Charlie Crist’s humanity laid bare by, wait for it, the Tampa Bay Times

The first campaign finance reports since St. Pete Mayor Ken Welch had more than $200,000 stolen from his political committee are now public, and it creates clear insight into how Welch’s re-election campaign is shaping up.

But this column is about the dollars and sense of the 2026 St. Pete mayoral race.

Instead, let’s talk about the Michael Van Sickler story published in the Times over the weekend (it was online Friday, in print Sunday). Van Sicker, a local political reporter turned managing editor turned something of a reporter at-large examined “why was Charlie Crist in Minnesota” the past couple of years and “why did he return?”

At this point, the answer to why Crist returned is pretty obvious: to fix the messes created by Welch’s bungled responses to the hurricanes, his handling of the stadium saga, and his failures on a variety of other issues, from the marina and the Moffitt development to Jabil not building its second campus in the city, not to mention his struggles with maintaining top staff.

But it’s the first question — and Crist’s forthright answers to it— that makes for compelling reading.

Crist, St. Petersburg’s favorite son, was displaced by Hurricane Idalia. This makes Crist, a former Governor and Congressman and someone who was on a shortlist to be a Vice Presidential nominee, something he’s not often been accused of: entirely relatable. With his home destroyed, he was like thousands of other St. Petersburg residents left scrambling by the hurricanes that have devastated the city these past years.

And it drove Crist to the wilderness.

Van Sickler, almost poetically, details how Crist split time between his parents’ home and his fiancee’s home in Minnesota, where she was enduring her own personal crisis: the untimely death of her ex-husband, who was father to her children.

If you know Charlie Crist as I do, it’s hard to imagine Sunshine Charlie in the frozen tundra of rural Minnesota, playing Mr. Mom to a household of grown children. But he did, and again, the entire ordeal makes Crist seem relatable in a way many people have probably not observed before.

I think a lot of folks who read this story — the folks in the deeply impacted neighborhoods of Shore Acres and Rio Vista and Bahama Shores — will take it all in and conclude, ‘Wow, Charlie Crist has had it just as f*cked up as we have these past few years. No wonder he’s pissed at City Hall. I’m pissed, too. No wonder he’s back to run for Mayor. Anyone is better than the guy there now.’

Now, there’s also a lot in the story that reads like someone dropped an oppo packet on Crist.

For some reason, Crist was registered to vote in Minnesota at the same time he was registered to vote in Florida. I checked myself and I guess there’s automatic voter registration, which for Crist probably kicked in when he filed state income taxes there. I really don’t know: the elections officials up there won’t comment and there’s no paperwork to request. Crist says he didn’t vote in Minnesota.

There were also some questions about Crist’s timeline as a resident of St. Pete. And Van Sickler, who went so far as a reporter to take pictures of the condo Crist was renting last year, concludes that Crist meets the nebulous residency requirements to run for Mayor of St. Pete (basically, you have to be a resident of St. Pete for a year; Crist’s lease began August 1, 2025 and he updated his address one year to the day before the August 2026 Primary Election.)

There’s been a whisper campaign, especially amongst Welch supporters, that Crist did not meet the residency requirements. There have also been some uglier whispers by Welch’s supporters questioning ‘Where has Charlie been?’

It turns out that the man whose last public act in Florida was running against Ron DeSantis — the man many of these Welch supporters despise the most, was humbled not by a political opponent — but by Mother Nature. And, along the way, a romantic relationship that was just beginning to blossom, was itself tested.

As for the whispers and innuendos, shame on the Welch supporters and gossipy scribes who have called into question Charlie Crist’s connection to St. Petersburg.

There is no one — and I say this as a guy who previously published a blog all about the City of St. Petersburg — more associated with the ’burg than Charlie Crist.

And I think there will be a comeuppance to those who tried to suggest otherwise.

One more note and I can’t believe I am writing this, but how wonderful to see Van Sickler report this story. Trust me, this story is not a win for Charlie Crist; it will only offer confirmation bias to those opposed to his looming candidacy. But Van Sickler, partially attempting to fill the shoes of the great Times political editors who came before him, is offering a commodity in short supply these days: context.

The Times and Florida Politics and The St. Pete Catalyst and all of the other local outlets will undoubtedly capture the rat-a-tat-tat of a wide-open mayoral race. But what is sorely missing are those voices, beyond mine if we’re being honest, who can offer some context and perspective to this race.

Many, if not most, who read my opinions about this race recognize I am beyond biased toward Crist. But I’ve also spent 40 years following local politics. I cut my teeth on campaigns working to recall of the City Council members who railroaded through construction of the baseball stadium. That’s how I got to know Connie Kone, which is why I went to work on her state Senate race, which is what got me involved 28 years ago in legislative races, which is how … well, you get the point: all the pieces matter.

But there has to be a counter to me. Actually there needs to be multiple counters. There should be a loud, vibrant debate about the future of the City.

Van Sickler is not, as the kids say, my opp, but he can, especially as the former managing editor of the city’s newspaper, offer some context an a multitude of issues. He will provide a sense of fairness I will not.

So, in his first piece about the 2026 mayoral race, Van Sickler avoids the low-hanging fruit. He could have just gone with, “Critics say Charlie Crist doesn’t live in St. Pete.” Instead, he did the leg work and research and provided the appropriate facts with the appropriate context.

To be honest, that’s been missing from the Tampa Bay Times. Not because the reporters who cover City Hall didn’t do it; they just haven’t had the time or the platform to do it. Colleen Wright is one person. And there are dozens of stories swirling in the city at any given moment. Drinking from a fire hose, in a city in which the fire chief was accused of sexual harassment, does not describe how voluminous Wright’s job is.

But now she has some back-up. And while later in this campaign cycle I might regret saying so, this longtime reader of the Times welcomes it.

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Ed. Note: Michelle Todd Schorsch is the Chair of St. Pete Shines, a political committee expected to back Crist for St. Petersburg Mayor. Todd Schorsch is married to Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics.