Orange Mayor Jerry Demings wins again; sales-tax campaign awaits

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings overcame three opponents, controversial votes in favor of a toll-road through Split Oak Forest and against a rent-cap ordinance to breeze Tuesday to a second, four-year term in which he’ll push for a sales-tax increase.

With nearly 60% of the vote, according to final, unofficial ballot counts, Demings dodged a run-off election Nov. 8 and can instead spend the autumn months stumping for a penny-per-dollar sales tax increase he considers vital to transforming the county’s transit systems.

Onstage at a victory party, Demings was flanked by his wife, three-term Congresswoman Val Demings, also victorious in her bid to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. The mayor predicted she’d become Florida’s next senator in November as her supporters waved “Chief” signs for the former Orlando Police chief.

All three challengers in the primary — tech entrepreneur Chris Messina, retired Army Col. Anthony Sabb and University of Central Florida professor Kelly Semrad — derided the proposed sales-tax increase as unnecessary or ill-timed amid record-high inflation.

They also assailed his handling of the pandemic, including employee vaccination mandates.

Messina got about 22% of the vote and Sabb and Semrad each won about 9.3% of the ballots.

Orange County is a strong-mayor form of government as spelled out in the county charter. The mayor oversees a $5.2 billion county budget and sits on the region’s most powerful and important boards. The mayor also serves on the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, which governs Orlando International Airport, the Central Florida Expressway Authority and the Tourist Development Council.

According to county figures, the proposed 1% sales-tax increase — which works out to a penny-per-dollar increase on taxable goods — would bring in about $600 million a year for 20 years, about $12 billion, to build, improve and expand transportation options. It will be on the Nov. 8 ballot and requires voter approval.

Voters also gave a second term to incumbent commissioner Christine Moore in District 2, which includes Apopka and Ocoee.

But run-off elections are set for District 4 and District 6 in the Nov. 8 general election. The candidates are not yet set.

“To be determined,” Orange County Election Supervisor Bill Cowles said in a text to the Orlando Sentinel. “Stay tuned.”

He noted 17,000 vote-by-mail ballots have to be counted and added to the totals.

In District 4, which includes Lake Nona, incumbent Maribel Gomez Cordero will face either Mercedes Fonseca or Karl Pearson.

In District 6, community activist Lawanna Gelzer was the top vote-getter with 19.11% of the vote.

Four other candidates were separated by 339 votes.

Recounts are required to confirm who will oppose Gomez Cordero and Gelzer.

District 2

Moore, the board’s most conservative member, won easily over challengers Sandra Fatmi-Hall and Christopher Delgado.

She got 57.2% of the vote to avoid a run-off while first-time candidate Fatmi-Hall finished second with about 27% of the ballots.

Delgado, 30, a businessman, finished a distant third with 15.8% in the three-candidate race.

Moore, 61, who opposed a proposal to cap rent increases for a year, survived an ad blitz that featured campaign mailers dubbing her “Christine ‘You Pay’ Moore,” which was funded by a Miami-based group identified in organizational documents as a social-justice PAC.

Service Employees International Union’s PAC gave $1.5 million in July to the group, Florida For All Inc.

District 2 includes all of northwest Orange County as well as Eatonville, Lockhart and Ocoee.

District 4

Gomez Cordero won 47.1% of the vote, first among the three candidates but not enough to avoid a runoff Nov. 8.

Mercedes Fonseca with about 26.7% and Karl A. Pearson with about 26.2% are separated by 111 votes.

Fonseca, who works as a consultant, served as an aide for former Commissioner Pete Clarke.

Pearson has worked in the banking industry for 25 years.

Gomez Cordero’s first term was marked by several key votes. She cast the deciding vote to ban the retail sale of puppies and kittens and was part of the 4-3 board majority to move a proposed rent-cap ordinance to the November ballot.

She voted against two controversial road projects, putting a 1.5-mile stretch of a toll road through Split Oak Forest and earmarking $125 million in community redevelopment funds for a road project sought by Universal Studios for a new theme park.

District 4 includes fast-growing Lake Nona and the communities of Avalon Park South, Eastwood and Waterford Lakes.

The district stretches across southern Orange from the eastern edge of Hunters Creek to the Brevard County line.

District 6

Voters in Orange County Commission District 6 will choose their next representative in November.

None of the seven candidates vying for the job got 20% of the vote.

After Gelzer, Michael “Mike” Scott, coordinator for a mentoring initiative, got 18.09% of the vote followed by community advocate Cynthia Harris, 17.94%; Nikki Mims McGee, who works for her family’s construction company, 16.49%; Roberta Walton Johnson, general counsel for Orange County Clerk of Courts Tiffany Moore Russell, 15.97%; community organizer Rosemarie Diehl, 7.57%; and real-estate agent Hedder Pierre-Joseph, 4.8%.

The district, which includes International Drive, the Universal Orlando Resort theme parks, the Orange County Convention Center, Tangelo Park, Metro West and most of Pine Hills, has 52,877 Black voters, about 300 more than districts 1, 3, 4 and 5 combined.

Pierre-Joseph is the sister of two-term District 6 Commissioner Victoria Siplin.

An earlier version of this article misstated Christine Moore’s age.