Jerry Demings, the mayor of Orange County, has been re-elected; this is the first of two elections that might forever alter his legacy and the county’s development. In a four-way race on Tuesday, Demings prevailed with more than 60% of the vote, ensuring that he would win the election outright without the need for a runoff. He defeated conservative Chris Messina, liberal Tony Sabb, and progressive Kelly Semrad, who ran small campaigns against the well-known Demings.
In the County Commission District 2 race, Christine Moore, an incumbent commissioner for Orange County, won re-election with 57% of the vote against two competitors. A recount might be required to decide the winner of the District 4 commissioner race after incumbent Maribel Gomez Cordero was forced into a runoff in November. Mercedes Fonseca finished slightly ahead of Karl Anthony Pearson with about 26%, while Gomez Cordero finished with 48%.
Another runoff and recount could be required in District 6. In a field of seven candidates, veteran community activist Lawant to Gelzer came in first with 19% of the vote. Mike Scott and Cynthia Harris came in second and third, respectively, with around 18% of the vote each. Angie Gallo, a member of School Board District 1, and Teresa Jacobs, Chair of the Orange County School Board, both won reelection with huge margins. There will be runoff elections for the two vacant School Board positions. For the District 2 seat, Maria Salamanca and Heather Ashby came in first and second, while Alicia Farrant and Michael Daniels came in first and second for the District 3 seat.
Messina received 22% of the vote in the mayoral race, while the other two each received 9%. Demings must now focus on the general election in November, which will test and define his legacy as mayor of Orange County. For the next 20 years, he plans to spend billions of dollars on road improvements, therefore he is asking county voters to support a penny increase in the sales tax. Demings’ proposal includes new highways, streets, trains, and buses that could not only reduce traffic in Central Florida but also alter how the city operates in the ensuing decades.
Whether Demings won on Tuesday or had to run for re-election himself in the general election, that question would still have been on the ballot. There was little question that Demings would triumph nonetheless, even if it wasn’t on Tuesday. In a county where there are 150,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, he is a well-liked Democrat who is married to another one, U.S. Representative Val Demings.
Demings negotiated to strike a balance between economic growth and other priorities, retaining a large portion of the Democratic Party’s support while also winning over a majority of the business community, including the Central Florida Hotel & Lodging Association and the Orlando Economic Partnership. Nevertheless, Messina, Sabb, and Semrad have detected opportunities on the Right and Left, respectively.
None of Demings’ opponents have accumulated the kind of campaign resources or support networks that Demings faced in his 2018 race. By the end of last week, Messina had spent $26,000, Sabb, $27,000, and Semrad $18,000 on their respective campaigns. Demings has invested $346,000 in his campaign, with a large portion going to mailers distributed around the county promoting his work in housing, economic development, public safety, and public-private partnerships.
The county has glaring difficulties. The housing stock and transportation systems in Orange County have been overwhelmed for years, and environmental gems are in danger. A demographic base that is extremely vulnerable to inflation, taxes, and housing expenses is also created by the county’s economic basis, which is heavily based on hospitality and has one of the lowest median salary rates in the nation.
Then there was the COVID-19 pandemic, during which Demings relied on his experience in public safety as a former chief of the Orlando Police Department and sheriff of Orange County. He received a lot of appreciation for his prominence. He was able to appear on Orlando television news programs almost every night because of his twice-weekly public briefings.
Demings nevertheless advocated mask regulations, closures, and extensive vaccines while adopting a high level of caution. This put him in direct opposition to other Republicans, including Governor Ron DeSantis, who changed his position mid-pandemic to support openness and the elimination of vaccine and mask requirements. Economically, Orange County recovered from the epidemic; unemployment rates decreased from double-digits in 2020 to 3.1% by this past June. The population is still expanding.
Demings campaigned for significant pay raises for the police department as well as a new, high-tech approach to providing county services. As the top objective of his administration, Demings developed affordable housing programs that, according to him, will result in the construction of 30,000 affordable housing units over the next five years and prevent the eviction of 10,000 tenants. The Left, meanwhile, who have been fighting against what they regard as a corporate takeover of rental real estate, criticized him for his opposition to a ballot initiative for one year of rent control.
And for his masterpiece, Demings pushed ahead with his greatest priority, a ballot initiative to raise the sales tax by one penny to pay for significant transit and transportation projects worth billions of dollars. However, his campaign continued during a time of 8% inflation, garnering criticism from both the Left and Right who opposed regressive taxes and tax rises.
Additionally, he supported growth measures that included building a road through Split Oak Forest and took no action to support charter revisions that voters voted in 2020 to conserve Split Oak and add new safeguards for the county’s two most treasured rivers, the Wekiva and the Econlockhatchee. That drew criticism from the Left, who regarded it as a failure to safeguard the environment.
Both Messina, a high-tech entrepreneur, and Sabb, a retired decorated Army colonel, made pitches for platforms that prioritize freedom. They both capitalized on conservatives’ ire at Demings’ COVID-19 policies, which included closing and restricting companies and mandating mask use, as well as his suggestion to raise sales taxes at a time of inflation.
Semrad is a professor at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management at the University of Central Florida and a longtime advocate for social justice and the environment. She is well known for testifying at Orange County Commission meetings, where she has discussed Split Oak and the rent control proposal, among other topics.
For more information like this do visit lakecountyfloridanews.com
