Tensions surface at forum as Clearwater’s Seat 5 candidates trade charges

The candidates in the city’s virtual election forum on Wednesday were careful to heed moderator Al Ruechel’s warning to not make any personal attacks.

“I’m not going to allow that,” said Ruechel, a retired Bay News 9 anchor.

But the tension between City Council Seat 5 candidates Aaron Smith-Levin and Lina Teixeira still seeped through during answers to Ruechel’s questions on everything from Clearwater’s so-called “good ol’ boy” network to their closing statements.

In the campaign up to the March 15 election, Smith-Levin, 41, and Teixeira, 52, have traded blows, leaving the third candidate, pastor Jonathan Wade, 66, out of the fray.

VIDEO: Watch the video of Clearwater’s Seat 5 candidate forum

As Smith-Levin runs on challenging the Church of Scientology’s growing influence on downtown real estate, he has targeted Teixeira’s activism in downtown business groups, alleging her work alongside church members makes her too friendly to Scientology. In a video posted to Smith-Levin’s YouTube channel last week, he called her “Scientology’s Trojan horse,” which Teixeira called false and defamatory.

Last week Teixeira fought back with a mailer that blasted Smith-Levin’s behavior during two incidents at bars over the past two years where law enforcement responded, though no charges were filed. In 2020, he was issued a trespass warning after he “catcalled” two women, tried to provoke their boyfriends into a fight and threw Mardi Gras beads at the group, according to a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office incident report. In September, Smith-Levin said a man punched him in the head at a bar on Clearwater Beach after he called the man’s girlfriend “crazy,” according to police body camera footage. Smith-Levin admitted to calling the woman a “c–t” after the fight although police told him that two witnesses said he used the word prior to the fight.

“I have been the target of a very organized online slander campaign for the last six months,” Teixeira, who is not a member of Scientology, said during the forum. “I’ve tried to do the Christian thing. I have turned the other cheek over and over and over again and the blows have just kept coming, so two weeks ago I decided enough is enough.”

Teixeira’s second negative mailer hit voters’ homes this week. In this one, the Teixeira campaign used two photos of Smith-Levin from a smear website about him that is owned and operated by the Church of Scientology. Teixeira said her freelance graphic artist pulled the images from Google and that she “was not aware it was from a site the church had designed.”

“My campaign has had no contact with the church or their employees or supporters, who were not involved in any way with this mail piece or any other advertising for my campaign,” Teixeira told the Tampa Bay Times in a statement.

At Wednesday’s forum, Smith-Levin brought up the website as one way that Scientology has been “attacking me nonstop with lies and exaggerations” since he defected from the organization in 2014 after being raised in the church.

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“The voters are focused on the issues,” Smith-Levin said. “They want to know what are you going to do for our neighborhoods and what are you going to do about Scientology. … Talking about a City Council candidate’s connections to Scientology and David Miscavige is not a personal attack, it’s addressing the core issues that voters care about in this campaign.”

Wade, pastor of St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church and a longtime advocate in the North Greenwood neighborhood, said he’s running on a platform to advocate for more affordable housing and to represent the needs of neighborhoods, especially when faced with undesirable development.

“I believe that there’s communities that have been marginalized, left behind and have not had a voice at the table,” said Wade, a retired licensed clinical social worker. “So I believe that I can bring a voice to the table that will take care of not only those who are disenfranchised and left behind, but can speak to the larger community as well.”

But when Ruechel asked if the perception of a “good ol’ boys” club in Clearwater was real, all three agreed it was. Wade, who is Black, said that network has discouraged some people of color from running for office, noting it has been 30 years since an African American sat on the City Council.

“Now is the time to have some diversity and people who look like myself who are equally qualified to be able to lead the city in this year 2022,” Wade said.

Smith-Levin said the “good old boys” are “terrified of losing control of the City Council,” especially after the 2020 election of council members Mark Bunker, another Scientology critic, and Kathleen Beckman, the most socially and environmentally progressive council member in years. He alluded to the support Teixeira has received from “establishment” figures like business owners, developers and elected officials.

“That is why this campaign has gotten so nasty,” Smith-Levin said. “They are so desperate to win that they are resorting to tactics they normally wouldn’t use, and the solution, get rid of them.”

Teixeira said while “the network exists just like many others do,” she’s had to fight for her place to be heard as a “5-foot-2 little Latina woman who’s an artist.”

But when it comes to Scientology, which Ruechel dedicated two questions about, all three candidates stated the church’s growing influence downtown was an issue.

Wade noted residents he speaks with say downtown is an “eerie” place, but he said the church is a “force that we have to work with in some way.”

All three agreed the city should continue discussions with Scientology leader David Miscavige about revitalizing vacant church-controlled properties, but Smith-Levin warned the city should not trust an organization like Scientology to be honest about its plans.

Teixeira said it’s challenging to share the city with “an entity that has large needs that don’t coincide with the city’s” and that Scientology’s vast hold on downtown real estate “is unhealthy and it cripples us.”

“This is why it really should be a priority of certain city leaders to be doing things now that in the future will result in Scientology’s tax exempt status being revoked,” Smith-Levin said, “so they don’t have the authority to bully us around the way they have been.”