District 1 Orange County Commission race heads to Nov. 5 runoff

Orange County Commissioner Nicole Wilson and candidate Austin Arthur are headed for a Nov. 5 runoff, rather than a recount, for their District 1 race, according to the Supervisor of Elections. 

The announcement was made just after 7:30 p.m. after the canvassing board finished counting the write-in ballots, the provisional ballots and the mail-in ballots with signature issues that had been “cured.” 

In the process, Wilson gained 10 additional votes to finish with a two-vote lead over Arthur, who netted another 13. The final tally was 14,062 votes for Wilson to 14,060 for Arthur. Write-in candidate Stephen Davis, who entered the race on June 14, the last day to qualify, received 15 votes and 0.05 percent of the vote. That left Arthur with 49.97 percent and Wilson with 49.98 percent of the vote — just shy of the 50 percent threshold required to win. When no candidate emerges from a three-way race with more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getters have a runoff.

Longtime election watcher attorney Nick Shannin, general counsel for the Supervisor of Elections, said this may be the first time a write-in candidate has had such an outsized impact on an election in Orange County and possibly Florida. 

“An election like this goes to show that every vote really does count, even those for a write-in candidate,” Supervisor of Elections spokesperson Christopher Heath told VoxPopuli in an email. “With two candidates separated by such a narrow margin, the votes for the qualified write-in were enough to keep each candidate just under 50 percent.” 

Wilson, reached by phone Thursday evening, told VoxPopuli she was “absolutely relieved with this outcome.” 

“We should have always been on the November election as part of a two-candidate race,” she said. “So, I am absolutely confident, going into November, that I'll prevail. 

“There's a lot of people and a lot of things out there that I feel like if I'm not that voice on the county commission, that they don't have that voice,” she continued. “And I mean that as in turtles all the way to people who, I think, have just been marginalized and don't have a voice.”

Arthur told VoxPopuli in a Thursday night phone interview that while he had hoped to have the race wrapped up Tuesday, the additional 10 weeks before the Nov. 5 general election just gives him more time to get his message out to more people. 

The nearly even split between him and Wilson, he said, shows that “voters need more time to learn about the candidates."

Arthur has been campaigning for 18 months, but he said voters are just tuning in now.

"A year and a half ago, people aren't paying attention to this election," he said. "They were paying attention to their work, life, their family, daily things. But now when it gets closer, people start to pay attention. And that's why we've had the momentum that we've had ... That extra time is going to allow people to get plugged into our campaign and learn about our message."