Ocoee Mayor Rusty Johnson wins race with rival; Maitland voters reject Dale McDonald
Ocoee Mayor Rusty Johnson won a new four-year term Tuesday, defeating two opponents including a city commissioner with whom he has often clashed.
The 77-year-old mayor, a Vietnam War veteran and retired mail carrier, has said this term will be his last, capping a career of public service which has spanned more than half a century including more than 30 years in elected office.
Ocoee has grown during his tenure in office from about 13,000 residents in 1990 to over 47,000 in 2020.
Johnson received about 61% of the ballots, according to final unofficial results posted by Orange County Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles. Ocoee Commissioner George Oliver III, often at odds with Johnson, finished second with about 27% of the vote.
First-time candidate Chris Adkins finished third with about 12% of the vote.
In Maitland, former Mayor Dale McDonald, required to sit out two election cycles because of term limits, lost his bid to return to elected office, losing to Lindsay Hall Harrison, incumbent Seat 4 City Council member.
Hall Harrison, a lawyer, won about 62% of the vote.
“Maitland voters have once again demonstrated that they prefer integrity and hard work above smear campaign trickery,” Hall Harrison said, referring to attack ads that McDonald mailed to voters late last week
The mailers may have contributed to his loss.
He got an earful from Marc Auster, 80, about the attack ads outside the polling site.
“You’re a lowlife,” Auster shouted at McDonald who was greeting voters. “You should be embarrassed.”
Voters Bill and Sheila Oelfke said the mailers were deciding factors for them because they falsely portrayed Hall Harrison, who previously served as a volunteer on the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board.
“We don’t like that kind of thing,” Bill Oelfke said.
One of McDonald’s political postcards featured an image of a man in a trench coat and no pants flashing children sitting on a blanket in a field and alleged that Hall Harrison voted to “allow deviants to expose themselves to our children in our parks and to prevent the police department from arresting them.”
Asked about the mailer, McDonald insisted the charges were truthful.
Maitland voters also decided five charter questions, approving four of them.
They rejected only Question 3 which would have eliminated run-off elections in a race where no candidate received more than 50% of the ballots cast.
Ocoee voters also decided two city commission races.
In District 1, Scott Kennedy, a member of the city’s planning and zoning board, won 63 % of the ballots to easily defeat Shuantae Bellamy, who appeared on the ballot as Hope Bellamy, to win a seat formerly held by Larry Brinson Sr.
In District 3, former Fire Chief Richard Firstner won re-election by an even larger margin, winning about 76% the ballots to defeat Shante Munns, a first-time commission candidate who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in November.
shudak@orlandosentinel.com
