The room is called the Edward White Hospital Auditorium. It's really a small, plain-vanilla meeting room, and it's home to St. Petersburg's North Kenwood Neighborhood Association every second Monday of the month.
On this meeting night, the North Kendwood-ians are hosting two candidates for City Council for a 16-minute forum on the pressing issues of the day — which for these folks consist almost entirely of the need for sidewalks in the neighborhood. Fifteen minutes into the meeting, Ed Helm slips into the back of the room, largely unnoticed by the 25 or so residents listening to council candidates Jeff Danner and Jamie Mayo.
Helm wants to become mayor of St. Petersburg. Rick Baker, the very tall man who has the job now, wants to remain in office. The two are night and day in terms of political skills, style and ideology for a city that is used to having strong demographic and political schisms. So on this Monday night, Helm is out stumping for votes in his long-shot race.
Mayor Baker is not here — not physically, at least. But his four years in office hang over the crowd like a warm blanket. The $325,000 in neighborhood improvement grants his office has dispensed. The 15 miles of new sidewalks. A nationally recognized program that has helped St. Petersburg schools improve their testing scores. Cutting the budget and property tax rates.
Ask Phil Whysong, president of the North Kenwood group, if he has any thoughts about the mayor's race, and he replies: "Just that Baker can't be beat."
Politics in St. Petersburg are changing. For years, political campaigns citywide were us vs. them. North of Central Avenue, with its largely white population vs. south of Central, with African-American neighborhoods and pockets of poverty. It was the west side, angry at being neglected and upset with what it viewed as an inadequately equipped police department, vs. downtown's silk stocking interests. It was South St. Pete (now Midtown) angry at poverty and economic neglect, and some demagogic white leaders who blamed that neighborhood for the city's woes.
Mayoral races turned on those class, race and socioeconomic distinctions and saw some ugly campaigns, notably from fired police chief Curt Curtsinger in 1993, who tapped into white racial unease and a simmering tax revolt in his unsuccessful bid for City Hall. He lost to St. Pete's first strong mayor, a details-oriented and dry David Fischer whose candidacy drew record numbers of black voters. One of Fischer's top kitchen cabinet members in both races was Baker, who learned Fischer's details-oriented governing skills and augmented them with an eye for publicity and big-picture problem solving.
Fischer won few precincts north of Central when re-elected in 1997, but Baker won support in both white and black communities for his "Baker Plan," which focused on improving neighborhoods, helping local schools and creating jobs. Baker — and the march of time that has seen south St. Pete heavily gentrified by white homeowners — is managing to end the cycle of white vs. black mayoral politics in St. Petersburg.
Replacing the mayoral issue of race, however, is the politics of party.
Helm is a progressive, waging a partisan strategy to try to unseat the better-financed incumbent. Helm is a charismatic leader, but has nonetheless angered others on the left with his personality and stridency. He doesn't have the support of some notable progressives, including council candidate Darden Rice; she questioned Helm's "political smarts" after he disrupted her and other environmentalists at a city press conference by protesting Baker's environmental stance. He also picked a fight with the Democratic Party chairwoman over party loyalty oaths.
Baker is a conservative and a Baptist. He has taken full advantage of the "strong mayor" system approved by voters in 1993, crafting programs aimed at the decaying urban core, up-and-coming neighborhoods and school kids — and then using those programs for lots of feel-good publicity. He is great on camera, his warmth and fuzziness projected by a machine of City Hall workers whose purpose is to make him look good.
Baker also is emerging as one of the state's leading Republicans with a future in the party beyond the mayor's office, possibly in Congress once C.W. "Bill" Young retires. He is an FOB (Friend of Bush) and has helped both the governor and the president, serving as state co-chairman for the 2004 Bush presidential campaign. Helm's adviser, Jon Ausman, called Baker "an extreme partisan."
Yet it is Helm who is running the partisan campaign. Where Baker talks about schools and Midtown and mentoring and corporate partnerships, Helm's advertising is addressed to his "fellow Democrats." Helm and his consultants talk about the overwhelming Democratic voter registration in the city and St. Petersburg's 57.6 percent support for John Kerry in the 2004 presidential elections as indicators of his ability to win.
