Republican Primary — Congressional District 11
John McCloy
For those looking for an alternative to Congressman Daniel Webster, who has one of the lowest effectiveness ratings in Congress according to the Center for Effective Lawmaking, and is also known for his no-show voting record, Mount Dora geophysicist and veteran John McCloy has emerged as a viable candidate. He’s not the perfect candidate, but waiting for the perfect candidate is akin to waiting for Godot. McCloy is a reasonable Republican and those are in short supply.
For starters, McCloy is not an election denier, which is a low bar for holding office, but one that Webster cannot clear since he was one of the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election after the Jan. 6 insurrection. McCloy readily states that the 2020 election was legitimate though he told reporter Andrea Charur in his interview for our Voting Guide that only the rioters who were violent and forced their way into the Capitol should be prosecuted, not those who merely entered — which contradicts the restrictions barring entry to federal buildings without authorization. But with many Republicans attempting to whitewash Jan. 6 as a tourist holiday, it’s a plus that McCloy describes the insurrection as a riot at all.
McCloy also earns respect for talking to voters about the rare diseases initiative spearheaded by Barbie Harden Hall, the Democratic nominee in the race. She lost a child to a rare disease, and he is a parent of a child on the spectrum. It may seem insignificant that he's done outreach on her behalf, but it's a sign that if elected, McCloy would likely work across the aisle to get things done, and that speaks to his willingness to compromise for good legislation.
Still, McCloy is a mass of contradictions on other key issues:
-
He opposes safe gun storage laws and mandating basic gun-use training, but supports background checks and believes parents should be held responsible if kids commit gun-related crimes.
-
He supports investment in green energy and investment in fossil fuels
-
He supports rape and incest exceptions in Florida’s six-week abortion ban — but believes women will lie about rape and incest in order to obtain abortions.
-
He’s for school vouchers but opposes religious teaching and compulsory prayer in public schools.
There’s a saying about politics: Voting isn’t marriage; it’s public transportation. You’re not waiting for The One. You’re getting a bus. And if there’s not one going to your destination, get the one that’s going closest.
In the bus terminal that is the Republican primary, the McCloy bus is going in the right direction.
Circuit Judge, Ninth Judicial Circuit, Group 37
Judge Tanya Davis Wilson
Of the two people campaigning for circuit judge in Group 37 — Judge Tanya Davis Wilson and Jason Willis — Judge Davis Wilson gets our endorsement.
Judge Davis Wilson has already served a decade on the bench — which is how long Willis has been practicing law. And that’s on top of the 27 years she spent as a public defender and federal prosecutor before then-Gov. Rick Scott appointed her first to Orange County Court and then to the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court.
Meanwhile, a look at Willis’ LinkedIn shows that after three and a half years with the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court's Public Defenders’ office following law school, he’s bounced law firm to law firm, leaving each after less than two years. He was terminated from his last position after five months for cause, according to someone familiar with the situation, who spoke anonymously to discuss a sensitive matter. Willis refused to answer VoxPopuli's questions about his work history.
Experience matters as we have said so frequently in these endorsements. And as Davis Wilson told reporter Kathryn Brudzinski who interviewed her for her profile, what prevents judges from being thrown by “surprises in court” is —you guessed it — experience.
“Nothing about the legal system is cookie cutter … and if you don't have the knowledge, if you don't have the work ethic, if you don't have the experience to do it, then that's a disservice to the citizens in this market” she said.
Wilson told Brudzinski she bases her rulings on law and mercy, that she doesn’t see a “case number" standing before her in her court room; she sees a human being who may have behaved criminally in the moment but who is nonetheless is still a person, and she considers the totality of their circumstances when she makes her rulings.
We could use more thoughtfulness and more mercy in the criminal justice system. We need Davis Wilson’s continued experience on the bench and not someone seeking a steady job because he may be running out of law firms to employ him.
Orange County School Board — District 4
Jake Petroski
The Orange County School Board should be staffed by education professionals who have a thorough understanding of both classroom dynamics and administrator demands. This is not volunteer gig — it's a real job with a $48,400 annual salary and requires experience and expertise. That’s why VoxPopuli will only back an educator for the District 4 seat.
Of the two educators running — Anne Douglas and Jake Petroski — Petroski has our endorsement for his plan to improve teacher training to boost county-wide literacy rates and expand technical education for students who seek a different path to success than college. We also applaud Petroski's outspoken support for the LGBTQ+ community. The most despicable aspects of the Don’t Say Gay law were undone with the March settlement with National Center for Lesbian Rights. But LGBTQ+ students, teachers and staff still need people in their corner every day to demonstrate that Orange County has their back, and Petroski is a steady ally. With two kids in OCPS and endorsed by the 7,575-strong Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, Petroski also stands against blanket classroom book bans and Amendment 1’s partisan school board elections. We believe he'll find his way through the ever-present bureaucracy to put students and teachers first.
