Shan Rose thwarted the political comeback of Regina Hill and Tom Keen ousted incumbent City Commissioner Jim Gray in Tuesday\u2019s Orlando City Council elections, kicking off the start of what could be a wholesale turnover of city government in the coming years.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, voters in District 3 narrowed the five-person field to two, with Roger Chapin and Mira Tanna advancing to a runoff Dec. 9. The winner of that contest will replace retiring commissioner Robert Stuart.<\/p>\n
Rose\u2019s win came in the most tense and closely watched race in Orlando this year. She had won a partial term as interim commissioner last year after Hill was suspended from office following an indictment and arrest on seven felony charges.<\/p>\n
Rose, who needed more than 50% of votes to avoid a runoff, took in 51.84% to Hill\u2019s 33%.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you for giving me the privilege of serving you for four more years,\u201d Rose said \u201cI promise to keep listening, to be transparent, and to work with you every day to deliver results.\u201d<\/p>\n
At her election night party, Hill told reporters she intended to go to the Orange elections office on Wednesday to review ballots and signatures.<\/p>\n
Hill said she thought her criminal case was a factor in the outcome.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, every moment I was being called a criminal, a thief or abuser \u2026. and that wasn\u2019t one news cycle, that was for almost two years, I\u2019ve been identified as the person that harmed people \u2014 and it\u2019s called conditioning,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I think after the narrative that has been spent about me as abuser, a thief or liar or fraud, I think I did pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tension between the two had spilled over in recent weeks, after Hill accused Rose of being romantically involved with a registered sex offender, Travis Wright, whom she alleged Rose brought to city events attended by children. Rose notarized a request to vacate Wright\u2019s original charge, which involved a pre-teen girl.<\/p>\n
Rose wouldn\u2019t say if she was dating Wright, and Hill said she didn\u2019t have proof of the accusation. State records, however, suggest Rose and Wright are in business together.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, voters in the district spanning downtown Orlando and neighborhoods west of Interstate 4 backed keeping Rose in office. She pitched her candidacy as a way to move past the drama.<\/p>\n
Had Hill prevailed, it\u2019s unclear if she would have been allowed to take office. She\u2019s still facing the felony charges that led to her suspension and so far a trial date hasn\u2019t been set. She\u2019s maintained her innocence, and Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 office didn\u2019t respond to questions about her status.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a major changing of the guard took place in southeast Orlando\u2019s District 1 as Keen toppled Gray, who had led the city\u2019s growth engine since first taking office in 2012.<\/p>\n
Keen took in 54% of the vote to Gray\u2019s 31% in a four-way race.<\/p>\n
Keen said he was knocking on doors, reminding voters to sign up to vote by mail as soon as he filed. He noted he won the vote-by-mail count.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe [council] is going to have a big change in the next two years,\u201d he said, noting Mayor Buddy Dyer\u2019s planned retirement and other commissioners weighing their futures. \u201cPeople want to know that they\u2019re being heard, and that\u2019s my goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keen, who briefly served as a state representative last year in an area including the city council district, lined up a slate of influential endorsements from most of the region\u2019s progressives, including U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost and State Rep. Anna Eskamani, the lone candidate so far for Orlando mayor in 2027. Progressive political committees also backed Keen at $1,000 apiece.<\/p>\n
The officially nonpartisan race turned into a partisan clash, which ultimately favored the Democrat Keen over the Republican Gray. The district has about 2,400 more Democrats than Republicans, though the largest share of its voters belong to neither party.<\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s Republican Party sent an ad last week to voters urging them to keep Gray in office as Orlando\u2019s last GOP member on the council, where he was \u201csurrounded by liberals.\u201d He was also backed by Dyer and Commissioner Tony Ortiz \u2013 both Democrats.<\/p>\n
The state GOP spent more than $27,000 to back Gray in recent weeks, campaign reports show, including $15,000 in \u201cprofessional consulting\u201d and $12,628 on mail advertisements.<\/p>\n
In the northwest area of Orlando in District 3, Chapin and Tanna, with just 13 votes separating them, head to a runoff off Dec. 9.<\/p>\n
In the five-person field, Chapin received 2,477 votes to Tanna\u2019s 2,463, both coming in at about 34%. Chapin, the son of former Orange County Mayor Linda Chapin, was the best-funded candidate in the race and had the endorsement of Dyer and Stuart, both residents of the district with deep roots there.<\/p>\n
Chapin, who raised nearly $220,000, said he had been expecting to be in a runoff and was preparing to get back to talking to voters for another month.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou kind of start over and focus on your messaging and focus on your voters,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Tanna, who raised about $64,000, thought her transit-focused message resonated.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople want safe streets where they can walk and bike safely, they want alternatives to where not everybody has to own a car and they want relief from traffic congestion,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Across the three districts, 15,033 ballots were cast. All results are considered unofficial Tuesday night, until the canvassing board convenes on Friday to certify the results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shan Rose thwarted the political comeback of Regina Hill and Tom Keen ousted incumbent City Commissioner Jim Gray…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[7509,8789,139,4786,141,140,6643,21108,8793,23704,7889,7512,23744],"class_list":["post-33949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-jim-gray","tag-linda-chapin","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-city","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-regina-hill","tag-robert-stuart","tag-roger-chapin","tag-rose","tag-shan-rose","tag-tom-keen","tag-travis-wright"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}