It’s difficult to feel bad for a billionaire, especially in this economy, but I am starting to feel bad for Cathie Wood.
The ARK Invest CEO has been snubbed twice this Summer, first in July and then again this week.
St. Pete Mayor Ken Welch’s first rejection of a Wood-backed development proposal cost him campaign cash, and the second appears to be retribution for it. Combined, the decisions are throwing up new obstacles in a path to re-election that was already dotted with many.
In July, Welch selected The Burg Bid for redevelopment of the Historic Gas Plant District, rejecting another bid from ARK-Ellison-Horus, which Wood was leading.
Prior to his selection, campaign finance records strongly suggested Wood and/or her business interests had donated heavily to a political committee backing Welch’s re-election. Cardinal Covenant, a company tied to Wood’s ARK Invest, donated $75,000 to Shumaker Florida Political Committee in 2025.
A year later, Shumaker Advisors gave $50,000 to Welch’s then political committee, Pelican Political Action Committee. The link is clear: ARK Invest used Shumaker lobbyists during the competitive bid process for the Gas Plant redevelopment project.
Welch, struggling with fundraising throughout his re-election campaign, should have been able to predict what would happen next.
After The Burg Bid selection, Cardinal Covenant shipped $69,000 to former Governor Charlie Crist’s affiliated political committee, St. Pete Shines. Crist was Welch’s top Primary opposition at the time, and is now his only opponent in a runoff for St. Pete Mayor.
Now Welch has selected Magellan Housing, an affordable and workforce housing developer based in South Florida and Texas, to redevelop a 3-acre site along 22nd Street South known colloquially as the Deuces.
Wood, through a proposal from HP Capital, was eying an ARK Innovation Center as part of the proposal. Sources familiar with the procurement and development selection process have told Florida Politics the Magellan Housing proposal, dubbed Deuces Rising, was actually the weakest of all seven proposals for the 22nd St. project.
For example, the HP Capital proposal included 320 housing units, while the Deuces Rising plan had just 126. HP Capital’s plan would have purchased the redevelopment property for $5 million, while Deuces Rising called for a 99-year lease at $55,000 per year.
While that rent for 99 years is technically more than $5 million, at $5.4 million, cities can do a whole lot more with $5 million now than $5.4 million over the course of nearly a century. And it’s unlikely that length of a lease would even last.
Other bids also seemed more lucrative for the city. A bid from Woda Cooper/CDC/Urban League proposed a $1 million land purchase that would revert back to the city after 15 years. And it still had more housing in its pitch, at 160 units.
There are, of course, more complicated components to all the pitches, but the bird’s eye view of details correctly spotlights the pros and cons to each proposal, and easily draws the conclusion that, at least on paper, Welch didn’t select the most competitive bid.
Such an issue would draw attention in any year, but it’s particularly salient in an election year.
Welch is already known among local political insiders to hold grudges. The Deuces Rising selection adds to that a potential inclination toward retribution.
Choosing The Burg Bid proposal for the Trop at the expense of the ARK Invest-backed pitch may not have been anything personal. And if Welch stopped there, he may have been able to say, had he selected the ARK-backed project this time, that he chooses what’s right for St. Pete even if it means backing someone who once screwed him. Now he just looks like sour grapes.
And what will those sour grapes get him? Certainly not any sort of palatable wine.
If Wood already steered nearly $70,000 to Welch’s political opponent the first time she got the finger from the current administration, how much do you suppose she might direct to Crist this time?
That’s an especially important question for a number of reasons. First, for at least one of her snubbed projects, there is still hope.
It’s already been reported that Welch’s selection for the Historic Gas Plant redevelopment may not survive a new administration. If Welch loses, Crist has the opportunity to cancel his selection and start anew. Reenter Cathie Wood.
And let us not forget there is precedent for this. Welch himself canceled a redevelopment plan at the Trop site that had been selected by his predecessor, former Mayor Rick Kriseman.
Perhaps bigger is this: Welch needs the cash, and he needs Crist not to get the cash.
The latest campaign finance reports covering financial activity from Aug. 15-21 are due Friday. Crist’s haven’t posted publicly yet, but Welch’s showed just $1,000 raised to his political committee, St. Petersburg Progress.
Even if Crist raised nothing during that period, Crist carries a commanding cash advantage over Welch, with more than $366,000 on hand compared to less than $57,000 for Welch. Those totals account for both candidates’ political committees and their campaign accounts.
Money is not always everything in politics. Look at Angie Nixon, the Democratic Socialist-aligned Democratic nominee for Senate who pulled off a major Primary upset last week over better-funded Alex Vindman.
But money is critical when your path to victory looks more like an unkempt country road than an actual navigable street. A Tampa Bay Times analysis of precinct-by-precinct election outcomes after the Primary, in which Welch trailed Crist by nearly 15 percentage points, found Crist faring no worse than second place in any of the city’s 84 precincts, while Welch fared no better than third place in 70% of them.
On top of that, former mayoral candidate Maria Scruggs, who finished fifth in the Primary but performed better within Black communities, has endorsed Crist, opening a path for the former Governor to possibly woo some of Welch’s base in majority minority communities.
Given his challenges, Welch needs a war chest to put his message on blast across the entire city. Alienating one of the city’s deepest pockets, a community leader who has proven she’s willing to use her vast financial resources to back candidates she thinks will make a difference, is not the best way to build those resources.
In fact, it’s the worst way. But perhaps this Mayor just can’t help himself, and that’s why he’s a distant second and facing a pink slip from voters in November.
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Ed. note: Michelle Todd Schorsch is the Chair of St. Pete Shines, a political committee backing Crist for St. Petersburg Mayor. Todd Schorsch is married to Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics.
Peter Schorsch is the President of Extensive Enterprises Media and is the publisher of FloridaPolitics.com, INFLUENCE Magazine, and Sunburn, the morning read of what’s hot in Florida politics. Previous to his publishing efforts, Peter was a political consultant to dozens of congressional and state campaigns, as well as several of the state’s largest governmental affairs and public relations firms. Peter lives in St. Petersburg with his wife, Michelle, and their daughter, Ella. Follow Peter on Twitter @PeterSchorschFL.
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