Grading Last Night's Mayoral Forum

The dust is still settling from last night's mayoral candidate forum. The candidates' surrogates are still spinning, especially on social media. Heck, even the apologies are still forthcoming. 

But one thing is clear after the first "debate" between incumbent Bill Foster and challengers Kathleen Ford and Rick Kriseman -- it's going to a hell of a long summer.

Something that may have been forgotten over the last six months, as city politics has been consumed by the debate over the future of the St. Petersburg Pier, is that none of these three candidate are terribly charismatic politicians.

Bill Foster is a principled, forthright man. But he's not a very good communicator, at least by the usual standards we rate politicians. His body language is distracting. He employs odd diction. And he has a penchant for tilting his head in an odd manner.

Kathleen Ford is a focused, intelligent woman. But, unless she is standing ramrod straight and speaking just above a whisper, she comes across as pointed, if not angry and bitter. She wears dowdy clothes better suited to a woman twenty-years older. 

Rick Kriseman is smart, compassionate man. But he is needlessly partisan in a non-partisan environment. He speaks with a slight lisp and can appear swarthy, especially as the day wears on. 

All of these warts were on display at last night's event, which was sponsored by The Weekly Challenger, the local NAACP chapter and BayTech Label, a printing concern owned by Councilman Karl Nurse.

And while the Times and Tribune shaped their coverage of last night's event by recounting the blow-by-blow of what happened, I was most struck by what didn't happen and by what was not said.

There was a question asked of all three candidates in which they were given the opportunity to outline what the first 100 days of their administration would look like. Sure, that's a softball question. But it's also a chance for Foster, Ford, and Kriseman to offer their vision for St. Petersburg. It's a chance to let the rhetoric soar. It's an opportunity to entice voters with teases of what may come. It's where the poetry of campaigning meets the prose of governing.

Unfortunately, all three candidates' answers fell flat as they each rattled off laundry lists of tired ideas, while making sure to use the word "neighborhoods" as often as possible. 

Rick Baker's true successor was not in the room last night. Hell, Bob Ulrich or David Fischer's true successor wasn't in the room last night.

If I have to grade each of the candidates' performances, I'd give a "B-" to both Foster and Ford and a "C" to Rick Kriseman.

Kriseman's foremost problem is his brittle partisanship. Everything about him and everything he says is cast in terms of red and blue, Republican and Democrat. In Tallahassee, in the Florida Legislature, this is understandable, but in purplish St. Petersburg, where Democrats like Kathleen Ford act like Tea Partiers and Republicans like Bill Foster do as much as politically possible to expand gay rights, it just doesn't make sense to campaign for Mayor by reminding voters of your stand on Medicaid. 

My other issue with Kriseman is how disappointingly unprepared he is, relative to his political experience. This is a former City Councilman and State Representative and yet he sounded the least connected to the city of the three candidates. Perhaps it is because he is from the west side of St. Petersburg, but Kriseman just seemed out of sync.

And while he did have Rep. Darryl Rouson cheering for him in the crowd, Kriseman certainly had the least number of supporters at the forum.

My final criticism of Kriseman: He's running as if he has until November to convince folks to vote for him. Yet, if there was one trend among the questions from the audience, it's that they don't "know" Kriseman. At least four questioners said something like this. They didn't say they liked or didn't like him. They just said they didn't know him.

As for Ford, she definitely had the crowd on her side. It was remarkable to me to see so many of my friends and contacts in the African American community wearing "Kathleen Ford for Mayor" T-shirts. Four years ago, they were waving signs for Foster; now they're applauding every time Kathleen sneezes.

Kathleen made a lot of good points about her past involvements in neighborhoods and about her pro bono legal work. But this is all part of her run the clock out strategy. Kathleen knows she is going to make it out of the primary and she is playing prevent defense at this point. I wouldn't say she bit her tongue, because she did jab the Mayor several times about the Pier. But Kathleen definitely has the secondary back.

Finally, let's talk about Bill Foster. At points, he was almost brilliant, especially when he extolled about his relatively successful record as a politician who had to lead in a recession. And yet at other points, Foster was maddeningly long-winded, especially with his insistence that improving education -- an issue the Mayor of St. Petersburg can hardly impact -- would be his top priority in a second term.

If I were advising Foster, I would have him watch speeches of Joe Biden on the campaign trail in 2012. Yes, Joe Biden. Especially the parts where Biden would say, "Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is still alive." Foster needs to shrink his message to a local version of that. Something like, "The homeless and the panhandlers are gone and the Rays are still here."

In other words, Foster needs to be able to answer why he deserves re-election in 25 words. You know, the elevator pitch. Unfortunately for him, after four years in office, he doesn't have it.

As for the showdown between Goliath Davis and Foster, I give the win to Foster. Go has waited two years to "nail" Foster and that's the best he could come up with ... a question about whether Foster takes too much credit for the accomplishments begun in Rick Baker's administration?

Credit should go to Foster for taking Go's best punch and counter-punching Davis with a dismissive,  "There's a lot of things I do in the chair that you know nothing about."

While I am dishing out credit, allow me to give some to the local media, which was out in force last night. In addition to the beat reporters, I spotted editors Tim Nickens, Adam Smith, and Heather Urquides. 

I don't know if they'll be at every forum, but, after last night's blase performances who would blame them.