Candidate maneuver limits who can vote
Write-in contender shifts challenge to primary on Aug. 18
Tens of thousands of voters in West Orange County are likely to miss out on an important local election, after a last-minute move orchestrated by a close friend and supporter of the incumbent — and his 20-year-old stepdaughter.
The race involves Orange County Commissioner Betsy VanderLey, who is up for re-election this year in District 1, which covers the western and southwestern parts of the county, from Winter Garden to Walt Disney World.
VanderLey is being challenged by environmental-law attorney Nicole Wilson, and the two were on track to go head-to-head on the November ballot, when voter turnout is expected to be high because of the presidential election.
But that changed last month when — barely an hour before the end of the weeklong candidate-qualifying period — the 20-year-old stepdaughter of VanderLey’s good friend, former county commissioner Scott Boyd, filed the paperwork to be a write-in candidate in the race.
The college student’s name will never appear on the ballot. But because she signed up, VanderLey and Wilson will now square off during the Aug. 18 primary — when far fewer voters are likely to cast ballots.
The reason: Under a nearly 20-year-old legal interpretation by Orange County government attorneys, a write-in candidate, who doesn’t have to pay any qualifying fee and gets only a blank line on the ballot, is considered the equivalent to a regular candidate, who must either pay a fee or collect
enough signatures to get their name on the ballot.
And once three or more candidates have qualified for a county race — even if one of them is only a writein — the election moves to the primary ballot.
Boyd told the Orlando Sentinel this week that he talked his stepdaughter into the gambit in order to move VanderLey’s race to the lower-turnout primary election.
Boyd said he wanted to ensure there is more attention on the county commission race, which he said might otherwise be drowned out by the presidential campaign.
“It moves it to where hopefully there’s a group of people who are going to look at the race a little closer,” Boyd said.
VanderLey said she did not know about the maneuver. Her opponent is skeptical.
“I 100 percent believe she’s behind it,” Wilson said.
“They want to try to dilute the vote or manipulate the voters. It’s underhanded, and I want people to know about it.”
The stakes in the election are significant. VanderLey, for instance, cast a deciding
vote in the county commission’s 4-3 decision last year to give Universal Orlando up to $125 million to help pay for a new road through the property where Universal plans to build another theme park.
VanderLey and Boyd, who come from prominent families in West Orange County, have a long history together.
She worked on his campaigns for the county commission, and he got her appointed to the county’s planning and zoning board. One of VanderLey’s daughters used to work for Boyd.
What’s more, Boyd’s stepdaughter has received one contribution for her write-in campaign so far: A $50 donation from an Apopka banker who is also the treasurer for VanderLey’s campaign.
VanderLey said she had no idea that her friend was going to put one of his family members into her race. She also said she didn’t know her treasurer had donated to one of her opponents. Boyd said he never discussed the plan with VanderLey.
But VanderLey said she’s happy it happened.
“I do have to say that I’m grateful for it because, in a presidential year, it’s so difficult to have a conversation about any local issues,” she said.
Boyd’s stepdaughter, a University of Central Florida student named Hannah Burns, did not respond to requests for comment. “You don’t need to talk to her,” Boyd said.
Strategists on both sides of the aisle say the move is likely to help VanderLey politically.
For instance, moving the election up from Nov. 3 to Aug. 18 simply means less time to campaign. That hurts challengers, who typically aren’t as well-known as the established politicians they are trying to unseat, said Screven Watson, a Democratic consultant in Tallahassee.
County commission races are nonpartisan. That means anyone in District 1 can still vote in the race, even though it will be on the primary ballot.
But the practical reality is that only the most partisan Republicans and Democrats are likely to show up, said Anthony Pedicini, a GOP political consultant in Tampa. That’s partly because independent and third-party voters are frozen out of many other races on the primary ballot — so they have little else drawing them to the polls — and partly because there are so many casual voters who only vote in presidential elections.
And Pedicini said that smaller, more partisan electorate likely will favor VanderLey, a Republican who was endorsed in 2016 by the National Rifle Association and who represents a part of Orange County that is more Republican-friendly than the county as a whole, which has otherwise become a Democratic stronghold.
Wilson is a Democrat. “What you do is you confine the race to the superright and the super-left and you kind of cut out the independents,” Pedicini said.
The effect on turnout is likely to be dramatic. Four years ago, when VanderLey first won the District 1 commission seat, there was a four-way race on the August primary ballot and then, after no single candidate got a majority, a runoff between the top two finishers in the November general election.
About 22,000 people voted in the primary — compared with 79,000 in the general.
There is unlikely to be a general election runoff this time around. With only two candidates actually named on the primary ballot, one will almost certainly get more than 50 percent of the vote.