St. Petersburg voters sent a clear message Tuesday that they want their mayor to provide stronger leadership and their city to aim higher. That is why they replaced incumbent Mayor Bill Foster with Rick Kriseman, who promises to bring new energy and fresh ideas to City Hall. Now Kriseman should build on his solid victory, unite the city and lead St. Petersburg in a more positive direction.For those of you keeping score at home, there have been more than a dozen Times editorials ripping Foster over the Rays. A small sampling:
Sept. 2013 | Feb 2013 | Feb 2013 | Jan 2013
Jan 2013 | Oct 2012 | April 2012
The Times, which continues to give the Rays a free pass on the Stadium Saga, now moves on to lobbying Kriseman for a Tampa stadium:
The incoming mayor also should reach out to the Tampa Bay Rays and renew discussions about allowing the franchise to look at potential stadium sites in Tampa. It's understandable that the new mayor wants to try to build attendance at Tropicana Field, but that effort should be simultaneous with talks on the long-term approach to keeping Major League Baseball in Tampa Bay.Kriseman is about to find out it's not easy to protect the city's interests and please the newspaper on this issue. The mayor-elect said on the campaign trail he favored letting the Rays look in Tampa, but he also stressed protecting the city's financial interests. St. Pete's contract with the Rays runs through 2027.
Remember, this is a newspaper that changed its hundred-year-old name because people were confused about the "St. Petersburg Times Forum" being located in Tampa.
ReplyDeleteYou couldn't make it up.
They changed their name to help sell more newspapers in Tampa.
Delete"the name change to the Tampa Bay Times is to become a more regional newspaper..."
DeleteYour wrong! You just made it up!
DeleteIf by "selling more newspapers in Tampa" you mean trying to put the Tribune out of business, then yes. That was part of it. But a bigger part was confusion over the naming rights to a stadium in Tampa, not getting all the "bank for the buck!" that those expensive naming rights should accrue. What I believe, anyway.
DeleteI'm going to go out on a limb and say that this issue won't be resolved by the end of Kriseman's first term.
ReplyDeleteSad to see Kriseman win, because frankly, he was 100% vague about ANY of his positions.
ReplyDeleteDoes he honestly think there's ANYTHING the Rays want that correlates with "protecting the city's financial interests"? If that was his concern, he'd load Sternberg into a cannon and fire him into outer space.
The only consideration the Rays are likely to give the city and it's coffers are whether we get screwed deeply and royally or just hard and fast.
It must suck to a "extreme right-winger", and see a Dem. win the position! And "consideration"? St.Pete should just be lucky the (Devil)Rays brought so much prosperity to the area compared to the outlook in the early to mid 90's! It's not that the Rays aren't good enough for St.Pete, it's that through many years on a downslide compared to the 80's, St.Pete isn't good enough for the Rays!
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