On a windy, drizzly Wednesday afternoon, Austin Arthur is out canvassing a Winter Garden neighborhood.
A woman answers the door on the third home he tries. She’s a supporter and voted for Arthur in the August Primary Election, where only five votes separated him and the person he’s trying to unseat — the Orange County District 1 commissioner, County Vice Mayor Nicole Wilson.
The woman who answered the door let Arthur put a campaign sign in her front yard, and he moved on, leaving on each house a colorful pamphlet containing information about his platform and how to contact him.
He says people resonate with his message.
“I think that almost every single resident feels that we need to slow the growth down in West Orange County. It's coming too hard, too fast. The infrastructure is not there to support it,” Arthur says. “I don't think I've met one resident who disagrees with that, to be honest. That is a winning message and the reason why I’m running.”
The challenge of growth
University of Central Florida Political Scientist Aubrey Jewett, said Orange County’s steep population growth in recent years has presented new challenges for local politicians — who must now balance increased demands for development and commerce, while keeping up with infrastructure upgrades and protecting green spaces.
“District 1 is the largest and fastest growing district in Orange County. Made of quiet, historic towns and bustling new development, it is a unique hybrid of classic and contemporary Florida living.”Orange County website
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2022, the Greater Orlando Metro area saw an average of about 1,000 new people a week. And when it comes to statewide growth, Florida has ranked top two in the country over the past two years.
“Florida's population has grown by 1 or 2 million people a decade, every decade, for the last 50 years. And with that population growth has come enormous challenges. So, at the local level, when you have an area like Orange County that's just growing so fast, it really presents extra pressures to local government leaders,” Jewett said.
These growing pains are characteristic of many Central Florida races this election.
One thing is clear, Jewett said, these elections are seeing bigger donations each time because deep pockets have vested interests in what happens here because of all the growth and opportunity.
“Who gets involved in local races, and when I say who gets involved, like, who's giving the money? And why are they giving the money? And so for many decades now, political scientists and sociologists have said at the local level, there's some, often something called the growth machine, which is all the interest groups and industries and businesses that benefit from growth and development,” Jewett said.
At the same time, Jewett explained, a counter movement also emerges.
“We see people pushing for smart growth, smart development, saying, ‘We need to pay as much attention to the environment and the environmental damage that development can cause as we do to the development itself.’ And so a lot of times the local races are about trying to find that balance,” he said.
This dilemma has sparked special interests to become involved in local elections, each with their own vision of what this growth should look like. From people like Arthur, non-politicians who are running for office, to commercial industry leaders, particularly developers, who are contributing large sums of money to influence results, voters this year have a lot to consider.
Who is Austin Arthur?
Arthur has lived in the county’s District 1 for about 10 years with his wife and their three children. He’s an entrepreneur. Arthur opened Gymnastic USA in Winter Garden with his brother and partner, who now runs the place with his wife. The brothers also founded Stars and Stripes Marketing Services and still co-own and run it together.
Arthur said he loves people, and he loves to help. During his time in West Orange County, he has volunteered to serve on several community boards, including his local Habitat for Humanity, helping disadvantaged families on their path to homeownership.
In that role, Arthur said he's fostered relationships with municipalities and organizations to acquire land for housing development. He said that when it came time to deal with the county, he noticed major problems.
“We tried to work with the current commissioner. It was a real struggle. You could tell that it was just a real bureaucracy. It was hard to get anyone on the phone,” Arthur said. “At one point, I just started to realize that we really had a leadership crisis in West Orange County.”
He said he got nowhere with the county, even trying to meet with Wilson several times, many to which, he said, she didn’t show up.
After talking to people in the community and trying to get other people to run against the commissioner, he felt he had no choice but to throw his own hat in the ring.
Arthur said that growth in West Orange County needs to be controlled and infrastructure considered. If elected, he said he will slow down growth and negotiate impact fees that will help pay for wider roads.
