For the first time in nearly 20 years, Orlando’s city council District 3 will have a new commissioner.
Longtime commissioner Robert Stuart, first elected in 2006, is retiring and a slew of contenders are vying for the seat: Samuel Chambers, Roger Chapin, Chris Durant, Kimberly Kiss and Mira Tanna.
While all five have raised competitive sums of campaign cash, Chapin is the best-funded candidate in the race and is backed by Mayor Buddy Dyer, while Tanna has the endorsement of Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, so far the lone candidate for mayor in 2027.
The winner will represent a district that includes College Park, Rosemont, Baldwin Park and Audubon Park. Election Day is Nov. 4. If no candidate receives 50%-plus-one vote, the top vote getters will have a runoff on Dec. 9.
Chambers, of Orwin Manor, works as an adjunct professor at Valencia College.
He said the city should boost the minimum wage of its employees from $15 an hour to a so-called “living wage,” or how much a full-time worker needs to make to support their family. In Orange County, that’s $24.91 per hour, according to a calculator created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
An increase is needed due to cost-of-living spikes since the city increased the minimum wage in 2019, he said.
“The fight for $15 has been around for at least 15+ years now, and the cost of living has increased a lot since then,” Chambers added.
He said he opposed a proposed annexation of rural lands east of Lake Nona into the city limits, which he said would contribute to urban sprawl. He also spoke against creating a Community Development District to help the developer of the massive sports and entertainment Westcourt project next to the Kia Center, which he criticized as a giveaway.
Chambers, a cyclist, said the city shouldn’t do away with bike lanes on Edgewater in favor of a mixed-use path, as a proposed design calls for, and instead create more bike lanes in the district to help people travel safely.
He’s raised $13,000.
Chapin, of College Park, is the son of former Orange County Mayor Linda Chapin and owns his own communications company. He’s a current board member on the Orlando Utilities Commission and previously served on the city’s Municipal Planning Board and Downtown Development Board.
He contends he’s the most experienced candidate of the bunch, someone who knows City Hall and is ready to start right away.
“I want to do the blocking and tackling of city government,” he said.
Chapin said he supports building wider sidewalks for walking and biking on key corridors in the district — Edgewater, Corinne and Virginia Drives — in an effort to improve safety and commerce. He likes that those three road plans have design elements meant to slow down cars.
He said he’s focused on affordability, including reviewing city policies related to parking requirements and providing incentives for shovel-ready affordable housing developments, which may not qualify for other funding sources.
His endorsements include Dyer, unions representing the city’s police and fire departments, and the Central Florida Hotel & Lodging Association.
He’s raised $197,000 toward the contest.
Durant, 24, is the youngest candidate in the race. He said he was shaped by his upbringing in Rosemont. Growing up, initially he had a negative opinion of police officers, until his mother enrolled him in the city-sponsored Dueling Dragons program, which pairs inner-city youth with police officers in a boat racing competition.
There he met Lt. Debra Clayton, the Orlando Police Officer who was later killed in a shootout after she tried to arrest a murder suspect at a Walmart. Clayton mentored Durant, and he learned the value of good law enforcement.
He said he wants OPD to invest in more community programs, as well as connect with all neighborhoods to build trust and transparency.
“What I think OPD is doing right now is great, they’ve stepped up their community policing in such a great way,” said Durant. “I want to do more to engage with every neighborhood within District 3.”
Durant is a youth sports coach who worked in real estate wholesaling, a business that buys distressed properties, prior to pursuing his candidacy full-time.
He’s raised $18,000 so far.
Kiss, of College Park, is an estate attorney who owns her firm, and is a mother of two.
Those experiences led her platform to be centered on support for small businesses and policies to improve the city as a place to raise a family.
For example, she said the city should better communicate with businesses about the impacts of road closures, as well as promote those impacted. She said city officials could also consider grant programs to reimburse businesses that lose revenue when infrastructure projects are disruptive. She cited a project on Orange Avenue in 2023 and 2024 that blocked businesses like The Hammered Lamb, a pub that went out of business before the project was completed.
“What we’ve seen is road projects happening in front of businesses and businesses being hurt by that. That I think is an issue that should be addressed,” she said.
She said the city should review policies costly to home builders and work to speed up zoning decisions to build housing quickly. The city should also do away with parking minimum rules that require developers to provide a certain number of parking spaces, she said, as relaxing such policies can save builders money — savings that theoretically could lower rents and home prices.
Kiss has raised about $40,000 so far.
Tanna, of Rosemont, is the city’s grants manager, and has overseen about $125 million in incoming funding, money the city uses to help with everything from stormwater upgrades to gun violence prevention programs.
She was named one of the city’s employees of the year in 2021 — and at the time was credited with a 67% increase in grant funding.
Tanna uses the region’s meager public transit system to get to work each day. It takes her 70 minutes to get to city hall using Lynx, a system she says desperately needs more investment. She supports City Hall’s use of transportation impact fees and also advocates for lobbying Florida lawmakers to allow the Tourist Development Tax to be used for public transit.
“Ultimately, what we need is a much bigger investment in new routes and more frequent routes,” she said. “My bus used to come every 15 minutes, now it’s every 30 minutes.”
She said she supports more housing of all types in the district, as well as developments that embrace transit. She said she would have supported the now-abandoned proposal to convert a work-release center on Kaley Street into a homeless shelter.
She’s raised about $24,000 toward the race, and has endorsements from elected progressives like Sen. Lavon Bracy Davis, D-Ocoee, Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, and Eskamani.