Palm Coast District 2 seat heads to runoff between Theresa Pontieri and Alan Lowe

The race for the District 2 Palm Coast City Council seat will head to a runoff in November between Theresa Carli Pontieri and Alan Lowe.

Pontieri finished with the most votes in the primary with 37% while Lowe came in second with 28%. Sims E. Jones finished third with 26% and Shauna Kanter was last with 9%.

In November, voters will choose between Lowe, who for a time declared himself a sovereign citizen three decades ago, and Pontieri, a former legal counsel for the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office who resigned after making controversial comments on her video podcast about police interactions with Black people.

Pontieri said in a phone interview Tuesday she was grateful for the support from citizens.

"I just hope and pray that they will continue to have confidence in me and that I will be able to take it home in November," Pontieri said.

Lowe said he was looking forward to the race.

"I'm very happy about it, " Lowe said, "a lot of work to get to this point so I'm happy that I'm continuing on."

The winner will benefit from a pay raise. The City Council earlier this year voted to increase pay for council members from $9,600 to $24,097.61.

The District 2 seat is currently held by John Fanelli, who was appointed by the council after Victor Barbosa resigned in March. Fanelli, like the other applicants, agreed not to run for the seat this year.

Lowe, 61, a handyman and inventor who patented a method for cultivating live coral, wrote in an email that he was well-prepared for the job, having attended “a majority” of City Council meetings for the last couple of years.

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But a decision Lowe made three decades ago has trailed his political ambitions.

Lowe declared himself a “sovereign citizen” in 1993 and 1994, and wrote a declaration of independence proclaiming himself a foreign state. He also changed his signature for a time to “Alan S. Lowe ambassador of Christ.”

Sovereign citizens generally share anti-government beliefs and reject the authority of courts and law enforcement.

Lowe said in a 2020 interview that those actions reflected a “thought pattern” that lasted only several months nearly 30 years ago.

“It was a declaration saying that basically I don’t like the government and I don’t like what they are doing to people and I don’t want to be part of what they are doing to people 30 years ago,” Lowe said.

Lowe repeated in a phone interview lasweek that it was something that happened a long time ago and he never gave up his United States passport.

Lowe wrote in an email to The News-Journal about the current campaign that he has lived in the city for 39 years and spent 33 of those in District 2.

Lowe also wrote he had the endorsement of Lt. Col. Oliver North. North was involved in the Iran-Contra Affair, a scandal in the 1980s.

Pontieri, an attorney, resigned in August 2021 as general counsel for the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office after The News-Journal asked about a series of videos titled “More Than White Noise” she posted on Rumble, a conservative online platform. Pontieri said she was forced to resign.

The videos all appeared to have been made before she started her job as general counsel for the sheriff’s office on July 6, 2021. In one video, Pontieri, who is white, disparaged the Black Lives Matter movement and in another she referred to a Black girl, Ma’Khia Bryant, who was fatally shot by police in Ohio as “thuggy.”

Bryant was 16 and living in a foster home when she was shot. Police body camera video showed Bryant appeared to try to swing a knife at another young Black woman on April 20, 2021, when an officer shot her. Pontieri also commented about Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was fatally shot on April 11, 2021, in Minnesota by former police officer Kim Potter, who yelled "Taser," but instead drew her pistol.

“They were both freaking thuggy criminals,” Pontieri said of Bryant and Wright in her video.

The sheriff's office released a statement on Aug. 24, 2021, saying that Pontieri had resigned and that the video podcast was not disclosed during the hiring process and did not reflect Sheriff Rick Staly's values.

In a recent interview, Pontieri said her comments about the Bryant case showed race did not play a part in her statements because the incident involved two Black girls.

Pontieri said that Wright should not have been shot and that the officer was negligent. Potter was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced in February to two years in prison. But Pontieri said that Wright was shot while trying to flee, which is a crime and which Pontieri said has led to other officer-involved shootings.

“Could I have been more tactful in the way I said things? Yes, sure, and I am learning every day how to be more tactful and choose my words so that they are not cherry-picked,” Pontieri said.

What would she say to Black residents of Palm Coast concerned about her views and whether she can fairly represent them? Pontieri said that anyone who speaks to her would know she has no racial bias.

“I personally don’t hold any racial bias whatsoever,” Pontieri said.

Pontieri also has a prior arrest for driving-under-the-influence in Orange County when she was in collage. She said in the interview that it changed the direction of her life and taught her about overcoming adversity.

She said she has the support of the Republican Party of Flagler County.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Palm Coast District 2 seat heads to runoff between Pontieri and Lowe