The night of the primary election in Sarasota County was marked by surprises and outsiders.
Despite passionate attempts by the Conservatives to paint the entire school board in a red light, candidates to the left of the current council majority – Liz Barker, who ousted Karen Rose, and Tom Edwards – were able to defeat their challengers and retain his seat.
To fill a vacancy on the 3rd District County Committee in 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis selected Neil Rainford over Tom Knight, and most of Sarasota County’s elite developers chose his campaign coffers, but Knight crushed the incumbent in virtually every way to win a four-year term.
Teresa Mast has similar development support and a huge fundraising lead over Alexandra Coe in the 1st District County Commission primary, but her victory was unsuccessful.
With the much-anticipated or dreaded November general election looming, Tuesday’s results suggest that candidates backed by the local conservative establishment are showing a degree of overconfidence, and those seen as too pro-development face potential problems.
Candidates supported by DeSantis lose surprisingly
DeSantis began his presidential campaign in a live chat with conservative tech magnates Elon Musk and David Sacks. Like many tech startups, DeSantis’ political brand proved flawed after it moved beyond beta testing and became nationally known. The governor’s bid to gain control of the Republican Party ended after he finished a distant second to former President Donald Trump in the Iowa caucuses in January.
Months later, DeSantis’ support for Republicans on the lower ballots in the 2022 Sarasota County election turned out not to be the golden ticket it once was.
In southern Sarasota County, you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a sign for Rainford, on property owned by developer Pat Neal or the Benderson Group, saying he was “endorsed by Governor DeSantis!”
Rainford was appointed to the Sarasota County Commission by DeSantis in 2023, defeating his opponent, Tom Knight. Rainford’s campaign was based largely on the fact that while he did not have Knight’s 51 years of experience in Venice, his conservative stance on social issues and his support from the governor made him the better right-wing fighter.
Despite implicit support from DeSantis and the local Republican establishment, Rainford lost by 20 percentage points on Tuesday.
Part of the governor’s legacy will be his focus on politicizing school board elections. Yet of the 23 school board elections in which he endorsed a candidate, 11 of his candidates lost, six won, and six face runoffs in November.
Sarasota School Board member Karen Rose was also endorsed by DeSantis but lost her re-election bid to Barker.
The high spending of Rainford, Mast and Rose was not reflected in the polls
Regardless of his candidates’ election results, Republican political consultant Anthony Pedicini raked in a lot of money in 2024. Through his company Simwins, Pedicini advised Rainford and Mast’s campaigns in Sarasota County.
Mast had a huge fundraising advantage over her opponent Alexandra Coe, but won by about 11 points. Rainford had a sizable lead over Knight, and lost by almost twice that margin.
Rainford’s campaign team and his political committee, Friends of Neil Rainford, paid Pedicini over $266,000 for the 2024 campaign, which equates to about $51 per vote in his defeat.
Mast’s campaign team and her Friends of Teresa Mast committee paid Simwins more than $177,028 in 2024 – about $30 for each vote she received.
The Make America Great Again political committee, which issued a questionable voter guide supporting Mast and Rainford and shares a treasurer with Rainford’s campaign, paid Simwins more than $434,000 for mail-in advertising and “digital services” in 2024, according to state records.
According to county records, Rose donated more than $178,000 to her own campaign since September 2023 before her surprise loss to Barker.
“America First” candidates suffered losses in the elections
The America First Southwest Florida Caucus has emerged as a new force in Sarasota politics in 2024. The group is allied with retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn – the far-right influencer and former national security adviser to Donald Trump who has made his home in the south of the county. Despite clashes with the GOP establishment, the 2024 AF SWFL Caucus meetings have hosted a number of up-and-coming conservative candidates, including Knight.
However, all candidates for County Charter Review Boards and Hospital Boards endorsed by the America First Southwest Florida Caucus lost the Republican primaries.
The four hospital board candidates who support “medical freedom” – including Mary Flynn O’Neill, Mike Flynn’s sister – lost by an average of about 32 percent to candidates supported by the Citizens for Excellence Healthcare Fund.
Michelle Pozzie, a local conservative activist who hosts a show on Flynn’s nascent Patriot TV platform, was also endorsed by the AF SWFL Caucus in her primary against Republican Rep. James Buchanan of Sarasota, but she lost by more than 47 percentage points.
The only local candidates endorsed by the AF SWFL Caucus who won their primaries also had by far the highest name recognition – Knight and County Commission Chairman Mike Moran.
Despite primary victories, Battie and Moran face challenges in the November elections
Moran easily defeated Charles Bear in the Republican primary for tax collector. Despite his higher profile as a long-time local politician than the unknown first-time candidate Bear and a 7-to-1 vote share over his opponent, Moran received about two-thirds of the vote.
Moran’s position as executive director of the Florida PACE Funding Agency has come under scrutiny from several taxing authorities. As executive director of Florida PACE, Moran also spent about $30,000 in public money on fancy restaurants and hotels in New York and Las Vegas, a Herald-Tribune investigation found. The commissioner has also angered many Sarasota nonprofits and activists for cutting funding for social programs, and he has drawn the ire of residents who oppose his support for growth in the rural east of the county and big hotel plans on Siesta Key.
In Tax Collector Barbara Ford-Coates, Moran is running against a popular incumbent who has been in office since the Ronald Reagan administration. In his campaign speeches, Moran has tried to make the campaign as partisan as possible, emphasizing that Ford-Coates is the only elected Democrat in Sarasota County politics.
The victories of Barker and Edwards show that Republicans will not win elections in Sarasota simply by being Republican.
City Commissioner Kyle Battie is seeking his first re-election after a hectic first term. He won the three-candidate primary and will face Sequoia Felton in the November runoff.
However, Battie received only about 43% of the vote, just 89 more than Felton. Third-place finisher Melissa Furman received about 20%.
Voter turnout in the city’s First District primary was about 29% of the turnout in the 2020 general election, when Battie defeated incumbent Willie Shaw. In addition to winning over a majority of Furman voters, the incumbent commissioner must also keep Felton at bay in an election where trends point to increasingly stubborn voter opposition to candidates seen as too pro-development.
Voter turnout decreased compared to previous primaries
According to the election commissioner’s unofficial tracker, a total of 104,051 votes were cast in Sarasota County. Overall voter turnout was about 31.8%, the lowest rate for a primary election since 2016.
The lowest voter turnout in the county was in North Port. At four large polling places east of the Myakka River – which together would have served nearly 45,000 registered voters – turnout was only about 19.4%.
Democrats also appeared to outperform relative to their declining political strength at the local level. Although they represent about 26% of registered voters in Sarasota, they only received about 34.5% of the vote. Republicans also outperformed relative to their registration rate in the county, but only half as much as Democrats.
Voter turnout in the primary election had risen steadily in every election cycle since 2012 through Tuesday. But turnout in November will be significantly higher. In 2020, turnout was about 32% in the primary and rose to 80% in the general election.
Christian Casale covers local politics for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @vanityhack
