Results are in!

What an election night it was!

We kicked off the night with a Facebook Live to discuss the election results as they came in live. That was fun. Maybe I do it again in the future. I can see the potential for that type of thing going forward.

But enough about that... Let's talk about what we saw.

First of all.. 33.73% was the voter turnout. We talk about it all the time, but that is horrible. 40,000 people picked two county commission seats and a school board seat. Out of almost 120k voters, only 40k showed up.

We can do better than that.

The ones that did show up had a message. They are tired of the status quo. They wanted change on the county commission and change they got by flipping both seats and ousting both incumbents.

The voters that showed up are tired of what has taken place the last 4 years and do not feel the current commissioners have done a good job. They wanted new faces to change the dynamic of the board.

In District 2, Stacey Worthington beat Diana Finegan by 389 votes. I believe that is the closest race in history.

I am kind of curious though. We had 40,236 people vote, why did only 38,073 vote in this race? It was open to everyone. That is over 2,000 people who did not choose to use their voice for this race, certainly a number that could have swung it in the other direction or made the margin of victory larger.

Interesting.

Nonetheless, Worthington is taking over in November.

The anti-growth crowd is certainly nervous about this. However, Worthington has told everyone that she will support smart growth and do what the constituents want her to do. We shall see.

In District 4, Holli Herndon pulled off the win over Rebecca Bays and Jennifer Grogan. This one is not surprising. In my poll earlier this summer, Herndon led by a significant margin and we all know that Grogan did not have a chance.

Again, this is a referendum on the BOCC. Voters do not like the path that they are taking. If Holly Davis, Janet Barek and Jeff Kinnard hope to have a chance in 2028 if they decide to run again, they better be paying attention. This is the 2nd straight year an incumbent lost that had a lot of financial support. Kinnard and Davis share similar support and many of the same people who supported Bays also supported Davis and Kinnard.

Bays outspend Herndon by almost $50k in a losing effort. That opens some eyes.

Speaking of that. Does this election shape contributions in the future elections? In this cycle, we saw some big donors largely sit out. James Dicks did not give any money to any candidate, although family members supported Bays and Worthington. Citrus Hills only did an in-kind contribution to Bays. They did not give thousands of dollars, as they normally do.

Does Bays losing alter the contribution landscape? She lost with almost $100k backing her. Ruthie Schlabach lost with close to $74k in contributions. Are the days of contributions from the "political elite" coming to a close? Do voters view their contributions as toxic to a candidate? Do candidates feel that way?

Going to be interesting to see how that effects 2028, if it does at all.

One note on growth. Most view these two votes as not really changing the board dynamic. The current board of Barek, Bays, Davis, Finegan and Kinnard is routinely a 3-2 vote dynamic with Barek and Finegan joining together.

A board of Barek, Davis, Herndon, Kinnard and Worthington is viewed as being largely the same. 3-2 with Herndon and Barek joining on votes and the other 3 joining on votes.

Going to be interesting to see how it all plays out.

In the school board race, no real surprise there. Mullen is from the Sam Himmel administration. She was immensely popular here, so no shock that Mullen pulled off the win against Thrumston, despite raising less money... at least on paper. Mullen raised far more money despite trailing Thrumston in overall funds... Why? Because Thrumston bankrolled the campaign himself whereas Mullen did not.

Bravo to Thrumston for literally sticking his money where his mouth is. His entire campaign was self funded.

JJ Grow won the Florida Rep seat.. No real surprise there.

In a closely watched judge race, Nicole Morris beat Lisa Yeager. Yeager won the Citrus vote but this race was multiple counties and was not able to carry that momentum elsewhere.

All in all.. it was a pretty good night. It is going to be interesting to watch the next 3 months play out with both incumbents headed out the door in November. What kind of votes do we see out of them over the next 6 meetings or so.

Have a great day everyone and congratulations to everyone who won last night... and thank you to all who ran.