Ed Helm barrels through the front door of Shirley's Soul Food on 34th Street S., takes a quick look at the half-dozen potential voters eating breakfast at the counter and heads toward the kitchen. Shirley Tigg stands over a skillet frying bacon, her back turned to the door. An African-American business owner, Tigg is featured in a Helm campaign television ad that ran for the first time the day before.
"Hey Shirley!" says the St. Petersburg mayoral candidate, slipping around a counter to put an arm around his star. "Are you famous yet?"
Tigg, laughing as she looks at the floor, says "No, not yet." Like the rest of St. Petersburg, or at least the portion that doesn't frequently check EdHelm.com, she didn't know the ads had hit the air.
Helm moves from the kitchen to the front of the restaurant and begins to work the counter, New Hampshire primary-style. He walks with a slight hunch forward, shuffling his feet. The men poking at their plates of scrambled eggs and bowls of steaming grits avoid eye contact as he talks about an increased police presence on the south side, affordable housing and living wages — three of his primary issues. When they do pick their heads up, most of the guys eye him as they would a used-car salesman.
And yet Helm remains unfazed. His gaze never flinches, his pitch never wavers. He slides from stool to stool, hitting his talking points, listening to the concerns the men are willing to voice (two ask about racial profiling). He shakes every hand and pats each guy on the shoulder as he walks to the door.
It's been a successful trip. He connected with South St. Pete voters, he says, the voters that are going to win him this election. He walks around the outside of Shirley's, sticking four "Ed Helm for Mayor" yard signs where the 34th Street S. traffic will be sure to see them. In the parking lot, Helm opens the back of his Civic Hybrid — the one with the "Voldemort Votes Republican" bumper sticker — and throws in the rest of the signs.
"You know," he says, pausing for a moment before closing the trunk. "I think people haven't been invited to participate in city government."
Maybe that's why Ed Helm invited himself.
Helm didn't want to run for mayor, at least not at first. The 60-year-old retired U.S. Department of Labor lawyer is used to being the man behind campaigns, not the face of them. In addition to 15 years of involvement in Pinellas politics (Helm campaigned for St. Petersburg's switch to a strong-mayor system in the early '90s and is the co-chairman of the city's First Progressive Club), he set up a St. Petersburg office for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign. On his list of political role models, Helm places Kucinich just after Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. "He's a man of great courage," he says.
In fact, it was Kucinich who talked him into his courageous bid for mayor. After several months of searching for a challenger to take on incumbent Rick Baker, Helm went to the Ohio Congressman (and former Cleveland mayor) for advice. Two weeks before the filing deadline, the two met in Kucinich's Washington D.C. office. "He looked at me and he said, 'You should run — this is your chance,' Helm remembers. 'You might never get a chance like this again.'"
So Helm took it, filing his papers at City Hall an hour before the Aug. 2 deadline, ensuring a two-man race.
Outside of the Helm camp, there are few true believers. Baker, who won 57 percent of the vote in 2001, has a strong base, and the recent prosperity of St. Petersburg, especially downtown, coincides with his years in office. While Helm has received endorsements from the Pinellas and Hillsborough chapters of Democracy for America (formerly Dean for America) and contributions from local labor organizations, he has yet to gain the support of some notable local progressives, including Council of Neighborhood Associations President Karl Nurse and City Council hopeful Darden Rice, who won the District 6 primary on Sept. 26. The only poll released so far, which was conducted by the mayor's campaign before Helm entered the race, put Baker's job approval rating at 70 percent. And despite pledging $50,000 of his own money to the campaign, Helm trails Baker mightily in fundraising.
Yet, as he recently told a meeting of local trade union leaders, Helm optimistically says the race "is mine to lose." Mayoral elections in St. Petersburg are nonpartisan, but Helm is unapologetically running as a Democrat (see accompanying story), and doing his best to draw out voters, and contributions, based on party affiliation. When pushed on how he'll win — a question he's heard often enough that he now asks it himself in his stump speech — Helm focuses on St. Pete's voting statistics. "There are 75,000 registered Democrats and only 49,000 Republicans," he says, leaving out the almost 28,000 registered independents. Whether he's on the campaign trail or dialing for dollars, the numbers are Helm's mantra — the backbone of his defiant case that he can actually win this thing.
"It'll be 50-something to 40-something, not 60-40," says Jim Dobyns, Helm's deputy campaign manager. "But, yeah. Ed's gonna win." Sitting in the back room of Helm's headquarters at 3914 Sixth St. S., Dobyns has crates of unaddressed envelopes piled on a table in front of him. He's targeting absentee voters — Helm literature will show up the same day as their ballots.
A few local volunteers sit at the table with Dobyns, checking names off a list as they address each envelope. In the front, two young field organizers talk strategy. Cammie Croft, 24, is from Seattle and Ariel Shallit, 34, came down from New York City. Both worked in Pinellas County with MoveOn PAC during the 2004 presidential election and came back to help on the Helm campaign. Shallit says they've recruited over 200 volunteers thus far.
So why would two organizers travel across the country to chip in on a little mayoral race in St. Pete?
"This is one of the most important places in the country to be working in politics," says Shallit, citing Bush's slim 220-vote margin over Kerry in Pinellas County last November. Both Republicans and Democrats see Pinellas as ground zero, and the chance to take out a Bush crony like Baker is hard for progressives to turn down. "I really don't believe that right-wing republicans like Rick Baker should be trusted in positions of authority, like Mayor of St. Petersburg," Shallit says.
