OPINION. This is the view of the Florida Man News Network editorial board, separate from our news reporting. Results are unofficial as of Tuesday night, Nov. 3, 2026.
Tuesday night at the Birchwood on First Avenue North, the balloons came down on a 70-year-old man who has now asked Florida voters for a job more times than most of us have changed jobs. Charlie Crist told the room he ran for mayor because St. Petersburg is home. Across town, Ken Welch conceded and wished him well.
St. Pete gave Crist about 62% of the vote, according to the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections' unofficial count. That's a landslide over a sitting mayor. It's also a city of 260,000 people handing City Hall to a man the rest of Florida has turned down three times.
So, St. Pete: what were you thinking?
The résumé St. Pete just rehired
Crist has been a state senator, education commissioner, attorney general, governor and congressman. That's the version on the yard signs. Here is the rest of it.
He was elected governor as a Republican in 2006. He didn't run for a second term. Instead, in 2010, he ran for the U.S. Senate. When Marco Rubio overtook him in the Republican primary, Crist left the party, ran as an independent and lost. In 2012 he became a Democrat. In 2014 he ran for his old job against Rick Scott and lost by about a point. Voters in his home district sent him to Congress in 2016. In 2022 he quit that seat to run for governor against Ron DeSantis and lost by about 19 points.
That makes Crist the man who lost statewide as a Republican, an independent and a Democrat. Each time, he was running for the next job, not the one in front of him. Tuesday, Florida's oldest political comeback act finally found a stage small enough to win.
What he ran on
Crist ran on nostalgia: the St. Pete High quarterback, the hometown boy, the years when the city's biggest politician was its own. What he didn't run on was a plan.
The Tampa Bay Times found him light on specifics as he headed into the runoff with a 14-point lead. He promised a "deep dive" after he wins. He refused a one-on-one debate before a live audience and agreed to a single televised forum, WUSF reported. At that forum he called City Hall bloated, pointing to 262 jobs added under Welch. He said he'd reevaluate the Tropicana Field redevelopment picks, including the plan to honor the Gas Plant families whose neighborhood was bulldozed for the dome. He said the city should keep chasing the Rays until the team actually breaks ground in Tampa.
Welch's answer was simple. "Charlie Crist has spent decades running for office," he said after the primary. Welch had spent the last five years doing the job.
Who carried him
Crist went into the race with a war chest of about $1.2 million to $1.3 million, according to public records and his campaign manager, Michelle Todd Schorsch, as reported by WUSF. Schorsch chairs St. Pete Shines, the committee that backed him. She is married to Peter Schorsch, the Republican operative who publishes Florida Politics, the outlet much of St. Pete reads for its local political news. Creative Loafing reported this summer that her firm was paid about $140,000 by the committee, and Florida Politics' parent company more than $24,000.
A Democratic city just elected a former Republican governor whose campaign was run out of the house of a Republican political publisher. Mayors answer to the people who put them there. St. Pete should be watching who those people are.
Their side
Crist's backers have a real case, and it starts with the number: 62% against an incumbent is not an accident. All four living former St. Pete mayors endorsed him, and three of them had backed Welch before switching to Crist. Welch's term included two hurricanes that exposed the city's aging infrastructure, the Rays walking away from the Trop deal, and a Moffitt Cancer Center project that fell apart. Crist promised to reopen talks with Moffitt and fight to keep the team. Voters who wanted a change at City Hall got one, from a candidate who knows every street in town and a government that has been handing him jobs since 1992.
Our answer
The voters have spoken, and loudly. That verdict is legitimate, and Crist is St. Pete's mayor-elect. But a landslide for a familiar name is not a plan for a city still drying out from Helene and Milton. The record says Crist is very good at running for office and very quick to leave one for the next. St. Pete just bet he'll stay.
He's sworn in Jan. 7. Here's what we'll be watching from day one:
The Gas Plant. Whether "reevaluate" becomes another decade of delay for the families the city displaced.
The storm money. Whether the city keeps funding the pipes, pumps and seawalls that failed in 2024.
The Rays. What the chase costs taxpayers, and when he calls it off.
The transition. Who gets the jobs, the contracts and the mayor's ear, and whether any of them helped pay for his campaign.
Mr. Mayor-elect, you said it's home. Prove you'll stay longer than you did in Tallahassee.
Disclosure: FMNN endorsed Ken Welch for mayor on Oct. 18. Florida Politics is cited for some election-night results on our site. Its publisher is married to Crist's campaign chair.
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