Credit: Dave Decker / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
This month, St. Petersburg Pride kicks off its annual festivities. This year will already look different thanks to an exodus of corporate sponsors, but there’s also a big question mark over Pride in general after the passage of a Florida bill that means less funding and less visible public officials in 2027.
On April 22, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 1134, which prevents counties and city governments “from funding, promoting or implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.” Residents can sue public officials if they violate the bill, and the governor can remove them from office.
St. Pete Mayor Ken Welch, who’s running for reelection this August against five candidates, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay the city will continue to aid St. Pete Pride—Florida’s largest Pride celebration—with in-kind support through public safety measures from the police department.
But Welch said his team is still reviewing the bill’s limits over public funding and monetary contributions. He said he’ll support St. Pete Pride “within the guidelines of the new law.”
The mayor said he discussed the bill with the nonprofit’s executive director, Bior Guigni, on Thursday, May 21, at a meeting with the Stonewall Democrats. According to Welch, Guigni is reviewing possible funding alternatives, and private donations from the community will likely have to fill those gaps.
Welch told CL he still plans to keep all public initiatives, including the Minority and Women Business Enterprise program, running. And he finds it hard to believe that the state could penalize him or any public official for attending any DEI-related event; he doesn’t see it happening.
“They can’t tell you what church to go to; they can’t tell you what celebration to go to,” Welch said. “I guess their only angle might be that you’re expending public dollars to do that, but I think that one is a stretch.”
If he or any public official were penalized, Welch said he’d support legal action from the city against the state.
Welch told CL he believes he did everything he could on his part to oppose the bill before it was approved.
“It’s interesting when I hear folks say what they would have done,” Welch said. “And my question is, what did you do? Did you raise your voice at all to oppose this legislation when it could have made an impact?”
Welch claims that he “certainly did,” as he was among a group of Florida mayors that met in March to speak out against SB 1134.
He said he also drafted a joint letter in February after he saw Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner and city commissioners collaborate on a letter to state legislators, urging against the bill. But Welch told CL the St. Petersburg City Council “declined to do that.”
Welch told CL he doesn’t support the state’s “redefinition” of DEI and doesn’t believe it applies to any public programs in St. Pete.
“Our programs for minority and women-owned businesses are not discriminatory,” Welch said. “It’s based on a history and a track record of the city underutilizing minority and women-owned businesses. So, they want to erase history and just say that all these programs were created on a whim to be discriminatory. And that is not a fact.”
Welch believes the bill’s “vague and inconsistent” wording—which it faced criticism for—is problematic, and Republican Florida Senator Clay Yarborough’s sentiments on the bill reflect that.
“The sponsor from Jacksonville said that he is supportive of diversity, supportive of equity and supportive of inclusion; he’s just against ‘discriminatory’ DEI programs,” Welch said. “Well, we don’t have ‘discriminatory’ DEI programs. So, it would seem like we’re good to go from the start, because I don’t accept his redefinition of DEI. It doesn’t apply to what we do in St. Petersburg.”
Here’s what other St. Petersburg mayoral candidates said about how they’d handle the new law banning Florida cities and counties from supporting DEI programs.
Charlie Crist
For Charlie Crist, former governor of Florida and U.S. representative for the state’s 13th congressional district, court is his solution. He told CL he’d legally challenge SB 1134, just as he claims he would’ve done against the state-mandated street mural removals last fall if he were mayor.
Crist said that in the same way he considered the murals an expression of free speech, local government officials supporting and funding DEI initiatives is protected by the First Amendment, and he’d defend it using the same free speech principle.
“We’re all children of God,” Crist said. “I would work for all the people and their right to freedom of speech and can’t believe that the current mayor didn’t feel that it was enough to fight for.”
When Crist ran against DeSantis for governor in 2022, the Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus and Equality Florida Action PAC endorsed his campaign, which promised to combat DeSantis’ “attacks” against the LGBTQ+ community. Despite that support, Crist was walloped in the race, which he lost by nearly 20 points.
Years after Crist lost that election, he said his support for local government’s role in DEI is still rooted in a longstanding defense of free expression.