“We have failing roads, we have flooding issues, we have overcrowded schools. Development needs to help pay for that with impact fees. I believe that strongly, but you can't do that if you're not showing up to negotiate. We just keep getting pounded with development here, and we got to slow it down,” Arthur said. “We got to make sure it's the right kind of development, the right time, in the right place.”
Arthur has received endorsements from the Winter Garden, Oakland, Windermere, Ocoee, Apopka and Edgewood mayors, as well as the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, the Orlando Regional Realtor Association, and the Central Florida Hotel & Lodging Association.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer’s PAC reportedly contributed to Arthur’s campaign as well.
Commissioner Wilson’s take
Wilson is always on the move.
The District 1 commissioner serves a very large, diverse, and tourism dependent area of Orange County. And she loves every second of it — even if it doesn’t leave her time to campaign.
She laid out some of her favorite things about the region, as she rushed out of a meeting in Winter Garden to get to her next appointment.
“We have a little bit of everything: we are truly diverse in all ways. I mean socioeconomically, ethnically, as well as geographically. We have rural lands, beautiful rolling horse farms. But we also have Disney. That is something that you can't really say anywhere else in the country,” Wilson said. “It's a really special county with gorgeous natural treasures and resources.”
The district’s demands are long and many, and Wilson said she’s capable and up to the task.
The environmental lawyer has been a District 1 resident for nearly 30 years. The busy, working mother built a career and raised her three children in the same community she’s watched grow.
Wilson has been serving as commissioner for three and half years now. Not unlike Arthur, she was compelled to run for office when she felt the county was not growing responsibly. Her breaking point was when county commissioners started discussing building right through Split Oak Forest.
“I saw that the commission was out of touch with what was happening out in the district — and I mean this across the board, not just mine. There was a growth management issue, where any development application that came through was barely scrutinized. I continue to struggle with this issue,” she said.
Earlier this year, the Orange County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted Wilson as county vice mayor.
During her tenure, she said, she’s been an advocate for sensible growth and is proud of her track record. In 2022, she raised impact fees. In 2023, she began updating codes for tree and wetland preservations. She’s also fought to save natural landmarks in new developments and has been an advocate for adaptive reuse projects.
She said this approach has made her a target of big developers from day one.
“These are things that actually are growth management policies put into place. It scares the big, deep-pocketed development interests who have just always been able to write their own checks,” Wilson said.
According to Wilson, much of the fast-growing urban sprawl that Arthur and his supporters are referring to is part of entitlements that were approved in the 90s and early 2000s, decades before she or her predecessor ever took office.
On top of that, Wilson said, the market crash of 2007 drove the county to waive impact fees for developers to keep construction and investment moving. Without those impact fees, the county fell behind on infrastructure needs.
Wilson said the county is playing “catch up” with infrastructure, but she doesn’t want to make headway at the expense of taxpayers.
“I think anybody can say ‘infrastructure first,’ but, does that mean that he's going to raise taxes? Because the way we pay for infrastructure is through taxation. The only place that I've done that for our infrastructure is on development impact fees, and I think it’s important that people know that,” she said.
Wilson said Arthur doesn’t like her policies because she’s not going along with the plans of wealthy, influential developers who just want to “come here, tear down forests, make a quick buck, and get out.”
Politics in a non-partisan race
Although county elections are non-partisan, Red and Blue rhetoric has infiltrated the race, with ugly mudslinging and bad faith arguments plaguing both campaigns, mainly in the form of websites and social media attacks for which neither candidate claims credit.
Arthur is a registered Republican, and Wilson is a registered Democrat. Arthur has ties to anti-abortion movements, and Wilson has ties to environmentalist groups and receives backing from some of the county's Democratic groups.
But these are social issues, Arthur said, and not in the purview of a county commissioner’s responsibilities, so they should not come into play. But, to him, Wilson has been serving as more of an activist than a commissioner, being ideologically opposed to solutions that would mean making certain temporary sacrifices.
