St. Petersburg’s mayoral election happens in August, and five candidates want Mayor Ken Welch’s seat. All of them promise to improve the city’s infrastructure and affordability.
Maria Scruggs, administrator at the Orange County Community Corrections Department, was first to enter the race last August.
Scruggs, 68, believes her goals and background—with more than 40 years of experience in the public sector—set her apart from “any other professional politician” in the race.
Six months into her campaign, Scruggs has attended and hosted events in St. Pete. But the mainstay of her community effort was gathering 1,013 petition signatures from residents. She’s the only mayoral candidate to officially qualify for the ballot by petition.
Others who’ve filed to run include Mayor Welch, retired fire chief Jim Large, St. Petersburg City Councilwoman Brandi Gabbard, and real estate broker Kevin Batdorf. The deadline to qualify for the St. Petersburg mayoral race by paying $2,801.52 is May 29.
Speaking to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay by phone, Scruggs criticized two of her opponents: District 2 Councilwoman Brandi Gabbard and former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is the most recent candidate to file as of Monday, April 27.
Scruggs disagreed with Gabbard’s minority vote against funding the Next Stepp Pregnancy Center in 2021.
As for Crist, Scruggs told CL that he “is the result of Democrats who felt the city had its share of Black mayors.”
“How and why would anyone who had no involvement in the city’s affairs now want to be mayor, because they have name recognition and tons of money?” Scruggs said. “I was saddened by Charlie’s decision to run for mayor, because it makes him look hungry, and I don’t believe he is.”
Scruggs’ own campaign mainly focuses on affordability and economic growth for residents from within St. Pete. She said she wants the city to look past “feel-good” projects that only address the historic aspects of the community without fulfilling its promises. And she thinks this is St. Pete’s “last opportunity to get it right.”
Scruggs isn’t new to elections. She ran for St. Petersburg City Council District 6 in 2017 and Pinellas County Commission District 7 in 2020. Her 2017 campaign only won 15.8% of the vote and didn’t make it to the runoff. In 2020, she lost to Rene Flowers who earned 67% of the vote.
Scruggs said she ran in previous campaigns “not intending to win” but “certainly attempting to make a statement, more or less.”
This time, she’s running to fix her qualms with Welch’s administration.
“It looks like the City of St. Petersburg has a ‘For Sale’ sign to the highest bidder on it,” Scruggs told CL.
Scruggs said that St. Pete keeps “placing the emphasis, as a city, on money” and “not giving attention to the people,” especially when it comes to affordability.
Welch previously told CL he’d address affordability as one of the five initiatives in his “Pillars for Progress” and would include workforce housing in the redevelopment of the Gas Plant District.
But Scruggs feels that extensive proposals and development don’t help everyday residents with affordability.
“We cannot say that we are St. Petersburg—which is our tagline—when the majority of people that work every day, like you and I, cannot afford a basic quality of life in St. Petersburg,” Scruggs said. “That’s a fundamental problem.”
To improve affordability, Scruggs said she wants to implement a two-tier strategy for the city. The first includes raising wages by forming a “Liveable Wage Task Force” of local business owners, experts and other stakeholders.
Next, she wants to form “economic clusters,” encouraging collaborations between various industries such as the arts and academia. Scruggs wants more conversations from the city on work and pay strategies and supporting small businesses.
Scruggs also believes that developing over residences like the now-pink historic Ventnor apartments is unnecessary.
“The taking down of housing that could have been retrofitted for affordable living just blew my mind,” Scruggs told CL. “The mayor has just continued to move in that path—that there is no balance between the people and developers.”
Scruggs called the mayor’s decision to move forward on developers’ proposals instead of letting the city manage redevelopment of the Gas Plant District “suicide for the city of St. Petersburg.”
Welch said he wants to fulfill promises made to the district’s displaced residents as soon as possible. But Scruggs believes that “there have been too many environmental, economic and social conditions that have changed since those plans.”
Scruggs, like Welch, is a Gas Plant descendant and great niece of Reverend Enoch Douglas Davis, one of St. Petersburg’s prominent civil rights leaders. She said she also wants to honor her community’s promises. But she mainly trusts the city to achieve that goal.
“The promises that I make to my elders and to my family members that have gone before me—that I’ll go down fighting to ensure that what was promised—was economic opportunities for the descendants of the Gas Plant,” Scruggs told CL.
Though Scruggs appreciates proposals like a location for the Woodson African American Museum, she said residents likely would’ve wanted to see money spent toward community resources.
Scruggs’ PAC, The Shelynn PAC, sits with $17,929 to date, more than reported contributions for fellow candidates Gabbard and Kevin Batdorf. Crist surpasses all other candidates with more than $1.2 million from his St. Pete Shines PAC. Welch raised just under $220,000 in Q1 according to Florida Politics.
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This article appears in Apr. 30 – May 06, 2026.