Of course, schools wouldn’t function without parents who want to be involved and perhaps Kyle Goudy, who handles business development for the tee time reservation site GolfNow, will find his way to the School Advisory Committee at his daughter’s school, but he lacks the temperament for school board.
​
That's not something we say lightly. But when a media situation did not go his way, Goudy took it out on those on our staff who are young and vulnerable and that doesn't reflect well for one who aspires to the school board.
Goudy took issue with our story about his embrace of Christian nationalist author/radio host Eric Metaxas as the inspiration for his school board run. Our story was based on a Facebook reel on his campaign page in which he credited Metaxas’ book, Letter to the American Church for inspiring him to run. (The reel has since been removed from his page, but a copy exists in our story.) When asked, Goudy professed ignorance about Metaxas’ virulently anti-LGBTQ ideas, which we gave him space to express, both in the article and on VoxPopuli’s Facebook page. Still, he complained he’d been treated unfairly on separate occasions to two VoxPopuli interns, neither of whom had written the story, but one of whom was made to feel they were in trouble.
Is Goudy anti-LGBTQ? He says no. But what gives us pause is Goudy’s eagerness to bask in the reflected, approval of Metaxas without looking too closely at the totality of what the firebrand author represents, then crying foul when the ugliness rubs off. It’s the worst kind of naïveté. But to complain about it to college interns who bear no responsibility for the story, demonstrates questionable judgment not to mention an inability to effectively problem solve.
Public Defender Ninth Judicial Circuit Court for Orange & Oscoela Counties
Melissa Vickers
It’s the rare election in which the candidates are both so capable that Orange County residents would be in good hands if either of them wins. Such is the case with Melissa Vickers and Lenora Easter, the candidates for Public Defender of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court for Orange and Osceola Counties. Both are Democrats. Both are dedicated defense attorneys. Both are “down for the cause,” as Vickers says, helping those who can’t afford legal representation, get good representation when they stand accused of crime.
It’s Vickers who gets our endorsement.
Steeped in the culture of holistic or collaborative public defense, which assembles teams of attorneys, social workers and advocates to defend clients and remediate the factors that keep people cycling through the criminal justice system, Easter has an impressive social justice resume working with the Bronx Defenders (the cradle of holistic public defense) and Partners for Justice, which transitions offices interested in embracing holistic defense.
But Vickers has spent 18 years in this public defenders' office, working in every department and effectively running the office as the assistant chief public defender for two years before leaving to prepare for her campaign. She is in the best position to know how this office runs and what needs improvement — perhaps even to bring on Easter in her capacity at Partners for Justice to help the office move closer to the holistic model.
​
Beyond that, Vickers' biggest asset is her professional network, forged in the two decades she’s been working in this public defenders’ office. As the president of the Central Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers noted in her own endorsement of Vickers: “The best lawyers I know either worked alongside or under the guidance of Melissa Vickers.” There’s a level of admiration, respect and trust that Vickers engenders throughout the legal community — on the defense and prosecution sides — but also in law enforcement and judicial quarters.
Relationships are the currency of the criminal justice system and as Public Defender, Vickers would start out with quite a bit in the bank.
Orange County Supervisor of Elections
Wes Hodge
This is the most consequential race in the Aug. 20 elections for it's from this office that the trust and validation that every other election in the county is conducted fairly and without interference comes. This office ran smoothly for three decades under former elections supervisor Bill Cowles, and Orange County needs a new leader in this role who will maintain the transparency practices that inspire confidence that our voting systems are secure while implementing new measures to make voting accessible to every Orange County citizen.
That’s why of the four people running in the Democratic primary for Supervisor of Elections — Wes Hodge, Karen Castor Dentel, Dan Helm and Sunshine Linda-Marie Grund — VoxPopuli fully endorses Hodge as the next Supervisor of Elections.
Castor Dentel, with her record of service in the Florida Legislature and on the Orange County School Board, would also make a fine elections supervisor. But Hodge has vision. He comes prepared with actionable plans to encourage broad voter participation. One we're especially enamored of is “appointment voting" — akin to the appointment system for renewing driver’s licenses at the Department of Motor Vehicles — to help curb long lines at polls so that excessive wait times do not become disenfranchising.
​
We also support Hodge's ideas to accommodate voters in their native languages — staffing tables at voter registration events with people who speak Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian/Creole and Vietnamese, and updating touch-screen voting machines with these languages so that people can vote more easily in their primary language. Hodge also wants to partner with schools to pre-register 16- and 17-year-olds to vote; open more early voting sites and ensure that poll locations are near Lynx routes, so that not having a car or a driver’s license does not impede one's ability to vote.
​​
Finally, there’s the election security and integrity piece. Despite statements from the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, 61 court cases that found the 2020 election fraud claims lacked merit, former president Donald Trump’s own advisors stating there was no fraud, and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ stating unequivocally, “All those theories that were put out did not prove to be true,” the Big Lie of the stolen 2020 presidential election persists, and the resulting Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection to prevent the peaceful transfer of power still splits the country. As Republicans openly make plans to challenge the results of the 2024 election, the threat of additional violence, especially in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump, is never far from mind. Just days ago, a commenter on VoxPopuli’s Facebook page, who had been arguing with another page administrator about the District 1 Orange County Commission election, put out a $1,000 bounty for their name.
