votecharleshart.com<\/a><\/p>\nPrivate practice attorney and former chair of the Orange County Republican Executive Committee Charles Hart is running for the Group 1 seat on the Ninth Circuit Court.<\/p>\n
He is challenging incumbent Judge Mikaela Nix (a fellow Republican) and private practice attorney Temika Hampton-Johnson in the nonpartisan Aug. 18 election. Circuit Court judges serve six-year terms and earn $200,836 annually. The Ninth Circuit serves both Orange and Osceola counties.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs judge, I would work to ensure that every person who appears before the court is treated with courtesy, patience, and respect,\u201d Hart states on his campaign website. \u201cI believe the courtroom belongs to the public, and the judicial system should be accessible, efficient, and responsive to the needs of the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
A member of the Federalist Society and a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, Hart has applied five times to the Ninth Circuit Court\u2019s Judicial Nomination Commission and once to the Seventh Judicial Circuit for circuit and county court positions in 2019, 2023, 2024 and 2025. He\u2019s never made it past the commission.<\/p>\n
Hart has worked as an assistant state attorney and as a public defender for the 18th Judicial Circuit, which comprises Brevard and Seminole counties. He has also maintained a Sanford-based private practice, the Charles C. Hart Law Office, where he specializes in criminal and guardianship law and continues to practice today. A certified Florida Supreme Court family law and county court mediator, Hart opened a mediation practice earlier this year.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Hart ran for the Florida House of Representatives in District 39. He was defeated in the Republican Primary by State Rep. Doug Bankson of Apopka.<\/p>\n
Hart taught accounting at the University of South Florida\u2019s School of Accounting and Santa Fe Community College during his graduate school and law school years. In his application for a vacancy on the Seventh Circuit\u2019s County Court, he noted that his courses on accounting contained \u201cno critical race theory [or] distortionist history lessons \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Hart is also known for filing a lawsuit against Orange County\u2019s mask mandate at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, telling Florida Politics at the time that Orange County Mayor Jerry L. Deming\u2019s maneuver to stem the flood of cases and protect public health was a \u201cmassive government overreach\u201d and a free speech violation.<\/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":"Hart did not submit responses to the News Collaborative of Central Florida\u2019s candidate questionnaire. Campaign website: votecharleshart.com Private…\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-360492","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\/360492","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=360492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360492\/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=360492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}