Helm's campaign appears suspiciously like a tryout for a national Democratic Party strategy for winning. Gone is the label "liberal," turned into an epithet by Republican strategists. Helm is, instead, a progressive. Gone is the Democrats' mushy message on crime. Helm's campaign whacks Baker for his crime rate, especially for a recent increase in murders and a violent crime rate nearly four times the national average. Helm uses every opportunity to appeal to Democratic voters and contributors while linking Baker to the unpopularity of President Bush. In an e-mail solicitation reported on in the St. Petersburg Times, Helm called Baker "a conservative Republican who was the Pinellas County co-chair for George Bush's re-election. That's right; he's pro-war; pro-homophobic and pro-corporate welfare." The Helm campaign also has mirrored the trend among some progressives to hunt down and kill the party's centrists, with Helm publicly criticizing two Democratic county commissioners for supporting Baker.
As a partisan phenomenon, Helm's campaign is getting national attention. One of his early stump speeches was covered in great detail on the popular liberal blog DailyKos.com, which acknowledged he has an "uphill" battle but called him the next mayor of St. Petersburg.
And in Jon Ausman he managed to attract a veteran Democratic campaigner to help his cause. Ausman, hailed in party circles as a veteran Tallahassee insider and a Democratic National Committee member, met Helm during the 2004 presidential campaigns. Ausman was Kerry's delegate coordinator, while Helm was Dennis Kucinich's. When Helm decided to run, Ausman signed on to advise him.
Talk to Ausman about the race and he casts it in partisan terms, including discussing the impact a Democratic victory would have in the pivotal I-4 corridor.
"There are different tipping points throughout the state," he said recently in a telephone interview from the capital. "Hopefully we can shift things around."
"Pinellas County is trending more Democratic over the years," Ausman added. "In St. Petersburg, 57 percent of the voters voted for John Kerry."
Voting trends in presidential races are one thing; getting city voters — unaccustomed to making Republican vs. Democrat choices in mayoral races — to become partisans is another. In an early Hail Mary, Helm's campaign spent about $15,000 to air two campaign commercials on broadcast television, a light media buy in a market where saturation for a political message comes at a cost of $125,000 a week and up. The first is an introduction to Ed Helm, a positive image builder that touts his endorsement by "St. Petersburg Democrats Inc." The second is a hard-edged attack on Baker and crime rates in the city. Ausman said the ads are an attempt to create some buzz that there is an election going on and also recognition that absentee voters are already casting ballots and need some input to make their decisions.
While one of Helm's and Ausman's criticisms of Baker is his unabashed support for the brothers Bush, Baker fires back that it is Helm who is violating the city's charter by running a partisan campaign. (The charter calls for "[t]he nonpartisan general and primary election of the Council Members and Mayor" but contains no provisions for penalties or remedies against anyone running a partisan campaign.)
"I would completely reject his claim that I've ever used partisanship in this office," Baker said, pointing to a Times investigation that he hired more Democrats than Republicans and his public support (since reciprocated) for Democratic county leaders like Calvin Harris and Ken Welch. Helm's catering to Democrats and partisan attacks, Baker said, "has no business in a mayoral campaign."
At the center of all political campaigns in St. Pete is the city's most potent political force, the dominating media presence that is the St. Petersburg Times. If the Times is proprietary about most things in its realm of influence (which extends to Tallahassee), it is particularly protective of its clout at the mayor's office.
The Times has been a strong supporter, editorially, of Baker's tenure. Prior to becoming mayor, Baker had a record of helping the paper; his law firm saved the Times a lot of money in years past and worked for its owner, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, The mayor has also cultivated a uniquely strong bond with editorial page editor Phil Gailey, who pushed hard (against the strong desires of some of his own editorial board) to give Baker the endorsement in the 2001 primary.
"I think the editorial side has been supportive of me," Baker said. "I think I deserve the support."
