001. He enjoys support from some Democrats and says partisan politics should stay out of local governing — he notes, respectively, past and current alliances with Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch (now a Kriseman supporter) and now-State Rep. Wengay Newton. But apparently campaigning is a different story. As local Democrats noted, an invitation to a Clearwater fundraiser earlier this month listed dozens of Republicans among noted guests. The name of the sole Democrat on that list, Newton, was misspelled.
9. Yeah, but it happens on the other side, too. Baker may have support from some Democrats, but the bulk of them stand behind Kriseman. Increasing partisanship in local, nonpartisan races is just a reality in these hopelessly polarized times.
10. The Uhuru candidate. Jesse Nevel is a 20-something activist associated with the controversial African People’s Socialist Party, also known as the Uhurus. He says Baker and Kriseman basically are the same, save for the mustache. In his quest to shatter what he calls the status quo, he uses a word you don’t hear in mainstream politics: reparations. He wants to aggressively pursue policies that would deliver economic equality to south St. Pete, like giving the land that sits under Tropicana Field back to the black community. Some local politicos consider the newcomer a fringe candidate, given his ties to the Uhurus. Still, protest votes are all the rage these days.
11. KFC, Momma Tee, etc. Eccentric south-side activist and vocal homophobe Theresa “Momma Tee” Lassiter jumped into the race earlier this month. It’s possible she could siphon votes from south St. Pete’s religious African-American community, a bloc on which Baker relies. Gadfly Paul Congemi, whose big claim to fame is getting banned from a local KFC, is another homophobe on the roster. Anthony Cates, who managed the now-shuttered Wal-Mart in Midtown, has filed, as has obscure newcomer Ernisa Barnwell.
12. Preempt this. With Republicans having absolute control at the state and federal level, Florida’s cities have become beacons for progressives. St. Pete has passed measures like wage-theft ordinances, bans on pet stores that buy from puppy mills, and fertilizer bans. GOP lawmakers’ cynical response? Remove cities’ abilities to pass such laws, a practice known as preemption. Kriseman has passionately advocated for local control; Baker said he’d “generally” be open to challenging efforts to undermine cities and counties.
13. Stayin’ green. Both mayors have won environmental accolades. It was under Baker’s watch that the city landed its first green designation. Baker was chair of a statewide sustainability commission and oversaw a years-long project to clean Lake Maggiore. While he tries to discredit Kriseman on the environment solely on the basis of sewage (which was obviously bad for local waterways), the current mayor is no slouch when it comes to green initiatives. He’s embarked on an ambitious effort to make the city run on 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, created the city’s Office of Sustainability and launched curbside recycling. Kriseman is also defying Trump by adhering to the standards set out in the Paris agreement.
15. You’ll get sick of the word “seamless.” Baker wrote about his vision for the city in the book Seamless City years ago, and the city still has a few seams — namely Central, which continues to serve as the line between the city’s historically black south side and its historically white northern half. Still we’ll be hearing a lot about seamlessness this summer. Let’s just all agree to not start incorporating this into everyday conversation like we have with “optics” and “covfefe.”
16. Many voters have already decided. Even at the local level, social media’s polarizing effects are obvious. And that’s kind of a bummer.
17. And so much more. We wish we could cover it all here: the Rays, the Rowdies, the Pier, the Tampa Bay Cross-Bay Ferry, but alas — we are bound by the limits of both space and time. But what we can do is keep you posted with up-to-date coverage right here on our website, and you can follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook.
This article appears in Jun 8-15, 2017.
