Candidate Profile: Charles Hart

Private practice attorney and former chair of the Orange County Republican Executive Committee Charles Hart is running for the Group 1 seat on the Ninth Circuit Court.

He is challenging incumbent Judge Mikaela Nix (a fellow Republican) and private practice attorney Temika Hampton-Johnson in the nonpartisan Aug. 18 election. Circuit Court judges serve six-year terms and earn $200,836 annually. The Ninth Circuit serves both Orange and Osceola counties.

“As judge, I would work to ensure that every person who appears before the court is treated with courtesy, patience, and respect,” Hart states on his campaign website. “I believe the courtroom belongs to the public, and the judicial system should be accessible, efficient, and responsive to the needs of the community.”

A member of the Federalist Society and a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, Hart has applied five times to the Ninth Circuit Court’s Judicial Nomination Commission and once to the Seventh Judicial Circuit for circuit and county court positions in 2019, 2023, 2024 and 2025. He’s never made it past the commission. 

Hart has worked as an assistant state attorney and as a public defender for the 18th Judicial Circuit, which comprises Brevard and Seminole counties. He has also maintained a Sanford-based private practice, the Charles C. Hart Law Office, where he specializes in criminal and guardianship law and continues to practice today. A certified Florida Supreme Court family law and county court mediator, Hart opened a mediation practice earlier this year. 

In 2022, Hart ran for the Florida House of Representatives in District 39. He was defeated in the Republican Primary by State Rep. Doug Bankson of Apopka. 

Hart taught accounting at the University of South Florida’s School of Accounting and Santa Fe Community College during his graduate school and law school years. In his application for a vacancy on the Seventh Circuit’s County Court, he noted that his courses on accounting contained “no critical race theory [or] distortionist history lessons …” 

Hart is also known for filing a lawsuit against Orange County’s mask mandate at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, telling Florida Politics at the time that Orange County Mayor Jerry L. Deming’s maneuver to stem the flood of cases and protect public health was a “massive government overreach” and a free speech violation. 

Hart did not submit responses to the News Collaborative of Central Florida’s candidate questionnaire. VoxPopuli reached out to his campaign multiple times for an interview but received no response. 

Norine Dworkin contributed reporting.