Two St. Petersburg mayoral candidates, Rick Kriseman and Rick Baker, participated in a public forum Tuesday night—and the debates got a little heated.

Seven candidates have qualified for mayor but only Kriseman and Baker participated in the forum because they publicly announced they were running for mayor first.

Around 200 people attended Tuesday night’s forum at Mount Zion Progressive Missionary Baptist Church.

People were able to submit questions before the event and those in attendance were able to ask questions.

One little girl in the crowd asked, “How are you going to help the schools and the teachers care more about the children and build better schools?”

The candidates laid out their plans.

Kriseman said, “Isn’t that what anyone wants in this community is a job? With nine years you had to do that and there wasn’t any policies that came forth, we’ve done it in three and a half years.”

“I believe that when I was mayor from the cabinet level all the way down through my administration we had people we worked closely with in all parts of our community and we did it out in the city as well,” Baker said.

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Things got heated quickly between the two candidates and one person in the audience even called the candidate out for being too petty.

One woman directed a comment at Baker saying, “Specifically I’d like to have him address how he has changed since 2007 when tents were slashed for the homeless.”

Baker responded and admitted to the mistake, but Kriseman still chimed in saying, “We were selected as the meanest city when this happened. He can’t place the blame on his staff when it’s comfortable.”

Baker responded, “What’s laughable is he closes a sewer plant, he dumps 200 million gallons of sewage into the bay, and he blames everybody on the planet.”

Both mayoral candidates tried to put that pettiness aside as they answered questions about everything from crime to health to race relations.

People in the audience responded positively to the responses from the candidates. 

“It was great. It was wonderful, it was real, it was open and honest,” Gina Foti said.

“I’m very happy from what I heard for a starting debate and I know there’s a long process here and there’s a lot more questions that I’m sure I have and a lot of other of our constituents have for these two candidates,” Trevor Mallory said.

There was also a straw poll taken on Tuesday night after the forum. Rick Baker won 114 to 48.