Residents have seen Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch’s name on the ballot every four years for the entire two decades that District 7 has existed.
That changes on Nov. 3 with Democrat Rene Flowers and Maria Scruggs, who has no party affiliation, running to pick up where Welch’s legacy leaves off as he steps down to run for St. Petersburg mayor.
Welch has endorsed Flowers, a school board member and former two-term St. Petersburg City council member, for her “effective, focused and collaborative leadership" over Scruggs.
But both Flowers and Scruggs, the former president of the St. Petersburg NAACP, are well-known in this district that stretches from Lealman to Gulfport. It was created in 1999 when residents voted to convert the five at-large county commission seats to three-at large and four districts.
Flowers, 56, prioritizes boosting affordable housing through partnerships with developers and more streamlined permitting; expanding small, minority and women owned businesses through outreach and revising requirements for redevelopment funding; as well as establishing a solar energy program for climate change preparation.
Scruggs, 63, wants to strengthen the Tampa Bay Works program connecting the unemployed to jobs and livable wages; host listening tours to determine residents’ greatest needs related to COVID-19 impacts; and increase funding for affordable housing and rental assistance through the one-cent sales tax.
District 7 is the most diverse in the county, with 25 percent African American and 6 percent Hispanic residents. Two of the five areas with the highest concentrations of poverty in Pinellas, Lealman and South St. Petersburg, fall in the district.
Both candidates' roots run deep in south St. Petersburg, including spending their childhoods in the Jordan Park public housing community.
Scruggs, an administrative supervisor at Orange County Corrections, has worked in public housing, community healthcare and law enforcement.
As director of Sistahs for Breast Health for St. Anthony’s Healthcare, she developed a cancer awareness program that reached 3,000 and addressed the disproportionate number of Black women who die from the disease. As president of St. Petersburg NAACP, Scruggs changed policy to hire African American and women-owned vendors, redirecting $100,000 to minority businesses.
“We cannot in good faith talk about economic equity unless we’re walking the walk, and I was able to do that,” Scruggs said.
Scruggs has run unsuccessfully for public office four times: for St. Petersburg mayor, St. Petersburg city council and twice for county commission. But as a community activist and NAACP president she remained vocal in local government.
She was a critic of the South St. Petersburg Community Redevelopment Area in 2016, calling it a “political payoff” for the benefit of outside developers and a path to gentrification. In 2012, Scruggs was one of three residents who sued the county seeking to enforce a 1996 referendum in which residents voted for term limits on the county commission and constitutional offices. Legal challenges left the issue open for years and a judge threw out Scrugg’s lawsuit in 2013.
In recent years she’s criticized the Pinellas County School Board, where Flowers is a member, after a 2015 Tampa Bay Times investigation detailed how district policies beginning in 2007 made five predominantly Black schools into some of the worst in Florida.
Flowers, who was elected to the school board in 2012, defends her response to system failures. Flowers pushed for more African American principals and a change to suspension policies, and worked with lawmakers to address youth crime, among other initiatives.
Flowers, a development manager with Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services, has spent decades in community service on boards from YMCA of Greater Tampa Bay to the National Council of Negro Women.
She’s earned endorsements from a slew of elected officials and organizations, from St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman to the Suncoast Police Benevolent Association. Scruggs says her lack of endorsements shows she is “not tied to any agenda.” She takes pride in the single political endorsement she’s received from former state Rep. Rudy Bradley, whose legislative bill mandated the 1999 referendum, when residents voted to create commission districts.
Flowers’s service began in 1999 with her election to the St. Petersburg City Council, where she served two terms. She lost a race for county commission in 2008 and was elected to the school board in 2012.
She points to her record for how she would achieve her priority of broader affordable housing as a county commissioner: as a St. Petersburg council member she helped shape policy that updated development codes, repurposed and sold city owned vacant land and retail space, and approved single family homeowners to rent out accessory dwelling units for “granny units."
As a school board member, she’s supported bidders conferences for minority owned businesses to learn how to become vendors for the district and advocated for new construction and renovations at area schools. She highlights her ability to work with all stakeholders and political persuasions in addressing needs of her constituents.
“When it comes down to conversations, you can have conversations and talk about what it is you want to do but you also have to be in a position to meet immediate needs,” Flowers said. “Through my years as an elected official, I’ve had to make decisions, quick, fast and on the fly, my record proves that.”
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Activists running for Welch’s seat want their own legacy for Pinellas Commission District 7 - Tampa Bay Times
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