judgenix2026.com<\/a><\/p>\nCircuit Judge Mikaela Nix hopes voters will remember the five and a half years she\u2019s spent on the bench when they vote. She\u2019s running for re-election to hold her seat in Group 1 on the Ninth Circuit Court, which serves both Orange and Osceola counties.<\/p>\n
Nix had made a run for the Florida House in District 47 in 2018, but lost in the Republican Primary before being elected to the Ninth Circuit Court in 2020. She presided over the Osceola County Criminal Court from 2021 to 2022 and moved to the Orange County Domestic Relations Court in 2023 where she\u2019s been hearing family law and domestic violence cases ever since. Prior to joining the bench, Nix ran a private practice where she focused on fathers\u2019 rights in divorce, custody and child support cases. Nix has also worked as an adjunct professor at Seminole State College and Valencia Community College and is a Florida Supreme Court Family Court Certified Mediator.<\/p>\n
The Federalist Society member is now being challenged by fellow Republican and former chair of the Orange County Republican Party Charles C. Hart II and private practice attorney Temika Hampton-Johnson. The Aug. 18 election is nonpartisan. Circuit Court judges serve six-year terms and earn $200,836 annually.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that the six-year term is because we want to keep those experienced judges on the bench,\u201d the Apopka mom of two said in a recent interview.<\/p>\n
Nix\u2019s candidacy has not been without controversy. An opposition website that accuses Nix of corruption, ineptitude and massive personal debt keeps popping up under new URLs almost as quickly as Nix and her legal team shut them down. Though Nix dismissed the site as \u201cnothing more than a smear tactic,\u201d VoxPopuli found twice as much debt in Nix\u2019s financial disclosure forms as referenced on the website \u2014 about $1.2 million, including three mortgages and student loans. Nix disputes that her home is in foreclosure. But a case was opened in the Ninth Circuit Court; then it moved to the Tenth Circuit and the files sealed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that there should be a reason why a judge is removed, and I have not found any reason that I can see that would discredit me as a judge,\u201d Nix said. \u201cI believe that it is important to re-elect and keep those judges on the bench who are in the community, and I think that I am one of those.\u201d<\/p>\n
This Voters Guide was produced by the\u00a0News Collaborative of Central Florida,\u00a0a collective of independent local news outlets and aligned partners working toward a more informed and engaged Central Florida.<\/p>\n
Back to the Voters Guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite repeated requests, Nix did not submit responses to the News Collaborative of Central Florida questionnaire. Campaign website:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2811,114,266,115,139,141,140,99,109,146022],"class_list":["post-358727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-election","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-politics","tag-social","tag-voters-guide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358727","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=358727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}