FORT PIERCE, Fla. (CBS12) \u2014 A controversial Fort Pierce City Commission seat is still up for grabs after Election Night ended with no clear winner.<\/p>\n
The District 2 race, left vacant after former Commissioner James Taylor\u2019s arrest, will now be decided in a runoff election on January 13, 2026.<\/p>\n
Voters went to the polls Tuesday expecting to elect a new District 2 commissioner, but none of the three candidates reached the 50 percent majority needed to win.<\/p>\n
Chris Dzadovsky, who led in the initial results, and Jaimebeth Galinis, a first-time candidate, will now face each other in the January runoff.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually thought that it was going to end up something like this,\u201d Dzadovsky said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe turnout was higher than everybody expected, but I did expect a runoff,\u201d Galinis added.<\/p>\n
Voter turnout was just over 20 percent, higher than expected for a special election, but still a small fraction of registered voters in District 2.<\/p>\n
Galinis says she hopes to bring a fresh approach to City Hall. \u201cRight now what the city needs is someone with my skill set,\u201d she said. \u201cI come from a background in operational efficiency and customer experience and those are two things Fort Pierce really needs to focus on over the next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
See also: PBSO searches for duo who dined and dashed on $140 bill at Lilo’s Streetfood and bar<\/a><\/p>\n Dzadovsky, a former St. Lucie County commissioner, says his focus is representing the entire city. \u201cI think our messaging was clear, that we were looking at one Fort Pierce, that were going to represent the entire city, not just one group and the fact that our messaging was about policy, procedure, changing the challenges that City Hall has from a foundational standpoint,” he said.<\/p>\n The District 2 seat has been empty since former Commissioner James Taylor resigned earlier this year following his arrest. Taylor was arrested in July on 24 felony counts related to child exploitation charges. Investigators say he was accused of sending sexually explicit messages and nude images to a 12-year-old girl in Illinois through Snapchat. He was later suspended from office by Governor Ron DeSantis and has since been released on bond.<\/p>\n District 2 voters can cast their ballots in the runoff election on January 13, 2026.<\/p>\n Find more ways to stay up to date with your latest local news. Sign up for our newsletter <\/a>to get the day’s top headlines delivered right to your inbox. Subscribe to our YouTube channel<\/a> for the biggest stories and can’t miss video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT PIERCE, Fla. (CBS12) \u2014 A controversial Fort Pierce City Commission seat is still up for grabs after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[4858,7452,24512,23218,3886,23168,171,173,172,13397,24513],"class_list":{"0":"post-35229","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-port-st-lucie","8":"tag-child-exploitation","9":"tag-city-commission","10":"tag-commissioner-arrest","11":"tag-district-2","12":"tag-fort-pierce","13":"tag-james-taylor","14":"tag-port-st-lucie","15":"tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","16":"tag-port-st-lucie-news","17":"tag-runoff-election","18":"tag-voter-turnout"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35229","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=35229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}