Just days after announcing his run for Florida’s newly redrawn 16th Congressional District, former Sarasota mayor Kelly Kirschner says he has raised more than $100,000 (without accepting corporate PAC money, he qualified) while assembling an endorsement list that stretches from St. Petersburg to Manatee County.
The early fundraising haul lands as both parties begin maneuvering within one of Florida’s most politically unusual new congressional districts: a sprawling Gulf Coast-to-heartland seat that stitches together portions of south Pinellas County, Manatee and Sarasota with inland agricultural communities farther east, each with radically different wants and needs.
Kirschner, whose professional life over the past 14 years has been closely tied to St. Petersburg through Eckerd College and several local civic organizations, is pitching himself as a Gulf Coast consensus-builder focused on affordability issues and government reform.
“This is our government, we paid for it, and it is time we took it back,” the campaign said in today’s fundraising announcement.
Among the campaign’s first major endorsements: former St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman. “I have known and worked with Kelly for nearly twenty years,” Kriseman said in the release. “He has a proven record of making government work for the people it represents.”
The campaign also announced support from former State Rep. Jennifer Webb, former Sarasota-area legislator Keith Fitzgerald and several education, business and nonprofit leaders across the Tampa Bay region.
While Kirschner built his political career in Sarasota – serving as city commissioner and mayor – much of his recent regional visibility has come through St. Petersburg. At Eckerd College, he led executive and continuing education initiatives while helping develop partnerships with local businesses, nonprofits and workforce organizations.
His résumé also includes service with the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce, the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg and the South St. Pete Community Redevelopment Area Citizens Advisory Committee.
The race is unfolding against the backdrop of another volatile redistricting cycle in Florida, where critics have accused state leaders of carving apart longtime coastal voting blocs in favor of more Republican-friendly districts. The proposed map combines urban waterfront communities in southern Pinellas with suburban growth corridors around Bradenton and rural inland counties farther east.