Candidate Profile: Coretta Anthony-Smith

First-time political candidate Coretta Anthony-Smith has visited the state capitol before, primarily to testify on bills before the Legislature on issues like rising insurance premiums.

Now on the ballot for the upcoming Democratic primary, Anthony-Smith hopes to return to Tallahassee — this time, as an elected official representing the constituents of state Senate District 15. The district includes Winter Garden, Ocoee, Oakland, Apopka, Pine Hills, Dr. Phillips, parts of Orlando and Eatonville.

“I’m here in the community,” Anthony-Smith told VoxPopuli in a recent phone interview. “I am the person that people come to when they're having problems … I'm here on the ground floor in the community actually listening to citizens, hearing their everyday problems.”

Anthony-Smith is running against State Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis, her brother, former State Sen. Randolph Bracy III and former Congressman Alan Grayson in the June 24 primary. The winner will face Willie Montague, founder of the nonprofit House of Timothy, a facility for troubled boys and youth. Montague was the only Republican who filed for the Sept. 2 special election. The winner will serve out the late State Sen. Geraldine F. Thompson's term, which ends in 2028.

Florida state senators serve four-year terms and earn $29,697 annually.

The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is June 12. Early voting will take place June 14 to 22, daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Click here for early voting locations.

"Fight for the people"

A native Floridian, Anthony-Smith, 54, grew up in Naples where her mother worked as a physical education teacher and basketball coach at Lely High School (leading the first all-girl basketball team to the state championship in the 1970s), and her father worked as a lineman for Florida Power and Light. Tragically, she lost both parents when she was young: her mother to a drunk driver when she was 7; her father to cancer when she was 16. Her grandmother cared for her from then on. 

Anthony-Smith studied marketing at Georgetown University and then went to work in the marketing department of an insurance company, but found the job “unfulfilling.” She thought she’d try law school. After graduating from the University of Florida, she went to work defending insurance companies but found that just as unfulfilling. 

“I realized many insurance companies were taking advantage of the underprivileged,” she said. She found herself investigating minor issues as if claimants were cooking up insurance frauds.

“Like when someone applied for insurance, they didn't tell the company that their 80-year-old grandmother was living with them," she said. "They were having us look at it like they were planning on staging an accident or that they were going to do all these nefarious things. But I never did see anything like that.”

That dissatisfaction led her to open Anthony-Smith Law in Ocoee with her cousin in 2007. They represent people in their disputes against insurance companies. Despite initial financial struggles, she said, the firm thrived in the community and now employs 15. 

“I’ve always said that even if I wasn't going to get paid, I’m just going to do what's right and fight for people, try to serve the underprivileged,” she said.

“Very big shoes to fill”

It was Thompson’s unexpected death in February following complications from knee surgery that necessitated the September special election. Anthony-Smith said she left behind some “very big shoes to fill.” 

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for Sen. Thompson, and I think she was a magnanimous individual and politician. She fought very hard for the people, and I would continue to do that.”

But she said, the new political landscape requires a different playbook. While her Democratic rivals have experience in public office, she said today’s divisive climate is new for everyone. 

“Nobody has that type of experience because nobody even thought we'd be where we are today,” Anthony-Smith said. “Democracy — whether you're Democrat or Republican — is under attack. Our rights are being eroded, and people don't know it. They don't know that their rights are being eroded until they get ready to do something, until it affects them personally on that particular level.”

That’s why Anthony-Smith believes it’s time for a change in the status quo, one that leaves career politicians and the “old way of doing business” in the past. 

“Who would have ever thought that we'd be where we are today on a federal level, as well as a state level?” she said. “I think we need people who are going to adapt, and that's why I think my law experience comes into play, because you have to be adaptable. You have to be able to change with the tide ... Hopefully, we're in a much different position next year. But for this year, I think that we have to navigate the political landscape that is before us and not be looking back.”

The experience she's talking about is her negotiating skill as a trial attorney, which she believes will help her make headway with the kitchen table issues residents are concerned with now. 

