Candidate Profile: Joe Strada

Joe Strada won the crowded Aug. 18 Republican Primary and now faces Democrat James Pericola in the Nov. 3 midterm election for the 11th Congressional District seat.

Strada, who sold his Sanford-based HVAC, electrical, plumbing and security company Strada Services in 2021 to the mega-private equity firm Trilantic North America, says Washington needs more people who have “signed the front of a paycheck, built businesses, created jobs and solved real-world problems.”

The Lake Mary resident has sunk $5 million of his own funds along with another $1 million for advertising into the race. The state campaign finance database shows that he's raised another $248,640 in individual contributions.

However, beyond pledging to be "standing right next to [President Donald Trump],” Strada’s campaign is light on policy. His campaign site states that instituting term limits, supporting a balanced budget amendment and banning insider trading for Congressional members are key issues, apparently not recognizing that insider stock trading is illegal regardless of whether one is a member of Congress. Asked at a July forum what measures he would take to protect Social Security, Strada’s response was “Don’t worry about it.”  

Still, he has accumulated numerous endorsements from Republican leaders at the state and national level, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Congressmen Randy Fine and Jim Jordan, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, Lake County Republican Party Chair and State Rep. Taylor Yarkovsky as well as Orange County area legislators State Sens. Keith Truenow and Jason Brodeur and State Rep. Doug Bankson.

Strada has also accumulated eight federal lawsuits alleging that he violated the Fair Labor Standards Act, shorting his employees on overtime pay.

In July, a $5 million class action lawsuit was filed against Strada and Strada Services for substituting unapproved steel-core conductor wire for code-approved copper grounding electrode wire in 35,000 new Florida homes across 15 counties from 2020 to 2022, according to reporting by the Orlando Sentinel. This is the grounding wire that allows electricity to pass safely to the earth in the event of a fault or surge. The lawsuit states that Strada installed the cheaper, more available steel wire to avoid delays because the approved copper wiring was in short supply during the Covid-era. The lawsuit also states that Strada employees would keep copper wire in their service trucks to show to building inspectors — then install the steel wire in homes.

Despite multiple phone calls and emails to Strada’s campaign, Strada did not submit responses to the News Collaborative of Central Florida questionnaire nor respond to requests for an interview.