Ed Helm believes this year's election is proof that his strategies are starting to work and confirms that he will seek his first full term as chairman of the Pinellas County Democratic Executive Committee at its Dec. 13 meeting.
Helm was elected this summer to fill the remaining term of former chair Carrie Wadlinger. He has had dust-ups with elected Democrats, fellow DEC members and the state party as he drove to create an ideologically driven (some would say pure?) and committed organization that could compete with the big $$$ that the Republicans have. And Pinellas did see Democratic wins, even if Helm's role in them could be debated.
Helm told me today that he has a "thick skin" and wants to stay in charge despite his critics, which include the editorial board of the St. Petersburg Times. That paper, by the way, has reported that Toni Molinaro and possibly Norm Roche are mounting challenges to Helm.
More on Helm in next week's CL as I look at how both local Democratic Party mechanisms performed on Nov. 7.
This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2006.