“I think it is enough to fight for and is important,” Crist said. “And I would fight for it in the courts and anywhere else necessary to preserve the right of freedom of speech in St. Petersburg and for other cities throughout the state.”
Brandi Gabbard
District 2 Councilwoman Brandi Gabbard told CL the bill is an overreach on local government, and she already feels the looming threat of the bill over her own personal freedoms as an American and Floridian.
Gabbard said the city’s legal team is reviewing every policy to understand what officials can or can’t do, but she’s currently unsure what that entails.
She’s concerned as to whether she can, for example, join an organization or purchase tickets to an event with her own money if it’s deemed DEI, like when she attended the Equality Florida Gala just weeks back.
“Am I allowed to do that going forward? I don’t know. And I don’t even know that we have those answers yet,” Gabbard said. “The law feels very all-encompassing, but in a lot of ways, the verbiage is very vague.”
But Gabbard is more concerned about how state legislation will impact the city’s procurement code, including the Minority & Women Business Enterprise Program, which is heavily based on DEI-related criteria that the bill could challenge, such as ethnicity and gender.
Though she doesn’t know yet how Council can keep its procurement code intact, Gabbard told CL she’s willing to legally challenge the bill as mayor, and she’s not new to that task. In 2018, she joined the majority of council members in a 6-2 vote in favor of former St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman’s unsuccessful lawsuit against firearm preemptions.
But Gabbard was one of the members who didn’t sign Welch’s joint letter against the bill, and instead, she wrote her own. She claimed that the mayor’s letter did not enter the council’s usual review process, “and there was an opportunity for it to be followed.”
“For me—I can only speak for me—we have a very clear process as to how we jointly come together as a city council in the Sunshine to share issues of concern and decide if we want to band together to push back on those,” Gabbard told CL.
Gabbard said that as mayor, she’d make sure to collaborate fully with all eight city council members on the lawsuit and any joint letters regarding the bill. She also stressed she’d ideally form coalitions with other cities against it.
“We should be banding together with one another to find whatever legal recourse there could be to push back on the state,” Gabbard said.
Jim Large
While other candidates are concerned about the bill, retired St. Petersburg Fire Rescue Chief Jim Large believes it is reasonable and shouldn’t harm the city’s practices.
Large told CL he “supports the principle behind limiting political DEI spending,” and he insists that the city follow the law when it’s instated.
“I do not believe in taxpayer-funded programs that actually divide people, create preferences, or turn city hall into an ideological or political battleground,” Large told CL.
Large claimed that in his 18-year tenure as St. Petersburg Fire Chief, equal opportunity, fair treatment and hiring were successful for the majority of the time that there was no DEI department.
He also claimed that in his time as fire chief, he hired over 70% of the department, amounting to around 365 employees. According to Large, 49% of those hired were minority or protected class, while 17% were Black or African American.
For Large, those statistics—and his observation of “similar hiring” across other cities—showed him that a dedicated DEI department wasn’t necessary to achieve goals for equal opportunity. He pointed out that there wasn’t one for a majority of his tenure since 2006, which only saw the city introduce the Office of Equity—now, the Office of Community Impact—in December 2022.
“I think the city always tried to do the right thing and reflect the community,” Large said.
Maria Scruggs
Maria Scruggs, administrator at the Orange County Community Corrections Department, said she has previously gone on the record against the formation of specific DEI programs, specifically because of challenges like the bill. She said that separating and identifying a program with DEI criteria “creates a target on the program.”
“The intention is great, but one of the things that I’ve learned in the 40-plus years that I have been in the public sector is, the moment that you set something aside as something different, it becomes under attack,” Scruggs said.
Beyond removing DEI designations, Scruggs said that in order to still achieve equity for underrepresented vendors and programs in the city’s procurement process, she’d make sure Requests for Proposals are released and outreach is “intentional.”
In a May 28 press release, Scruggs said she does not agree with the possibility that equity-driven outreach from the city could become illegal under state law, “noting that Florida procurement law allows broad, inclusive outreach as long as the process remains open and competitive.”
