Mast wins, as predicted; Knight wins in upset, by landslide.
By Florence Fahringer
Original Air Date: August 21, 2024
Host: Teresa Mast was the only heavily developer-funded county candidate in the region who prevailed in yesterday’s primary. The other primary for Sarasota County Commission ended with an upset, by landslide. Florence Fahringer has that story.
Florence Fahringer:
Yesterday, Republican voters across Sarasota County picked their candidates for the county commission. Two of the five seats are up for grabs this election cycle, representing districts one and three. In both cases, two Republicans were competing for the nomination, with one overtly representing developer interests, and the other offering a less development-motivated campaign. In District One, the pro-development candidate won comfortably, while in District Three, the pro-development candidate suffered a resounding defeat.
Teresa Mast, with US Sen. Rick Scott.
First, District One. The candidates were Teresa Mast and Alex Coe, with Mast winning six thousand Republican votes to Coe’s four thousand. District One covers everything east of the City of Sarasota (as well as the easternmost regions of the city itself), and is the battleground between Lakewood Ranch developers and the rural community of Old Miakka. There was no incumbency in this race, as the current county commissioner representing District One — Mike Moran — is being termed out of his time on the commission.
There was a pretty clear line in the sand for this race, Mast’s extensive connections to the Lakewood Ranch development community contrasting sharply with Coe’s roots in the Old Miakka community. Campaign budgets also drew a sharp contrast, as Mast raised over a quarter million dollars to Coe’s forty-five thousand.
Teresa Mast winning this primary has all but ensured her place on the county commission. Normally, in situations where a primary election decides the victor, the primary becomes open, allowing Independent and Democratic voters to have a say in who represents them on the county commission. That would’ve been the case in this election, had the Mast campaign coordinator’s daughter Hope Williams not filed a last-minute write-in candidacy. Here’s Chair of the Sarasota County Democrats Dan Kuether’s take on Williams’ spoiler candidacy.
Hope Williams
Dan Kuether: Well, political tricks certainly paid out in County Commission District 1. Had Democrats and independents have not been blocked out of that race, I do believe Alexandra Coe would have won that race last night. Mast barely pulled that off, and with just a few couple thousand more Democratic votes in there, who would have all strongly backed Coe and the anti-development candidate, we would have seen Alexandra Coe make that win. So that was very unfortunate, but it was like Mast, using the political advantage by putting up a fake candidate and closing that race.
Tom Knight
FF: In District 3, incumbent Neil Rainford faced a challenge from former Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight. Knight won handily, raking in 8,000 votes to Rainford’s 5,000. District 3 covers Venice and its eastern hinterlands, and was represented by Nancy Detert until her passing early last year. Gov. DeSantis appointed Neil Rainford as Detert’s replacement, over other applicants for the position, including Tom Knight.
Rainford has made a name for himself as an anti-woke crusader during his year of incumbency, while Knight is more of a law-and-order style Republican — the dialogue between the two campaigns has at times taken a tone of which one of them is the real conservative. Perhaps the starkest contrast between the two candidates is their style of campaigning: while Knight took a more grassroots approach, knocking on doors and engaging with the greater public; Rainford was more reclusive, leaning more on his campaign’s finances and PAC-funded attack mailers than grassroots support. He certainly had a lot of finances to lean on, raising over three hundred thousand dollars for his campaign — that’s more than any county commission candidate has ever raised. Despite the daunting sum, Knight’s campaign finances kept pace, at two hundred forty thousand dollars.
Knight, responding to our questions over email, gives this assessment of his victory.
“I attribute our win and margin to several things. First, our citizens have opened their eyes to the fact that we have gradually lost control of our local government to a few powerful people. They want to have a say again and have finally decided to get educated and make a difference with their votes. That said, it is still possible for anyone to lose when hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent attacking you and painting you as someone you’re not. To counteract that I ran a deeply grassroots campaign so I could have direct contact with our local voters. With a lot of local support from North Port to Sarasota and Siesta Key I knocked on over 9,000 doors and we held countless in-person events, made thousands of phone calls and developed an extensive reach through social media and email. And, we stuck to the issues that affect them locally including taxes, spending, overdevelopment and flooding. The results showed, as they did in Manatee County, that people care more about the issues that directly affect them than meaningless endorsements and national hot button issues.”
Rainford did not respond to our request for comment.
Unlike Teresa Mast, Knight will be facing a challenger in November. Independent candidate Shari Thornton is running on an explicitly anti-development platform. Though she has a two hundred thousand dollar fundraising gap to overcome, she is certainly running an actual campaign — which is more than can be said for Hope Williams in District One.
This is Florence Fahringer, reporting for WSLR News.