“Activism is important, it exposes things that might not otherwise be known, and we need that in our framework, but it's a different role than leadership. Leadership is to listen to both sides, work on an issue, bring people together with a coalition to get things done,” Arthur said. People understand that we need more units on the market to help with this housing crisis, but they say, ‘Listen, we have to have the infrastructure. We have to have the road improvements and, yes, that means road widening.’”
Arthur said Wilson’s “adversarial” reluctance to negotiate or compromise with developer solutions are what make her unpopular among local government officials and industries.
Wilson said she has the support of her county board and more than half of voters. She said she feels confident people will “see through his slogans.”
“I think saying that I'm an activist is just code for ‘she doesn't just go along with the plan.’ Because representation means going and even saying unpopular things, and that’s what the people are experiencing, going and even pushing back on powerful influences because that is what I'm supposed to do,” Wilson said.
To Wilson, Arthur is beholden to his contributors.
Big money, big expectations
At this time, Orange County’s candidate financing records show Arthur has received more than $336,000 in contributions to his campaign. Wilson shows just under $80,000.
A recent report states Arthur has received tens of thousands in dark money investments, using political action committees to take donations, circumventing fundraising rules meant to keep local elections free from big money influences. According to the report, only two county candidates this year are not using PAC money — and Wilson is one of them.
Both candidates claim to support smart, responsible growth, and the protection of rural lands, coming out in support of the county’s Rural Boundary Amendment on the November ballot, which protects rural lands from urban sprawl and annexation.
Both also claim to sit with folks from across aisles, from developers to activists, and from the wealthiest to the neediest in their communities.
Wilson said the money shows Arthur is developer-backed.
He said the industries endorsing him, like tourism and development, are a critical sector of District 1’s economy. Arthur pointed to his history of speaking against overdevelopment.
“I’m on record multiple times, years before I decided to run for politics, saying, ‘We don't need to City-of-Orlando West Orange County.’ Orlando is a beautiful place, but it's a different place than West Orange County. We have a much more agricultural, rural background and character, and we need to preserve that,” he said.
He did, however, say that businesses that provide thousands of local jobs have been at odds with Wilson for almost four years are ready for a “pro-jobs, pro-economic growth” commissioner.
The way Arthur explained it, it’s not just developers. He said people from all over and across governments and industries are contributing big dollars to his campaign because they’re ready for effective leadership.
“Everybody is losing under this current commission,” Arthur said. “They just want to be heard. They want a seat at the table, and they're not getting that right now.”
Arthur also said Wilson has her own development-based contributions.
Wilson said she gives everyone the same voice, but in the end, District 1 is “worth fighting for” and will always win her vote.
“My opponent says it all the time, ‘She won't meet with developers,’ and it's absolutely false. I'll meet with anybody, but everybody is on an equal playing field. You don't have any more or less power because you're a large, wealthy developer than you would if you're a resident who was concerned about the drainage in your neighborhood or somebody from the Audubon Society who was worried about a specific endangered species. All those appointments that I take, they get equal footing, they get my attention, they get my time," Wilson said. “And then, at the end of all that, I will vote for what I think is in the best interest of the entire county.”
Both candidates said they will not be shills for corporate interests and that their contributors do not define their platforms or intentions.
Aubrey Jewett has been studying politics in Florida for more than 30 years. The politics professor has seen Central Florida grow, as a resident himself. He said the region is in an exciting yet delicate stage, especially as more money gets involved.
And although money isn’t always the only motivator, personal philosophy still plays a big part in politics, he said it ultimately could have an impact.
“A lot of political scientists have tried to make that causal connection that our politicians are bought and paid for, but it's not quite as easy as it might seem. On the one hand, they're taking a lot of money from someone, so they must be voting the way that someone wants, but maybe they’re taking money because their views already align, not to sway their behavior,” Jewett said. “But the evidence is pretty clear that most of the interest groups and bigger developers are giving money because they do hope to have some access to the politician and maybe a little bit of influence over the decisions that are made.”
Tuesday, November 5th is the last day to vote in the General Election.
Lillian Hernández Caraballo is a Report for America corps member.