The optimism among this core group — Dobyns, Croft and Shallit — is almost palpable. The response on the street, they say, has been fantastic. People are asking for yard signs, signing up to knock on doors, excited by the opportunity to have a choice on Nov. 8. "I think Ed's going to give Baker a huge surprise," Croft says.
As his headquarters hum, across town Ed Helm sits on a leather couch in his living room, thumbing through a massive rolodex. He and his wife Adrien live as far south in Pinellas County as you can; their backyard is the bay, their view of the Sunshine Skyway framed by glass patio doors.
Having spent $15,000 for the TV spots, Helm is calling old friends, raising money. He repeats his numbers — "75,000 registered Democrats, 49,000 Republicans" — as he paces around the living room, cordless phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder, hands punctuating every sentence.
The room is cluttered with scraps of his life. Pamphlets from Helm's failed 1993 run for City Council are strewn on an end table. A picture of Mark Twain, whom Helm impersonates both at schools and in daily conversation, hangs on a wall in the corner. Flyers his children handed out in Russia on a peace walk in 1987 are collected in a Ziploc bag on the coffee table. Thoughts of the event, in protest of the nuclear arms race, still bring tears to Helm's eyes. He interrupts his calls to talk about it, rambling on for nearly half an hour, ignoring the ringing phone. "I don't need to be mayor," he says toward the end of his monologue. "Because being on that walk was my contribution — helping to stop World War III."
Helm is a world-class rambler, especially off the campaign trail. Every story is prefaced with its own history, every comment annotated with dozens of observations. Because he and his staff haven't conducted any polls — "We're sort of flying blind right now," Helm admits — they rely on anecdotes for optimism. The firefighter fed up with Baker, the nurse fed up with the public transportation system. And sometimes, it seems that Helm loves telling these stories as much as he loves what they say about his campaign.
After a few hours on the phone, including a very lucrative call to an organizer of the '87 peace walk, the candidate has raised $1,000. The total is under his daily goal, but Helm seems happy with his work. So happy, in fact, that he rewards himself with a canvassing trip to Jordan Park, a housing complex in Midtown.
While Croft and Shallit are focusing their efforts on districts across the city, Helm has a clear passion for the south side. Though he lives in one of its more expensive neighborhoods, Helm touts himself as a "South Sider" at every chance. His headquarters is on the south side, and the office he opened for Kucinich was just a few blocks east of Jordan Park.
Baker too has made Midtown one of his priorities, touting the recent opening of a post office and the construction of a Sweetbay supermarket. But Helm says the mayor's work hasn't been enough. "Something's better than nothing," he says on his way to Midtown. "But this is little more than nothing.
"If in any other area of town there was a grocery store, a post office and a bank, people wouldn't be writing home to talk about what incredible development we're seeing."
Though initially his campaign focused on curbside recycling, Helm talks mostly of working-class issues these days. "Of much greater concern to our citizens, and higher priority of mine," he says, "[are] good jobs with living wages, housing that's affordable and a transportation system that's effective."
Perhaps his most intriguing proposal is an increased tax on the waterfront high-rises sprouting up in St. Pete. Helm believes that these buildings are changing the city's character, and thinks developers should take some responsibility for that change by contributing part of their profit to an affordable housing fund.
"I want all players and stakeholders in St. Petersburg to share the benefits, and the costs, equitably," he says.
Jordan Park is quiet at 5 p.m. on this Wednesday afternoon. Helm, dressed in a sport coat and slacks, the top two buttons of his shirt undone, gets out of his Civic and walks toward a group of campaign volunteers. They fan out on a corner, the canvassers catching passersby as Helm approaching a woman on her stoop.
His name's not familiar, at least not yet; Helm has to spend a few minutes just explaining who he is and what he's doing. But folks are interested in what he has to say, and Helm feeds off that interest, turning any morsel into a chance to register a voter, to sign up a volunteer.
He's just getting a promise to vote out of the woman on the stoop when one of his volunteers, 21-year-old Tim Works, comes running over. "Ed," Works says. "You gotta talk to this dude."
Antwan Shazell stands just off the curb in the street, arms folded across his red T-shirt. Helm walks up to him, shakes his hand and asks what the mayor should do.
"You're a pawn," Shazell says back, immediately distrustful. He is 6'4", maybe 6'5" and Helm has to stand on the curb to see eye-to-eye. Shazell says that Midtown hasn't seen the share of city funds that it should have. After a day of fundraising calls, interviews and talking to Shirley, this is the tensest moment in the candidate's day.
And it's exactly what he wants to hear.
"I got a pension," Helm tells Shazell. "So I can do whatever I like. I can sleep all day — or I can work for the people. I'm not going to have my hand in the till — I don't want it and I don't need it."
Still standing on the street, Shazell uncrosses his arms.
"Gandhi was right," Helm says, taking a page from an idol's playbook. "We have enough for everybody's need, not enough for everybody's greed."
He leans in.
"I can't do it alone. I need your help. Will you help me?" He asks.
"Yeah," Shazell says slowly. "I'll help you."
Later, with the candidate out of earshot, Shazell says that Helm sounds good, but that he's "gonna do a little investigating first."
But Helm's already half-skipping across the street to a new set of houses, a new set of doors. These are the moments that energize him, the moments that become anecdotes.
These are the moments that make Ed Helm think he can win.
Read on:
This article appears in Oct 19-25, 2005.
