Steve Kornell says he is not surprised that he face a challenger in November, though up until the last hour of the qualifying deadline on Monday afternoon, it looked as if he would run unopposed in his bid for re-election in his District 5 City Council seat in St. Petersburg.
But at the last hour, businessman Bill Protz filed to run against Kornell. Protz is the president of the Catalina Marketing Charitable Foundation.
Kornell said that he recently told some of his supporters that if anybody was going to get in the race against him, it would probably not happen until the final moments of qualifying.
He was correct.
This article appears in Jun 23-29, 2011.