ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – The November election is coming up, and Orange County residents will soon be voting for the Commission District 1, 3 and 5 races.
Early voting begins Monday, Oct. 21, and runs through Saturday, Nov. 3. Election Day is on Tuesday, Nov. 5. Find everything you need to know to vote in Orange County HERE.
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If these candidates look familiar, it’s because you probably voted in the August primary. No candidate got more than 50% of the vote in any of these races, so the top two vote-getters advanced to a runoff election this November.
District 1 encompasses much of southwestern Orange County, including much of the theme park areas, as well as Winter Garden, Windermere, Oakland and the booming Horizon West area. The area is one of the fastest growing in the county.
Back in August, a three-way race between Nicole Wilson, Austin Arthur, and write-in Stephen M. Davis was extremely close. Wilson had the lead by just two votes. Since she did not get more than 50% of the vote, she and challenger Austin Arthur are advancing to a runoff.
Orange County’s District 3 is located in the center of the county, running from Orange Blossom Trail in the Holden, Edgewood and Taft areas, east across the Curry Ford Road area to Dean Road, and includes communities like Rio Pinar, Belle Isle, SoDo, Conway, Lee Vista and the area around Valencia College.
Orange County Commission District 5 is oddly shaped. It encompasses all of Orange County east of East Colonial Drive and Tanner Road, including the Wedgefield, Bithlo, Lake Pickett and Christmas areas.
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Here’s who is on the ballot for each district.
District 1
NICOLE WILSON — Campaign Website
Environmental lawyer Nicole Wilson is running for her second term in office as a champion of growth management that also balances environmental issues.
Wilson sided with residents who tried to fight a plan by Disney to build affordable housing in Horizon West, saying the infrastructure wasn’t ready to handle the influx of new residents, but was outvoted 4-2 back in March.
Wilson also supported rolling back impact fee discounts for developers. Those discounts meant the county collected less money from developers for years, which resulted in less money for infrastructure, Wilson told us in May. Now more money is coming in, which will allow the county to tackle some of the infrastructure backlog.
Wilson also touts her support of the 2021 ordinance that banned the retail sale of dogs, cats and rabbits in unincorporated parts of the county, efforts to secure funding for homeless programs like Matthew’s Hope, and her tireless environmental advocacy with pushing for a summer fertilizer ordinance to reduce nutrient runoff, protecting the county’s wetlands, and advocating for the rural boundary amendment, which will be on the ballot in November.
Wilson also supports expanding the way the county uses tourist development tax dollars, which right now are restricted to community venues and tourism promotion.
AUSTIN ARTHUR - Campaign website
Austin Arthur is a longtime businessman in Winter Garden, founder of Gymnastics USA.
Arthur also says he wants to slow growth in West Orange County, build more infrastructure and preserve green spaces, like Wilson. He insists Wilson has not done enough regarding growth, saying she should be meeting more with “certain stakeholders” and landowners. He believes that efforts to rezone areas for multifamily housing need to be met with more scrutiny.
He also opposes tax increases and wants to remove regulations to deal with affordable housing.
Arthur has the support of the business community, along with the mayors of several cities in the area. He also is supported by Former District 1 Commissioner Scott Boyd, a developer who in 2020 orchestrated a write-in candidate in Wilson’s first race against Betsey Vanderley to get the race moved back to August when fewer people vote. Boyd is an outspoken critic of Wilson.
District 3
MAYRA URIBE — Campaign website
Mayra Uribe is a business owner who grew up in east Orange County in ZIP Code 32825, an area News 6 highlighted in our WKMG Hits the Road series.
Uribe was first elected in 2020 to represent the area, which she described as a tight-knit community with multi-generational families.
In her time in office, Uribe has focused deeply on the neighborhoods she serves. She says she increased office hours and connected neighborhoods with the sheriff in regular meetings to discuss law enforcement.
Uribe is known for being very prudent when it comes to the budget. She was the only one to vote against a property tax hike for emergency services, criticizing the lack of public input into the tax hike. Uribe says she supports growth limits, but says that doesn’t mean she’s anti-developer.
She’s been in favor of expanding the uses of the tourist development tax, and was frustrated by the preliminary memo recently released regarding an audit of Visit Orlando. She would like to change the way Visit Orlando gets TDT money from the county.
LINDA STEWART — Campaign website
Linda Stewart represented Orange County in the Florida Senate from 2016 to 2024 and before that served on the Orange County Commission. Stewart also spent two years in the Florida House.
You can see all the bills Stewart sponsored in the legislature on the Florida Senate website.
A Democrat in the legislature, Stewart prided herself on working in collaboration with Republicans to get bills passed. Sometimes that took years. In January Stewart told News 6 that it took five years to get the Glass Bill passed, which is a law she sponsored to require drivers with windshield damage to go through their insurance companies to get it fixed, rather than a third party. Stewart said they were finding that those third parties were replacing windshields for more than what insurance companies would assess, and thus driving up the cost of auto insurance. That bill was signed into law in 2023.
Stewart also worked with law enforcement to sponsor bills like SB 764, which increased the number of years agencies had to store rape kits in case they were needed for evidence.
In 2022, she also got Miya’s Law passed, which increased safety requirements for apartment complexes.
Stewart also has been criticized for some of the bills she sponsored. In 2024, she tried to pass a bill that would have stopped counties from reducing the amount of Tourist Development Tax dollars it paid to county tourism marketing agencies. The bill came as county commissioners were discussing whether to reduce funding to Visit Orlando. It failed to pass.
District 5
STEVE LEARY — Campaign website
Steve Leary is a small business owner who served on the Winter Park City Commission and subsequently went on to become the city’s mayor.
Leary said he also supports protecting the environment and found ways to do so while in office while also balancing economic growth. He says that getting things done in government involves talking to all stakeholders, including developers, on his website.
Leary says he supports protecting a rural boundary from development and managing urban sprawl. He wants to prioritize investing in updating infrastructure in the district, including roads, sewage and technology networks, and he wants to find ways to reduce housing costs.
KELLY SEMRAD — Campaign website
Dr. Kelly Semrad is a UCF professor specializing in the tourism and hospitality industry, and how communities can build tourism economies that also balance protecting the environment.
Semrad has a long record of environmental activism in the county. She helped found Save Orange County, a grassroots effort to fight overdevelopment, and led the effort to get the proposed rural boundary amendment on the November ballot. She also helped fight efforts to build large developments in the Lake Pickett area of east Orange County.
Semrad says her priorities include requiring developers to pay all of the costs associated with land use amendments, diversifying how Tourist Development Tax dollars are used, cutting red tape to allow for more affordable housing, increasing access to affordable and faster public transit, increasing pedestrian safety and finding ways to repurpose underutilized spaces to create affordable housing and provide support for the homeless.
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