Sliding in just before the Keys felt the effects of Hurricane Milton, the Keys Weekly and Greater Marathon Chamber of Commerce partnered to give voters one of their final extended looks at two critical local races with a candidate Q&A forum on Oct. 7. The Weekly encourages all voters to view the forum in its entirety.
County Commission, District 3
Republican incumbent Jim Scholl’s responses throughout the evening served to highlight his experience in government operations and familiarity with laws governing changes desired by residents, while Democrat challenger Chris Massicotte criticized what he said was a lack of oversight and accountability in county operations, positioning himself as a fiscal conservative and emphasizing his experience as a former auditor and accountant.
Massicotte stressed a need to divert additional resources for continuing audits of individual county departments, pinpointing “wasteful spending” to create a “culture of oversight.” Agreeing with the need for a culture change, Scholl spoke of a need for stronger top-down leadership, beginning with newly-promoted County Administrator Christine Hurley, and reminded viewers that “the legislative body doesn’t control day-to-day operations of the county – it’s the administrator’s job.”
The pair disagreed on the county’s future acceptance of additional building rights, with Scholl in favor of additional units bestowed by the state used largely for workforce housing, “as long as we get to control how they’re going to be issued out.”
“We’ve lost so much workforce housing because of the evolution of vacation rentals in what were traditional long-term rentals,” he said. “We have to do something to be able to maintain the quality of life and support our economy and environment.”
Massicotte said that while surveys and meetings to gauge resident sentiments on additional units were “okay,” he advocated for a temporary moratorium on additional units to allow completion of “an actual, real infrastructure assessment,” arguing that the threat of takings cases filed by property owners unable to build is “made out to be way more than our liability actually would be.”
“The decisions we make today are going to affect what the Keys are like in 20 years,” he said. “If we take more ROGOs, in 20 years you’ll see traffic choking, and we’re going to regret that we ever did it.”
Visions for the future of Marathon’s airport following its upcoming runway shift were further divided, with Massicotte in full support of pursuing commercial air travel to the Middle Keys as a mechanism to reduce rental vehicles and highway congestion.
Scholl said that previous attempts to establish services in Marathon have failed due to low passenger demand, arguing that Middle Keys residents were more likely to drive to Key West or mainland airports.
“It just hasn’t worked in the past, and I don’t see it working anytime soon,” he said.
Supervisor of Elections
Candidates in the Keys’ most contentious race made their way to the dais as Republican Sherri Hodies and Democrat Ron Saunders took their seats.
Amid an investigation authorized by Gov. Ron DeSantis into whether the Monroe County Republican Executive Committee broke its own rules in April and committed campaign finance fraud in endorsing Hodies with a $20,000 donation ahead of the Republican primary, Hodies pushed back against labels given to her campaign.
Calling the document that prompted the investigation, filed by fellow Republican Phyllis May, a “frivolous complaint,” Hodies claimed she had yet to receive a copy of the complaint through official channels.
“It’s just amazing to me that people talk about charges, people talk about fraud, and there’s nothing that has even been sent out there about me,” she said.
“I think (the investigation) is an example where we need to stay on top of things and make sure things are run properly,” Saunders said. “If nothing’s wrong, that’s great, but it remains to be seen what will happen.”
Referencing a May fundraising event in which she hosted retired Army intelligence officer Capt. Seth Keshel, a nationally-known election denier, Hodies worked to distance herself from what she called another “label” to her campaign.
“I am not an election denier, but there have been people at my fundraisers who have been labeled,” she said.
Asked directly whether Joe Biden won the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, Hoodies stated: “In 2016, Trump won, and in 2020, Biden won, plain and simple.” She called Keshel’s presentation “a wonderful history lesson,” but received pushback from Saunders when she stated that Keshel “didn’t speak about (Monroe County) precincts at all.”
Asked if he was aware of any compromised elements of previous Monroe County elections, Saunders said he’d seen no cause for concern, but said Keshel had raised suspicions with voters in Key West’s precinct 5, in which dozens of individuals had registered using a common address.
“It turns out that there were people without addresses there, and the reason for that is that they were actively military serving our country overseas, but still wanted to vote locally,” Saunders said. “The allegation was that there was something wrong there. There was nothing wrong there, and that’s what we need to be careful about when we start these types of rumors.”
“I have never worked for or with (the Supervisor of Elections) office, so I would not know if anything was compromised or not,” Hoodies said in response to the same question, later acknowledging that “we can see that we have not had any issues down here. … Joyce (Griffin) has run a very good office.”
Hoodies continued to blast May’s complaint in her closing statement, arguing that her application for funding from the REC stated that a majority vote of REC members in attendance for the group’s April 20 vote – not a majority of the committee’s total membership – would earn the $20,000 contribution, and that the 20-18 vote to endorse her was therefore sufficient.
Saunders closed by touting bipartisan supporters of his campaign, decrying recent attack mailers from the Conservative Family Alliance political organization as “full of lies and misstatements.”
“When you look at this election, see who’s throwing the mud and why,” he said. “I know the law, I know how to protect elections, and I have a lot of support from both sides.”
