Following a crowded primary for the District 8 seat on the Orange County Board of County Commissioners, voters now have two choices in the upcoming runoff: longtime lawmaker Victor Torres and Jeannette Qui\u00f1ones-Hernandez, a former Marco Rubio staffer and first-time candidate for public office.<\/p>\n
The two candidates qualified in August for the officially nonpartisan general election runoff, with Torres, a Democrat, leading the six-person pack with about 33% of the total votes. Qui\u00f1ones-Hernandez, a Republican, finished the night in second place with about 20%.<\/p>\n
Whoever wins in District 8, which includes Williamsburg, Hunters Creek, Southchase, Meadow Woods and Lake Nona, will have to contend with some of the most pertinent issues facing Orange County: affordable housing, lacking public transit and balancing the growth of the county\u2019s population with allocating strained resources.<\/p>\n
Torres, a Marine Corps veteran and former New York City detective, says he would bring his experience as a state representative and state senator to the county commission.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy experience has been about the grassroots: the everyday resident and how they get around and what makes them tick, and one of the things I found when I got elected [to the Legislature] was the lack of communication between elected officials and constituents,\u201d Torres said in a recent interview.<\/p>\n
Qui\u00f1ones-Hernandez, who did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, may be a new candidate, but she has worked in politics before. Prior to her run for county commission, she served as former U.S. Sen. Rubio\u2019s Hispanic outreach coordinator from 2017 to 2025, when Rubio was tapped by the Trump administration to be secretary of state.<\/p>\n
Before that, she worked on Hispanic outreach as a field director for the Republican Party of Florida and the Republican National Committee from 2012 to 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy values are simple: faith, family, fiscal responsibility, and putting Orange County families first,\u201d she said in answers submitted as part of the Sentinel\u2019s voter guide. \u201cI bring real-world experience balancing budgets, meeting payroll, and solving problems \u2014 exactly what District 8 needs on the County Commission.\u201d<\/p>\n
A former LYNX bus driver, Torres also favors expanding public transportation and argued the funding to do it could come from Tallahassee or federal dollars without needing to raise local taxes.<\/p>\n
In September, the county commission directed staff to study the feasibility of the STAR plan, or the Sunshine Transit Advancement Revolution, a grassroots initiative aiming to create and connect rapid transit lines stretching across the county to ease congestion on local roads with a mix of light rail, commuter trains and LYNX buses.<\/p>\n
A competing plan, called the Sunshine Corridor, seeks to expand SunRail to take passengers from Orlando International Airport to the city\u2019s tourist hubs, which would be included in the STAR plan.<\/p>\n
Torres also hopes to prioritize improving stormwater infrastructure while working with developers to stem the cost of new growth, helping make the region affordable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have 75 million people coming to Central Florida [as tourists], it\u2019s because of the workers who perform these tasks, from housekeeping to the services they provide in the restaurants and the hotels and in transportation,\u201d Torres said. \u201cWe need to make sure these folks are taken care of and get a place to live here and can afford it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Qui\u00f1ones-Hernandez has not commented on those plans, but said she hopes to work on completing road projects like widening Narcoossee Road and improving Lake Nona Boulevard, two areas with heavy congestion. She also called for better connectivity to State Road 417 and the Florida Turnpike.<\/p>\n
She also calls for lowering fees and deregulation to curb housing costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will push for public-private partnerships, cut unnecessary red tape, and ensure impact fees are used efficiently for actual infrastructure, not diverted elsewhere,\u201d she said in the candidate survey. \u201cSafety and predictability for working families must come first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torres is is backed by heavyweight endorsements including outgoing Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, commissioners Kelly Semrad-Martinez and Tom Keen, the Democratic Hispanic Caucus of Florida, and a slew of labor unions; local, state and federal lawmakers.<\/p>\n
Qui\u00f1ones-Hernandez, meanwhile, counts on high-profile backing from the Orange County GOP and the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.<\/p>\n
The relationships Torres built over a long career also resulted in a larger war chest throughout the campaign, outspending his opponents by far throughout the race. As of Friday afternoon, he spent $148,339 compared to Qui\u00f1ones-Hernandez\u2019s $36,907.<\/p>\n
Early voting ends Sunday. Election Day is on Nov. 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following a crowded primary for the District 8 seat on the Orange County Board of County Commissioners, voters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2811,28,5773,114,115,1335,139,141,140,99,109],"class_list":["post-443568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-election","tag-florida","tag-lake-nona","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-politics","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443568","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=443568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}