Perhaps one reason why there wasn't more excitement about this fall's City Council elections that culminated tonight in St. Petersburg is the fact that none of the three competitive races on the ballot were, well, actually competitive.
But first, let's look at another Pinellas County election, this one in Largo, where Michael Smith defeated long-time incumbent Mary Gray Smith Black for a City Commission seat, winning 54 to 46 percent.
An openly gay man, the 30-year old Smith defeated Black, a 72-year-old administrator, who was first elected to the Largo City Commission in 1975. Largo, you might remember, was the community that didn't exactly show the love when Steve Stanton became Susan Stanton a few years back.
Meanwhile, with 100 percent of the precincts reporting, Charlie Gerdes, Bill Dudley and Wengay Newton all won easily, as they were predicted to do. Steve Kornell won as well, against a non-person.
There were a number of extremely unsexy referendum questions on the ballot that didn't help turnout, which was 12 percent, lackluster for sure, but higher than the last off-year election in St. Pete that didn't have a mayoral race to contend with.
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2011.