In contrast, Helm's campaign has received scant attention from the newspaper, and those accounts that mention him are generally not favorable. An editorial headline labeled him "self-serving." A news column detailed at length a Baker campaign internal poll that showed the mayor with 70 percent job approval. Only in the last week has the Times run anything positive for Helm: an account of Helm's calls for debates with Baker and his contention that the mayor is ducking him. That story angered Baker, who pointed out that the Times went to one campaign stop where the two could have spoken together; Baker was there, but Helm missed the meeting.
At press time, the newspaper had run a profile downplaying his chances. Before that, it ran a Sept. 30 article about a Helm family fight in probate court in which some of his relatives said he was "unfit," "erratic" and "cannot be trusted" in his representation of his late mother's estate. Helm called the story by political editor Adam C. Smith a "hit piece," while his supporters cited what they saw as a double standard on the Times' part: Four years ago, the newspaper sat on a story about Baker family members, including his father, who had run into criminal trouble (Baker played no role in the crimes). The paper knew of the story before Election Day, but held the story until after votes were counted — and after it was contacted by the Planet's John Sugg, who was preparing a story about the Times' handling of the matter.
Smith — who was not on the beat in 2001 during the Baker family story brouhaha — defended the recent Helm family story as fair and important for readers as they make decisions about their vote.
"There's no question; it's right there in the public record," Smith said. "It was not something said by the Baker campaign."
The Helm story differs significantly from the 2001 Baker story because it is directly about Helm and his handling of a family matter, Smith added. Baker had no role whatsoever in his family members' brush with the law. "I don't think it's apples to apples," Smith said.
The Times could have mentioned the 2001 controversy in the Helm story by way of providing readers more context, but Smith said discussion among editors of such an inclusion "didn't even come up." He does add, while having no direct knowledge of the internal discussions surrounding the 2001 Baker story, that the newspaper "probably should have covered it earlier."
Helm's campaign is so concerned about what it sees as the Times' bias and power that it has bought a banner ad on sptimes.com to combat any future stories the newspaper may write about him.
Facing the Times and a well-funded mayor, Helm has a big task ahead of him. Baker has raised more campaign cash and most certainly will spend the bulk of it on television commercials produced by veteran consultant Adam Goodman, who has worked on campaigns for Rudy Giuliani and Katherine Harris. The ads will likely try to create a biography so rich and an image so appealing that it will set the table for any future campaigns he may wish to undertake, let alone do the job at hand and defeat Helm.
Then there are the mayor's accomplishments. Some are substantial. Most are, like a good movie, uplifting and heartwarming.
He created a city program that lends public school teachers $14,000 toward a down payment on a home in the city ($18,000 if they move into Midtown) and forgives the loan if the teachers stay for 10 years. He found corporations willing to provide mentorship, brainpower and money for each of the city's public schools. In a state where only 10 percent of schools increase a letter grade in their annual assessments, St. Petersburg saw 38 percent of its schools improve at least one letter grade.
In Midtown, Baker's pride and joy, the number of vacant lots in the city's property inventory has shrunk from 120 to nothing. Homes were built; a full-service post office was opened; a SunTrust bank is being built; and, just days before the Nov. 8 election, Baker will preside over the media circus that will be the grand opening of the Sweetbay grocery store on 22nd Avenue S. Talk about fortuitous timing.
Baker and his predecessor, Fischer, spent the past 12 years trying to break down the previous political fault lines. Fischer made neighborhoods a priority, and Baker is reaping the benefit of continuing and expanding that attention. "Those conflicts," he said, "didn't go away by accident."
Helm would argue that those conflicts haven't gone away at all — that progress in Midtown is cosmetic and that by some measures crime is up. He also points to the recent second-place primary finishes of two incumbent City Council members as indicative of voter dissatisfaction with the city's status quo.
But with no hot-button issue firing up neighborhood activists (as the Trop once did) and no scandals surfacing within the Baker administration, Helm has to hope for a partisan shift in St. Petersburg voters' thinking. So far, it is not apparent that is happening.
This article appears in Oct 19-25, 2005.
