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George Oliver III is jumping into the race for Orange County Commissioner in District 2. He told VoxPopuli that he plans to file his candidate paperwork on Wednesday. The district includes Ocoee where Oliver lives and serves as the city’s District 4 commissioner.
He joins private practice attorney and former child-welfare advocate Marsha Summersill of Apopka who has also filed to run in the Aug. 18 race. Qualifying for the nonpartisan election does not open until June 8, so other candidates may still enter the race.
Commissioners qualify either by paying a $4,948.81 fee or by collecting 1,046 signatures, which represents 1 percent of the voters in the district. Unlike the city commission, a part-time job that pays $4,000 a year, county commissioners work full-time and earn $123,720 annually.
Oliver was known to be considering a run, and he told VoxPopuli that over the holidays he finalized his decision. He said he wants to be a “voice” for cities, like Ocoee, which he and other city leaders say have not received much attention from the county.
“I’m just looking to be a candidate that's going to bring more visibility, resources and funding into the cities in West Orange County, i.e. Apopka and Ocoee that have seemed to be neglected by the county,” he told VoxPopuli. “Over the past few years, we just have not seemed to have gotten the support that we needed. I would like to be an advocate for the five cities in District 2.”
Following the redistricting process that added two new districts to Orange County, District 2 now encompasses Ocoee, Apopka, Tangerine, Zellwood and the census-designated areas Clarcona, Lockhart and Paradise Heights.
Oliver told VoxPopuli that he'd work to help cities like Tangerine and Zellwood maintain their rural environment.
“They want to keep a lot of development out. I can understand that they want that small hometown feel. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he said. “So we’ve gotta go back to the balance between development versus our green space. That’s going to be important in those rural areas, to let them know that someone’s going to advocate for that.”
Born in Tarpon Springs, Fla., and raised in Atlanta, Oliver has spent the past 22 years in Ocoee. He has six sons and six grandchildren. A U.S. Navy veteran, he holds a business degree and an MBA from the University of Phoenix as well as an associate’s degree from Valencia College. He founded the now-closed GPS-Sports Inc. and at one time partnered with his wife Deborah in the now-defunct companies AD&G Trucking and Compliance Logic. He has worked as an Orange County Public School substitute teacher through Kelly Education and at the U.S. Treasury Department and serves on the board of the nonprofit TRELS Home for Children in Houston.
Oliver was instrumental in persuading the city to issue an official Proclamation about the 1920 Election Day Massacre and an Apology during the 2020 100th Anniversary Remembrance events that commemorated those who were murdered by or who fled the white mob that decimated the city’s Black community after a Black man attempted to vote. He’s also gotten directional signs erected for the African American Hallowed Ground Cemetery and started the Ocoee Youth Council “to help cultivate future leaders,” according to his bio on Ocoee’s city site.
Oliver told VoxPopuli in a 2021 interview that when he and his wife first moved to Florida, they initially considered living in Maitland, spooked by stories they'd heard about the Ocoee Massacre and the city being a "sundown town." But he said he ultimately chose to make Ocoee his home because the city could only change if families like his became "part of that change."
He was elected as Ocoee’s first Black commissioner in 2018 then re-elected in 2021. He even won the March 2024 special election held to find the replacement to finish his term after he vacated his seat in 2023 to make an unsuccessful bid for mayor.
Initially the city commission attempted to bar Oliver from running in the March 2024 special election, arguing that because he’d vacated his seat, he could not succeed himself onto the commission. Oliver then filed a lawsuit to get his name on the ballot, and the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that the city commission had jurisdiction over commissioners, but not candidates. Oliver was able to run, then prevailed at the polls. Last March, Oliver won his third four-year term.
Still, Oliver’s term on the city commission has not been without controversy. He violated campaign finance laws in soliciting donations from city hall during his mayoral campaign. In last year’s election, he campaigned against three city charter amendments by falsely claiming they were part of Project 2025. (Following questions and coverage from VoxPopuli, he retracted the statement.) He’s battled with Ocoee Mayor Rusty Johnson about the city’s Music Festival, the annual commemoration of the 1920 Election Day Massacre, Ocoee Remembers, and the makeup and activities of the Human Relations Diversity Board (HRDB). He even asserted, without evidence, that the mayor, District 2 Commissioner Rosemary Wilsen and the HRDB chair violated Sunshine Law in plotting to claw back $100,000 that had been budgeted for HRDB cultural events.
But since Oliver’s re-election last year, there appears to be more cooperation and comity on the dais. It was Oliver who, in November, brought the rest of the commission over to his idea for the city to manage the Forest Lake Golf Club rather than vote to hire one of three golf course management companies to run it.
"Right now we’re only talking about a third-party vendor to be the operator of the golf course, never looking at the possibilities of what it would mean if we were to take it on ourselves,” he’d said at the Nov. 4 commission meeting. From there, the conversation turned from discussing the relative merits of the management companies to the feasibility of having the city manage the operations — and the earnings.
“He’s changed,” Johnson told VoxPopuli at November’s Ocoee Remembers memorial in Unity Park. At that time, Johnson said that if Oliver ran for the county commission, he would have his full-throated support. He reiterated that sentiment during a Friday phone call, saying that Oliver’s Ocoee roots and hard-charging style could yield dividends for the city.
“We’ve not had a person out of Ocoee to be on the Board [of County Commissioners],” Johnson said. “He’d be a good asset for our district. I would back him for the county.”
