Races for Orange County Commission intensify
With one week to go until Election Day, races for seats on the Orange County Commission are intensifying.
In west Orange County, in a district that runs from Winter Garden to Walt Disney World, the campaign of an incumbent commissioner who has been engulfed in controversy is going on the attack against her little-known challenger — a sign that a seemingly lopsided contest is tightening in the homestretch.
On the east side, in a commission district extending from Winter Park to Bithlo, an assortment of outside interests — from a state Republican
leader in Tallahassee to Democratic billionaire George Soros — are helping candidates in a vitriolic three-way race pitting an incumbent commissioner against two well-financed challengers.
Orange County commissioners Betsy VanderLey, Mayra Uribe and Emily Bonilla are up for re-election on Aug. 18. The three are part of a seven-member board that has decided a host of high-profile issues in recent months by narrow margins.
For instance, the current commission voted 4-3 to give up to $125 million to Universal Orlando to pay
for a new road, with VanderLey voting in favor of the deal but Uribe and Bonilla voting against it. And it voted 5-2 to support a plan to run a toll road backed by developer The Tavistock Group through the Split Oak Forest nature preserve, with VanderLey and Uribe voting in favor but Bonilla voting against.
“The county commission is the entity of government that really, I think, most impacts our day-to-day quality of life,” said Gloria Pickar, the co-chair of the League of Women Voters of Orange County. “Every vote counts.”
In Orange County’s District 1, which covers the western and southwestern parts of the county, incumbent VanderLey was once seen as a heavy favorite to win reelection. Her only named challenger is Nicole Wilson, an environmentallaw attorney who is making her first run for elected office.
But VanderLey has been rocked by controversy in recent weeks. One of her friends put his 20-year-old stepdaughter into the race as a write-in candidate in order to move VanderLey’s election from November to August, and the Orlando Sentinel reported that VanderLey failed to disclose income she earned from an engineering firm that holds contracts with both Orange County and the Central Florida Expressway Authority, where VanderLey is also a board member.
VanderLey, who has raised more than five times as much money as Wilson, has filled west Orange County mailboxes in recent weeks with generally positive ads, including one headlined “Please Allow Me to Set the Record Straight” in which she addressed some of her controversies.
But this week, a new group supporting VanderLey went negative. A political committee called “Floridians for Fiscal Responsibility” began sending mailers attacking Wilson. The ads criticize Wilson for supporting a proposed amendment to the county charter that could make it possible for people to sue businesses or government agencies on behalf of the Wekiva River, the Econlockhatchee River or other water bodies that are contaminated by pollution. The mailer includes a quote criticizing the concept — known as “Rights of Nature” — and attributes it to the Tampa Bay Times newspaper. It does not cite the actual person who said it: A Republican state legislator who runs a homebuilding
company.
VanderLey did not respond to requests for comment. But records show Floridians for Fiscal Responsibility is run by John Dowless, a local political consultant who is working on VanderLey’s campaign.
Floridians for Fiscal Responsibility hasn’t yet disclosed its most recent donors, and Dowless declined to reveal them himself. Records show the group has raised tens of thousands of dollars in previous election cycles from Walt Disney World, which is also one of VanderLey’s largest campaign contributors.
“I guess they were just really hunting for something and this was as close as they could get to something controversial,” said Wilson, who testified in support of the Rights of Nature amendment before Orange County’s Charter Review Commission. “I’m very proud of the work we did on that.”
Meanwhile, in Orange County’s District 5, all of the candidates are benefiting from similar political committees that have been set up to sidestep traditional campaign limits.
For instance, a group known as “United for Progress” that records show is ultimately funded by billionaire George Soros, has been promoting Commissioner Emily Bonilla and emphasizing that she is a Democrat. At the same time, the Florida Realtors, a lobbying group for real-estate agents, recently paid for a brochure promoting former Republican state Rep. Mike Miller, one of two people challenging Bonilla.
Then there’s a group called “A New Voice,” which has paid for ads promoting the third candidate in the race — Winter Park business owner Anjali Vaya, who, like Miller, is a Republican — while simultaneously attacking Bonilla for supporting former Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and attacking Miller for being a lobbyist for the state-funded Florida Virtual School.
Records show that group has raised $14,000 last month from two companies led by Orlando business owner Tino Patel, who serves with Vaya on the board of the Indian American Chamber of Commerce. The group has also received $6,000 from Vaya herself.
But some of the sharpest attacks have come directly from Miller. In one of his mailers, he lampooned Bonilla about travel and training expenses, alleging she was “living the high life on taxpayers” and using a photoshopped image of Bonilla in a cocktail dress holding a flute of champagne.
Comptroller records show Bonilla has billed taxpayers about $36,000 for travel expenses since she took office in December 2016, more than double any of her commission colleagues over the same span.
Bonilla said the travel and training, much of it provided by the National Association of Counties (NACo) and the Florida Association of Counties, made her a better, more knowledgeable public servant.
“As someone who wants to be the best commissioner possible, I felt it was beneficial to my district to take that training,” she said.
Bonilla said she usually stayed at hotels where the training or conferences were held because they offered reduced rates to attendees. She also said she believes her training and work paid off for the county this year when she was part of NACo’s lobbying team that pressed Congress to include direct payments to urban counties in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, also known as the CARES Act. Orange County received $243 million from the $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill passed in March.
“If we had not done that I don’t think our county would have gotten local government funding to help our constituents,” she said.
Miller declined to be interviewed but issued a prepared statement in which he said Bonilla’s travel bills “prove that she does not understand that her budget is our money not her money.”
More ads are likely to surface in the final week. Records show Miller recently set up a new political committee that can raise unlimited funds. It has reported two donors so far: $5,000 from Orlando attorney Pat Christiansen, a Miller supporter who currently serves as general counsel for the bus-agency Lynx and who recently competed for the top lawyer contract at Orlando International Airport, and $7,500 from a political committee led by state Rep. Paul Renner, a Republican from near Jacksonville who is in line to become speaker of the Florida House in 2022. Records show Renner gave $7,500 to Miller on the same day that Renner got $25,000 from Comcast Corp. — the owner of Universal Orlando, which has extensive business before Orange County. Renner said through a spokeswoman that nobody asked him to support Miller’s campaign.