Scruggs said in the press release that she’s concerned that the city is practicing favoritism and has not informed minority groups in St. Pete of grant opportunities, after it awarded a STEM grant to a Tampa-based program without releasing an RFP.
Scruggs said she still supports all targeted programs and would continue to participate in parades and festivals—including those considered DEI—and she’d do it in her official mayoral capacity.
“I would see it as an honor and a continual expression of what I said when I ran for mayor,” Scruggs said. “And I would feel it would be part of my duty as mayor not to separate myself, but to embrace the fact that I have a basic tenet that as the mayor of St. Petersburg, you’re mayor for all the people.”
SB 1134 states that public officials can face removal or punishment for “malfeasance.” But Scruggs said she considers all celebrations “as an expression of one’s culture and one’s belief,” and she believes that argument will withstand any type of legal scrutiny. She told CL she’d challenge the state in court if it impeded on that.
Scruggs said that legally, the city’s ability to support “cultural programming” for all events and organizations falls under constitutional requirements like the Equal Protection Clause and First Amendment rights. And the bill makes an exception for compliance with federal law.
Specifically, Scruggs finds it discriminatory that the bill targets celebrations like Pride and ethnic programs while exempting religious and national celebrations under federal law, like Christmas and Independence Day. She believes that all celebrations are cultural, whether rooted in religious, ethnic or sexual identity, and state governments can’t discriminate between supporting communities and their activities.
“I’m not going to be placed into a situation as mayor of choosing one culture over another,” Scruggs said. “I truly believe that the municipalities are protected. And the moment that we start to differentiate which culture we’re going to support and which one we’re not is the moment that we fall subject to being in violation of federal law.”
Kevin Batdorf
Kevin Batdorf, real estate broker and former president of the Shore Acres Civic Association, joins Welch in his doubt that public officials will ever have to worry about being barred from events centered around DEI initiatives. He said funding, instead, is the “main obstacle.”
“The government should not be fully funding private events,” Batdorf told CL. “If an event coordinator wants to put on a parade, for instance, then it should be privately funded, except for possibly police and fire and safety.”
Batdorf said that further funding is largely up to the city council—not the mayor—and that ideally includes appropriating funds under non-DEI requirements.
In order to squeeze past the semantics of state law, Batdorf believes the city should consider targeted programs for grants under different criteria, names and categories. Batdorf said grants could be awarded for categories like the arts, entertainment, economic benefits to the city and civic pride.
“You’ve got to take the ‘wink, wink’ out of it too,” Batdorf told CL. “Say, ‘We’re putting this money in for the Pride parade and here’s how much they need.’ So, we’ve got to make sure there’s enough for that, but not to the detriment of other organizations that want to put on an event.”
On that note, Batdorf told CL he believes that the city’s traditional Pride and MLK parades are net positives for the city. If the city doesn’t succeed or is challenged by the state for allowing DEI-designated organizations to join and request grants this way, Batdorf said he’d challenge it right back.
“Assuming the grant process is administered properly, it is the mayor’s duty to defend the policy,” Batdorf told CL. “Bad policy occurs at all levels of government. I will stand up and fight for St. Pete.”
That being said, Batdorf said he didn’t support Mayor Welch appointing Nathan Bruemmer as the city’s LGBTQ+ liaison—a role that was established by former Mayor Kriseman in 2017 and will end after the bill is enacted.
“You’re mayor for five years, and then late in your next to last year, you appoint this particular liaison—what is the purpose?” Batdorf told CL. “Of course, it’s clearly political, to garner more votes from a certain community.
I can tell you who the liaison would be to pretty much every community if I were mayor, and that would be me. I’m the liaison.”
Batdorf said the only liaison he’d appoint apart from himself is an education contact, specifically to help develop his youth programs. Otherwise, he wants to be the central point of contact for all of St. Pete’s communities, including LGBTQ+.
“If there’s a special interest out there that needs to seek recognition, come to the mayor’s office,” Batdorf said. “I’ll be that guy.”
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This article appears in May 21 – 27, 2026.