Kriseman faces a seven-way contest in the quest to keep his seat, and though he has quite a few significant accomplishments (the Pier, the Rays, the new police station, wage theft ordinance, Cross-Bey Ferry, Ban the Box, etc.) he faces a tough go at reelection, namely against former St. Pete mayor Rick Baker, who has big-time GOP backing and has been going after Kriseman since well before either announced a run.
Shortly after qualifying on Thursday, as happy hour crowds started packing bars on Central Avenue, Kriseman hoisted a pint of coffee porter in a toast to his supporters and the city at large.
He alluded the campaign's bottom line; that voting for him will help keep the city on its positive, progressive trajectory whereas a vote for Baker would take the city back a decade or two, when conservative leadership (akin to that which we presently see at the state and federal levels) shunned the environment, LGBT equality and underserved populations.
“This campaign is really about the future of this city," he said. "Who do we want to be; what kind of city do we want St. Petersburg to be? Do we want to be moving forward or do we want to go backwards?"
A couple dozen supporters milled about, cheering him on as he noted how the city has changed for the better since he became mayor, from the sprucing-up of blighted homes in south St. Pete to improved police relations with the community to better job opportunities for former offenders who have paid their debts to society.
“This is real progress for real people and it's really helping them and the city move forward. What we don't want to do is go backwards," he said.
A few of his examples of "backwards" things that happened during the Baker administration: low morale among police officers and the slashing of homeless peoples' tents a decade ago, the latter of which led national outlets to label St. Petersburg one of the "meanest cities in the nation."
"We don't want to go backwards to a time where we had one law enforcement officer leaving the force every week," he said. "We don't want to go back to a time when we stuck our head in the sand about climate change and didn't recognize the reality that's called climate change. We don't want to go back to a time when our LGBT community wasn't celebrated, where our homeless' tents were slashed. That's not who we are as a city and who we want to be as a city. We have a vision for moving this city forward.”
At the end of his brief speech, supporters chanted "four more years! Four more years!"
This article appears in Jun 15-22, 2017.