The most well-known Democrat in Orlando has openly backed Republican Steve Leary. Newly released campaign finance records suggest that he may also be supporting anti-abortion Republican Austin Arthur.
This year, Orange County voters will be choosing between a number of contentious races. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who is the most well-known Democrat in the area, seems to be financially backing two Republicans running for local office, one of whom is running against an incumbent Democrat.
Earlier this year, Dyer spoke out in favor of businessman Steve Leary, a Republican and former mayor of Winter Park who is running for the Orange County Commission District 5 seat that will soon be empty when Commissioner Emily Bonilla’s term ends.
For the seat, Dr. Kelly Semrad is running against Leary. She is a Democrat and a professor of hospitality and tourist studies at the University of Central Florida.
Dyer has openly backed Leary and called him a “thoughtful” and “effective leader.” He also shows up in Leary’s campaign materials. Several thousand dollars have also been given to Leary’s political action group by him.
Outside of the public eye, however, newly released campaign funding records show that Dyer also seems to be working with Republicans to get rid of Orange County Commissioner Nicole Wilson.
Wilson is being challenged by right-wing Republican Austin Arthur, who is against abortion. Like Leary, Arthur has the support of powerful people in the tourism, hospitality, and development businesses, all of whom could use new allies on the County Commission.
Rachael Kobb, a political analyst who used to work for Dyer as her campaign manager, told Orlando Weekly that Dyer has only backed Leary.
She didn’t say anything about Arthur, who has said that his opponents are spreading a “barrage of false information.” But records of campaign funds seem to tell a different story.
According to records from the state’s Division of Elections office, Dyer’s Orlando PAC gave $10,000 to Florida Right Solutions on October 24. Florida Right Solutions is run by well-known GOP adviser Marc Reichelderfer.
It’s not clear what the money was for because Cobb didn’t respond to a request for an explanation.
However, records show that on the same day, a different political committee with a similar name—Central Florida Solutions—run by GOP consultant David Johnson gave $10,000 to Citizens for Common Sense Solutions, a committee connected with Orange County Commission candidate Austin Arthur.
There are no public records of Arthur’s involvement with Citizens for Common Sense Solutions. However, Jose Virella, a cameraman hired by Arthur’s campaign, is in charge of the group. It has also been paying Tracy Main, Arthur’s campaign manager, every month since August of last year.
Johnson and Reichelderfer, who work for the GOP, have done work together before. Neither answered when asked for a response.
Arthur is running against Nicole Wilson, a Democrat from Windermere, for her nonpartisan District 1 Orange County Commission spot. Wilson is a marketing executive and gym owner from Winter Garden and is a Republican with known anti-abortion views.
Wilson, an environmental lawyer whose “smart growth” approach to new building has made developers angry, beat Arthur by a very small margin in the primary election on August 20. They will now face off again on November 5.
The district goes slightly Republican, but the race is officially nonpartisan. One candidate is a Democrat, and the other is a Republican.
Even though Arthur openly supports a “slow the growth” and “balancing act” approach to development, developers have given him a lot of money for his campaign, and he has raised more than four times as much as Wilson.
However, Dyer, who has been mayor since 2003, isn’t the only mayor who sees Arthur as a possible partner.
Arthur has also gotten support from at least six other mayors in the area, including those of Ocoee, Oakland, Apopka, Edgewood, Windermere, and Winter Garden.
His campaign website also lists support from other local elected officials, such as Alicia Farrant, who is a member of the Orange County School Board and is involved with Moms for Liberty. But these other mayors who have proudly backed Arthur are Republicans, not Democrats like Dyer.
Orlando Weekly sent Arthur an email asking if Dyer would support his campaign. Arthur didn’t reply, but in an interview with Orlando Weekly last month, he was proud to talk about the support he had gotten from other mayors and called Wilson a “failure of leadership.”
Arthur said, “It’s so important to set up these partnerships because that’s how you build infrastructure.” “These cities and towns need to work together and support you in order to get these projects done quickly.”
When Arthur was asked what he thought about abortion rights, he was less open. Arthur believes it is a matter for the federal or state government, even though such views may have an impact on local government, for example when it comes to zoning laws that make it hard for abortion clinics to start and/or run in a town.
Orlando Weekly got public records that show Arthur was invited by the Governor’s Office to the signing of Florida’s 15-week abortion ban bill in 2022. However, Arthur says she does not have a personal contact with Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Arthur is also a member of the board of Life’s Choices Clinic, a religiously affiliated Eustis non-profit “pregnancy resource center” that is against abortion.
Life’s Choices, for example, spreads false information on its website about “abortion pill reversal,” which is not based in science.
The center says at the bottom of their website, “Because we are pro-woman and a non-profit, we do not provide or refer for abortion services.”
Dyer has said in the past that he is “100% pro-choice,” so it’s not clear why he would give money to Arthur’s cause. Wilson, on the other hand, has some thoughts.
Wilson had not known about Dyer’s recent contribution from Dyer’s PAC, but she did say that she and Dyer have different views on some issues.
For example, Wilson is against a toll road that would go through environmentally sensitive land, and she recently spoke out against a huge plan to add more land that Dyer and city officials supported.
Wilson was voted as a county commissioner and was against the annexation. Semrad, who was running against Dyer’s favorite candidate for District 5, was against it as an activist with the group Save Orange County.
The controversial plan called for adding more than 52,000 acres of land from Deseret Ranch in rural Orange County to the city.
Wilson was against the plan because he thought it would lead to too much sprawl and the city’s environmental laws are not as strong as the county’s.
People who were against the plan called it a “massive land grab” that was backed by investors who had good ties to the city.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, the annexation plan involved land held by the Mormon church. The plan has since been shelved and reworked after an agreement between city and county leaders, but Wilson said Dyer might be angry about it.
She also says that she pushed for holding off on the much-wanted tourist development tax money for city venues if the city kept adding environmentally sensitive parts of unincorporated Orange County.
She wasn’t impressed with a plan to add these areas from mega-developer Tavistock that was backed by the city and had Dyer’s approval.
