There are three men running in St. Pete's District 1 primary race taking place on August 30th, and after that, there will be two, who will continue to debate and compete against each other up to the November 1 general election.
Last night at a League of Women Voters's debate at City Hall, there was very little conflict expressed between the three, but an incident that occurred last month that did have the candidates exercised towards each other was revisited, and that involved a photo shoot that was observed by CL photographer Phil Bardi for our article (that photo is the one on the right).
After the photo shoot, Bardi contacted this reporter about the argument, but said he wasn't certain about the specifics, but affirmed that the men had become agitated towards each other. What we learned last night during the debate was that it started when Charlie Gerdes took exception to robo-calls made by the Kersteen campaign, that the 74-year-old Kersteen, the only Republican in the race, was also the only "fiscally conservative" candidate running.
This article appears in Aug 11-17, 2011.
