The ‘other party’ is running just one candidate for county commission.
By Ramon Lopez
Host: Sarasota Democrats have failed to field a candidate in the most Democrat-leaning county commission district. Ramon Lopez is taking a close look at the state of the “other party” in Sarasota.
Ramon Lopez: It’s been a staggering half-century—50 years—since the Democratic Party has been represented on the five-member Sarasota County Commission, the county’s five-district governing body. That’s a long time not being part of the county’s inner circle of political power.
Sarasota Democratic Party Chair David Dean and District 4 Sarasota County Commission candidate Julie London Ferguson. | Photo: Ramon Lopez
Elections are held every two years, with either the District 1, 3 and 5 seats or District 2 and 4 seats up for election.
This year, it’s District 2 and 4, currently represented by GOP members Mark Smith and Joe Neunder respectively. Both are first-term commissioners.
In 2022, Neunder easily beat Daniel Kuether, then head of Sarasota’s Democratic Party, for his District 4 county commission seat. The district covers the length of Laurel Road to Clark Road east to west and north to Bee Ridge Road along US-41. It’s the largest chunk of real estate in the county’s five districts. And the area is rife with registered Republicans.
On the other hand, trendy Siesta Key is split into county commission Districts 2 and 4. Mark Smith reps the northern end of the barrier island. That’s in District 2, which – most importantly – includes the entire City of Sarasota.
District 2 is Democrat-heavy. Smith won it in 2022 by a mere 373-vote margin against Fredd Atkins, a Black Democrat. Now, the Siesta Key architect is the incumbent and is facing recent arrival Kristina Sargent in the August 18 Republican primary.
District 2 offers the best chance for Dems to finally break the Republican stranglehold on the county commission. The presence on the ballot of a Democrat in the county’s most Democratic district would have dented the re-election chances of incumbent Mark Smith. While running as a Republican, Smith has been appealing to independent, moderate and liberal-leaning voters.
But Andrew Bevan, who filed for the District 2 seat, failed to qualify. And Robert Trent Miller, a complete unknown to local Democratic leaders filed at the last minute, only to withdraw just hours later. David Dean, now the Democratic Party chair in Sarasota, said Miller was not known to the party and had no further comment.
When asked this week why the Sarasota Democrats were unable to field a candidate for the District 2 seat, he said it wasn’t for lack of trying.
“It was a high priority for us,” Dean said. “We tried for over a year. We just couldn’t find anyone.”
“Many people told me this was our best chance to get on the county commission. We approached everybody. Those that I talked to declined. People said they didn’t have the time or the cash to mount a campaign. One unidentified person seriously considered a run but changed jobs and had to drop out.”
With fielding a Democratic candidate for District 2 now out of the question, David Dean turned his attention to finding someone to run against the winner of the August 18 District 4 Republican primary—either incumbent Joe Neunder or his opponent Jim DeNiro, a retired Sarasota Police Department sergeant who has never held political office.
That will be Julie London. She has a large social media following and sees herself as a watchdog. But she’s a political outsider, also having never been elected, and she’s running in a district where 60% vote Republican.
Dean explains how the dark-horse candidate eventually got the nod over the others interviewed.
David Dean: I talked to a couple of people. No one decided to run. I was talking to a young college graduate from here. He was interested but thought it would be challenging.
I wanted to see if she’d be interested in volunteering with us in our communications, and then we met, and she wound up interviewing me. It was funny. We didn’t really talk about that specifically, but I guess she’d been thinking of becoming a candidate, and after we met, she got more interested, so we met and talked about what it would take for her to get going.
We’d love to have a Democrat on the commission. It’s been decades since we have. I think it’s going to be a change election up and down the ballot.
RL: Like most others plugged into local politics, Dean sees a tough campaign ahead for London.
DD: It’s challenging. District 4 is pretty representative of the county as far as the number of Republicans and Democrats. But we always have a very large number of unaffiliated voters. We get good turnout with Democrats, so what we need to do is reach independents and persuade them—or Republicans that are looking for a change. There is a lot of interest in her campaign from a cross-section of people in her district.
She has good momentum. She’s getting a lot of attention. She has a pretty large following of people who know her. I think she’d be very effective.
RL: WSLR News spoke to others regarding the State of the Sarasota Democratic Party and the ongoing campaigns.
Julie London | Photo: Lopez
We hear from Lourdes Ramirez, a well-known civic activist who unsuccessfully ran for the county commission as a Republican.
Lourdes Ramirez: We’re Facebook friends. We’ve met. She’s cheered me on when I speak. We believe in the same things. I really think what she needs to do is consider being more involved in the future. Nobody knows who she is. I think she has the same concept as I do, but nobody knows who she is.
RL: A local political consultant who is keeping a close watch on things weighs in, on background.
“It’s going to be an extremely uphill battle for her regardless of who her opponent is, and that’s putting it politely,” he said. “This, based on numbers and registration alone. She’s probably going to be an underfunded candidate, trying to get her name and message out there. It would even be an uphill fight for a well-funded Democrat.”
RL: We give Julie London equal time.
Julie London: We’re going to win. It’s almost by default that we’re going to win, because we’re telling the truth. We’re real people, and real people want to vote for people like them—people who have been dismissed—good people who want the right thing done. That’s why I think the Republicans and the conservatives are coming to me. They know that I’m going to hear them.
RL: On the campaign trail, this is Ramon Lopez for WSLR News.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.