St. Petersburg voters on Tuesday resoundingly rejected incumbent Mayor Ken Welch, whom they welcomed with open arms five years ago.
Welch, the city’s first Black mayor, needed a lot of things to change since taking 21% of the vote in the six-way August primary.
In the end, he didn’t double his share, and he needed to do much better than that. He finished with 38% of the vote in the higher-turnout Election Day rematch with former Florida Gov. and U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist.
Using precinct data as of Tuesday night, maps showing where each candidate won look similar to the primary.
Welch needed to gain serious ground to make a comeback. But out of 64 precincts where he trailed Crist in the primary, he could only flip one.
Crist won with 62% of the vote. He dominated everywhere outside the heavily Black neighborhoods of southern St. Petersburg, where he managed to flip three precincts.
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Crist will be sworn in as the city’s 55th mayor on Jan. 7. The winning City Council candidates, Linsey Grove and Gabriel Hament, will also be sworn in that day.
Crist won losing candidates’ precincts
Welch would needed to make up ground in places that opted for other candidates in the primary. But he couldn’t.
Candidates who failed to make the runoff in the August primary won three precincts. On Tuesday, Crist won all of them.
Brandi Gabbard won the neighborhoods of Historic Kenwood and Central Oak Park in the primary. Crist won with about 54% there.
In Yacht Club Estates, the neighborhood won by Jim Large three months ago, Crist ran away, with 73% of the vote.
Crist flipped three of Welch’s precincts
Crist even peeled off some of Welch’s territory in southern St. Petersburg.
Crist won the neighborhoods of Harbordale, Lakewood Terrace and part of Greater Pinellas Point — three neighboring precincts — after trailing Welch there in August.
Notably, those precincts have a Black voter population of around 50%.
Welch flipped only one of Crist’s precincts
Welch won one only precinct where he lagged in August: the shoreline neighborhoods between the Gandy and Howard Franklin bridges. There, he won by four votes Tuesday.
That’s surprising considering the precincts to the south, where residents felt abandoned by Welch following the devastation of the 2024 hurricanes, condemned him. In the low-lying area of Shore Acres, Crist won by 85%.
The geography didn’t change
Crist dominated outside southern St. Pete, earning more than enough to win.
He maintained his commanding lead from the primary, when he never fared worse that second place.
Welch hung on to his voter base in the core of southern St. Petersburg, home to the city’s largest concentration of Black voters.
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