{"id":855,"date":"2026-09-13T17:00:33","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T17:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oddusee.com\/tampa\/cpt_politics\/kenneth-t-welch-mayor-of-st-petersburg\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T17:00:33","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T17:00:33","slug":"kenneth-t-welch-mayor-of-st-petersburg","status":"publish","type":"cpt_politics","link":"https:\/\/oddusee.com\/tampa\/politics\/kenneth-t-welch-mayor-of-st-petersburg\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenneth T. Welch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kenneth T. Welch is the Mayor of St. Petersburg. The mayor runs St. Petersburg&#8217;s day-to-day government as its chief executive, proposing the city budget, hiring department heads and signing or vetoing what City Council passes. It is a full-time strong-mayor job, so decisions on police, sewers, parks, permitting and big deals like the Gas Plant\/Tropicana Field redevelopment land on this desk.<\/p>\n<p>Term ending January 2027; on the ballot November 3, 2026<\/p>\n<h3>Notes<\/h3>\n<p>Goes by Ken Welch. Seeking a second term but finished second in the Aug. 18, 2026 primary with about 20% to Charlie Crist&#8217;s 35%; the two meet in a Nov. 3 runoff. City elections moved to even years, which stretched his first term past the usual four years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kenneth T. Welch is the Mayor of St. Petersburg. The mayor runs St. Petersburg&#8217;s day-to-day government as its chief executive, proposing the city budget, hiring department heads and signing or vetoing what City Council passes. It is a full-time strong-mayor job, so decisions on police, sewers, parks, permitting and big[&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":856,"menu_order":401,"template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"wds_primary_politics-category":0},"politics-category":[],"class_list":["post-855","cpt_politics","type-cpt_politics","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddusee.com\/tampa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cpt_politics\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddusee.com\/tampa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cpt_politics"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddusee.com\/tampa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cpt_politics"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddusee.com\/tampa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddusee.com\/tampa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"politics-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddusee.com\/tampa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/politics-category?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}