Darden Rice is repeating the attack on Ken Welch for his relationship with Donald Trump supporters

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A member of the St. Louis City Council. Petersburg’s Daren Rice sent another mailer to voters throwing out one of his chief race rivals for Mayor, former Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch.

Just as one flyer hit mailboxes over the weekend, another received on Tuesday hit Welch for accepting donations and endorsements from what the mailer described as supporters of former President Donald Trump.

The mailer cited an article in the Tampa Bay Times from March 19 titled Ken Welch supporters of the St. Louis race. Pete Mayors along with prominent Republicans to support its statements. This is the same citation used in the previous mailer.

The mailer, like previous flyers, also claimed that Welch used his position of power for personal gain, citing a story in the October 2018 Times. There does not appear to be an article listed on the exact date, but the Times coverage around that time was widely associated with the firing of Welchs ’wife, Donna Welch, from her position as reading director at the James B. Sanderlin Neighborhood Family Center. In an editorial dated Nov. 8, 2018, the Times editorial board lamented a clear conflict of interest after Welch lobbied public officials to take over St. Louis-based RClub Child Care. Pete to take over a reading and reading program. That group offered to take Welchs’ wife.

The language in both mailers is almost identical because it relates to Welch’s criticism. But the two flyers differ in a major way that the first contains praise for Rice as a progressive leader, while the second does not mention about him anything outside of the necessary denial that the content was paid for by the Rices political committee. , Darden Rice’s Friends.

In the days following the first mailpiece, many Welch supporters publicly dismissed the content as hypocritical. While it’s true that Welchs ’donor list and endorsers include Republicans, Rice also has numerous contributions from local Republicans, amounting to thousands of dollars. Many of them are within former Republican Mayor Rick Bakers sphere of influence.

This is the height of hypocrisy after Darden Rice spent last week cracking down on bogus and patent false mailers to deceive voters, he doubled down at the Black Caucus forum last night, Welch said.

Here are the facts that Darden has more Trump donors than anyone in the career; he voted to help large developers and then reach out to them for large donations right after voting to limit campaign donations. Some people are willing to say and do anything to be elected that I don’t want.

Welch cited Rice’s leadership in campaign finance reform across the city, preventing city candidates from raising more than $ 5,000 per race from outside spending groups. Early in his campaign, Rice was fired for coming out that violated the spirit of that ordinance.

The campaign material also ignored another major contradiction in its claims, which Rice had previously endorsed and helped raise funds to elect colleague Robert Blackmon, a Republican who also now runs as mayor. He appeared at the start of the Blackmons campaign two years ago alongside Baker and made an earnest pitch for contributions for his campaign.

But those contradictions come from the single thing which angered Welch’s supporters. Both mailers also use stock images of Black individuals. The first showed a Black woman, arms crossed and looking annoyed, next to a claim that Ken Welch was tied to Trump supporters.

The second shows an older Black sitting with arms outstretched next to a similar claim.

The truth about Ken Welch is that he was endorsed by trump supporters and funded by Trump supporters, the mailer reads.

A Google image search of that photo added many results, including a testimonial for the company C3 Medical, an article about osteoarthritis demographics at GSK Health Partner, and available on the stock photo site, photostockeditor.com under search 60 64 years.

The negative mailers came despite Rices ’previous claim that he would not run a campaign campaign.

Speaking to the Tampa Bay Times when he officially launched his campaign in January (before any Republicans entered the contest), Rice said he had no plans to run it as a partisan career.

I don’t think anyone wants to see another bad election like the one we saw between Baker and (Rick) Kriseman, he added.

His reference is the 2017 Mayors career, which Kriseman won after tying Baker to Trump.

A spokeswoman for Rices ’campaign, Meagan Salisbury with Blue Ticket Consulting, did not immediately respond to a text message or email requesting feedback from mailers.

This isn’t the first time Blue Ticket Consulting has used Trump’s tactics in a career. Two years ago, Salisburys ’husband, Tom Alte, who runs the company with Salisbury, sent several mailers criticizing Republican City Council member Ed Montanari, who also tied him to Trump. Alte represented Democrat Orlando Acosta at the time, who was running against Montanari. Acosta lost that race and faced backlash, some from fellow Democrats, for critical campaign materials.

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