“I have to reach across the aisle every day. I have to work with a defense attorney and we're on completely opposite sides. We have completely different agendas, but we have to work together to get this case to trial and to a judge," she explained.

Likewise in the Legislature, she said both sides will have to put aside their differences to reach a common goal and [do] what’s best for residents “and not our own individual parties, which is where I think that Florida is going.”

“Even if you look right now, there's divisiveness within our own Democratic Party, within the Republican Party. We still don't have a budget,” she added. “I engage in a lot of negotiation where there has to be give and take. I think that's what we're missing right now. It's missing from our Legislature. I mean, we have people in the same parties that are fighting across the board.”

"Not a MAGA plant"

Anthony-Smith was on the receiving end of some of that divisiveness when her opponent Randolph Bracy posted a video to Instagram on May 26 that accused her of sending out a mailer stating that he took money from health insurance corporations during his 2020 state senate campaign. In his video, he said, without evidence, that she was being funded by Republicans and was a “Republican plant” in the Democratic Party. Bracy dubbed her “MAGA Coretta.” A review of Anthony-Smith’s campaign finance reports found no donations from Republican sources — and notably none from Committee to Protect Florida, the political action committee that was responsible for the mailer. 

Asked about Bracy’s video, Anthony-Smith called the accusations “baseless” and said she’s been a Democrat for 21 years. 

“Just so that we are clear, I am not a MAGA plant,” Anthony-Davis said. “I'm not a Republican. I'm a registered Democratic voter, and I've been registered as a Democrat during the entire time that I've been here in Orange County. 

“I take those allegations very seriously,” she continued. “[I wish] some other people would take just that small measure of due diligence, especially someone who's running for office.”

Safety, housing, insurance

Her platform has three main planks: securing affordable property insurance for residents, increasing affordable housing and strengthening public safety. 

“Everybody's rates are going up” for both property and auto insurance across the state, said Anthony-Smith. “Even if you don't have a home, most people have a car and, if your insurance rates are skyrocketing, people can't afford that.”

She also took issue with what she described as the House’s effort to “abandon” investigations into property insurance companies that misled lawmakers with previous claims of financial struggles to justify higher premiums. 

“How are the citizens of the state of Florida being taken advantage of like this and we don't hear anything about it? Where's the transparency? What happened? How does someone take billions of dollars from Florida citizens, cry broke, and then we don't hear anything else about it?” 

Higher insurance costs impact everyone and can derail home buying, she said. “I do think affordable housing flows from that too, because if you can't afford insurance, you can't be that first-time homebuyer,” Anthony-Smith said. “If you can't afford the insurance that goes along with a home, you can't get a home.”

She also has plans on how to address public safety, the third plank of her campaign, for neighborhoods and communities across the district. 

“It’s an issue that affects everyone no matter where you live,” Anthony-Smith said. “College Park, Windermere, Gotha, Pine Hills — we're all concerned about safety.”

She wants to invest in first responders and develop community-driven events to increase the opportunities residents have for positive encounters with local police to foster trust.

“Of course you're going to have bad actors who abuse the system — that's everywhere, that's for every single industry that we have,” Anthony-Smith said. “But for the most part, [police officers are] out here looking out for us, and we need to get the community to be able to trust them.”

And she wants to sit down with anyone who has ideas to share about addressing the problems facing Senate District 15.

“We can think about this together,” Anthony-Smith said. “Nobody has all of the solutions, but you need to make yourself accessible so that you can do that. So you can figure out what's working, what's not working, so people know what's going on in their communities, they know what's going on in the Legislature. I just feel like we don't have that anymore.”

She said she's intentionally not sought endorsements from other politicians or special interests.

“I don't want there to be any type of quid pro quo,” Anthony-Smith said. “I don't want there to be any favors … I may have to seek help from other people, but I don't want it to be at the expense of the citizens of the state of Florida ... The only reason I'm running is just to make a change … I have no other motivation, no other reasons. It's just simply to help our community and try to make a change.”