In interviews for our voting guide, Hodge is the only candidate who demonstrated an appreciation of the potential for election-related violence and is prepared to handle any future allegations of election fraud and the turbulence that could result.​
Senate District 15
State Sen. Geraldine Thompson
VoxPopuli endorses State Sen. Geraldine Thompson over her challenger, former State Sen. Randolph Bracy III, for her clear-eyed focus on the kitchen-table issues— affordable housing, property insurance — together with her unwavering advocacy for women’s reproductive health decisions, child welfare, teaching factual American history in schools and her efforts to roll back the voter suppression laws that the GOP and Gov. Ron DeSantis enacted in service to false 2020 election fraud claims that the governor now admits “did not prove to be true.”
While Thompson works on constituent focused issues like the triple-the-national-average property insurance premiums forcing 10 percent of Floridians to go without homeowners’ insurance in the face of more stronger, more frequent storms, Bracy’s entry into the race reads purely like a vanity move after his pasting in the 2022 midterms. His campaign has been long on grievance and short on substantive policy, and he’s been surprisingly reticent to elaborate on how his Better you. Better me. Better us sloganeering translates into a legislative agenda.
There was a time when Bracy was interested in passing meaningful legislation. But his rambling Instagram videos and political feud with Thompson have not only raised doubts about his judgment, they beg the question of whether the former senator's heart is still in politics at all. Bracy seems far happier making movies and music and living the life of a gentleman of the “manor,” as he refers to the Lake County estate where he appears to spend most of his time. Private life seems to suit him. Let’s leave him to it.
Senate District 13 — NO ENDORSEMENT ​
Republican voters deserve better than the candidates running in this Aug. 20 primary – a political neophyte, an alleged thief and a demonstrated racist.
Supermarket chain owner Bowen Kou, is an enthusiastic campaigner with an engaging story of fleeing religious repression in China, and he’s shown he’ll punch back against the truly vile attacks from Keith Truenow’s camp suggesting he’s a Chinese Communist agent. But even grit and more than $1 million in self-funding isn’t enough to mask that Kou is unprepared to serve in Tallahassee. His signature plan for eliminating tolls for Florida residents doesn’t hold up, particularly as he can’t verify the cost savings. And VoxPopuli has reservations about a candidate who cannot fill out his Form 6 financial disclosure form correctly — surely that $1 million personal donation could have bought some financial assistance.
More importantly, Kou cannot answer key questions about his positions on climate change, homelessness, gun safety. These are critical issues facing Floridians that are guaranteed to have legislation coming for a vote in the next session. When your wife/campaign manager suggests that your opponent is better suited to answer such questions, your argument for running evaporates.
That said, Kou is the least objectionable of the three candidates. The race baiting and nakedly anti-Chinese rhetoric coming from Truenow campaign surrogates, with his approval, should disqualify Truenow from serving in any public office. When the Lake County GOP State Committeeman describes your political mailers as “the dirty side of Lake County racism that I thought had disappeared,” you've abandoned decency. As for Cheryl “CJ” Blancett, the conspiracy theorist going on trial in Orange County next month for felony grand theft, it's difficult to argue that alleged criminal activity should be disqualifying when the Republican standard bearer is a convicted felon, but a clean police record should be the absolute lowest bar for serving in Tallahassee.
State House District 41
State Rep. Bruce Antone
Janét Marie Buford Johnson wouldn’t be the first person to come through adversity — in her case, her Orlo Vista neighborhood’s catastrophic flooding with Hurricane Ian — with the determination to run for office to improve things back home. And her drive and desire to step up to serve is admirable.
But experience counts, so incumbent State Rep. Bruce Antone has our endorsement. While his slippery response to Johnson’s ethics complaint that he does not live in District 41 —“they’ve never proven I do not live in the district” — does give us pause, Antone still has our backing because we want him to deliver on the scholarships for minority students to attend medical school that he's been working on — especially since West Orange County's new medical school, the Orlando College of Osteopathic Medicine, prioritizes minority enrollment.
Florida has a critical physician shortage now, and is on track by 2030 to have the second largest physician deficit in the country, according to a report from the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability. But that same report notes that physicians tend to stick around where they finish their training and when physicians do their residency and go to medical school in Florida, about 75 percent stay in Florida. Atone's scholarships would help.
We also want Antone to deliver on his initiative to help reduce maternal mortality. More women die giving birth in America than in any other developed nation — 22.3 deaths per 100,000 births in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black women’s mortality rate is higher at 49.5 per 100,000 births, and in Orange County, it's higher still at 51.7 deaths per 100,000 live births. Both these issues have been on Antone’s radar for a while, and while they didn’t get much traction in the last legislative session, Antone has said they are priorities for the next.