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With a unanimous vote from the full commission, Ocoee last week approved procedures for accepting and challenging candidates for mayor and city commissioner.
The new ordinance follows the 2025 adoption of a city charter amendment that gives the city commission the authority to judge candidates’ qualifications and eligibility for office.
Explaining the ordinance during the July 21 city commission meeting, City Attorney Rick Geller noted that candidate challenges would “be the exception and not the rule.”
Under the new procedures, candidates for office will be approved on the commission’s consent agenda. If there’s a challenge, that candidate would be pulled from the consent agenda for review. Geller explained that “based on reasonable cause” a quasi-evidentiary hearing would be held to determine the candidate’s eligibility for office.
In 2024, Ocoee voters adopted charter amendments to require candidates for office live in the city and the district they want to represent for at least 12 months before running for office. Candidates must also submit proof of residency and consent to a background check.
Geller added that disqualified candidates can appeal commission decisions to the circuit court.
“We have language in here that the city's procedures are in addition to any judicial process and remedies under law, so we're not taking away anyone's rights under the Florida statutes to proceed as they would be so authorized to do,” he said.
These new procedures stem from the 2024 lawsuit District 4 City Commissioner George Oliver III filed after the commission disqualified him from running in the March 2024 special election to fill his seat after he had resigned to run for mayor in 2023.
Oliver lost the mayoral election. But when he filed to run in the special election for the District 4 seat, the commission determined he was not eligible because a successor candidate had to be a separate individual. The Ninth Circuit Court ruled that the Ocoee City Commission had no authority over candidates and therefore could not disqualify Oliver from running. He subsequently won the seat.
Oliver is currently running for the District 2 seat on the Orange County Commission.
The new ordinance also clarifies that the city clerk’s role in accepting candidate qualifying paperwork is “ministerial in nature,” Geller explained.
“She does not look at the papers and determine their accuracy. She looks to make sure they appear to be complete and they’ve been timely filed. So it’s a facial type of assessment of what she receives as the city clerk,” Geller said.
