This story originally appeared in the Oviedo Community News. Central Florida Public Media along with the Oviedo Community News has partnered with the News Collaborative of Central Florida on this election coverage.
John Lowndes has unseated incumbent Republican Jason Brodeur for a seat in the Florida Senate.
Lowndes said he would represent voters in Oviedo and Winter Springs, even if they didn’t vote for him. He struck a tone of mending bridges and crossing party lines in his victory speech, as dozens cheered.
“It’s a fantastic result; the hard work of all these people here today, it’s awesome,” Lowndes said. “Thank you all, to everybody, in Oviedo, Winter Springs, Geneva, everyone. People who voted for me, and people who didn’t. I’m going to work for everybody.”
Unseated incumbent Republican Sen. Jason Brodeur comes from a health care and consulting background, and was the Florida Senate’s President Pro Tempore, which is the No. 2 in command in the Senate.
Brodeur’s campaign has focused on the $130 million in funding for the district he’s secured over the last four budgets – including while he was the second-in-command for the Florida Senate, running bills on the floor.
“Time wise for me, one of the roles that I have is that I spend about 90% of my time in the chair, meaning that while session is actually going on, I’m the person in the rostrum making sure that the bills are moving and doing all that stuff,” Brodeur previously said to Oviedo Community News. “If I’m doing that, I can’t be running bills. And so that’s just a mechanical hazard of running the chamber.”
Brodeur has been a controversial figure. During a previous campaign, a “ghost candidate” was running in the race to siphon votes from the Democrat.
More recently, Brodeur championed a bill that would have gutted Seminole County’s rural boundary, angering many voters.
“For those inside the rural boundary, and most love being there and want to be there, but there are some that want to develop their land, and they’re not allowed to because a bunch of people in Lake Mary and Altamonte (Springs) voted that they’re not allowed to do it,” Brodeur told Oviedo Community News in 2025. “That is a reverse subsidy, and that’s a takings.”
Lowndes put the rural boundary and environmental issues front and center in his campaign. Lowndes, Maitland’s mayor and a lawyer, has also put affordability at the front of his campaign.
“The differences are pretty stark,” Lowndes said. “When folks vote at that rate that they’d like to keep this land use designation and people in the rural boundary area want to keep their area rural, we’ve got to respect that. And so I’m here to make sure that right is respected.”
Lowndes wants to work on property insurance issues as his first bill.
“We’ve got to get to work tomorrow,” Lowndes said. “The session is coming right up. We’re going to have to get to work on bill drafting, figuring out how to bring home these issues of affordability we’ve been running on.”
