Kissimmee, St. Cloud will replace termed-out leaders on Nov. 5
FRIDAY UPDATE: That close margin between Olga Carino and John Cortes in the race to meet Jackie Espinosa in November for Kissimmee mayor was settled Friday.
After curing any questions with mail-in ballot signatures, a machine recount and a count of all ballots that either over-counted (more than one choice made) or undercounted (none made), Cortes ended up with 1,228 votes, ahead of Carino's 1,222.
In the Nov. 5 election, Kissimmee voters will choose between Cortes and Espinosa (1,446 primary voters) to be their next mayor.
The process to elect new Kissimmee and St. Cloud mayors to replace those who have termed out has narrowed down.
Sort of.
While Chris Robertson and Tony Busby will face off in the Nov. 5 runoff to see who is St. Cloud’s next mayor, Kissimmee businesswoman Jackie Espinosa will have to wait a couple days to find out who her runoff opponent is.
While Espinosa earned a comfortable 29.90 percent (1,444 of 4,830 votes cast), fellow businesswoman Olga Carino and former state representative John Cortes will have to wait out a hand recount later this week.
Cortes (1,224 votes) and Carino (1,220) must wait for any provisional and military ballots, and an automatic recount triggered since they were separated by .08%.
“How do I feel? Well, I’m grateful for the support from the community,” Carino said from her café on Tuesday.
“I guess we’ll wait and see,” Cortes said. “We’ll have to bust it to get it to get people out to vote. The weather today didn’t help.”
“We’re hoping to get Kissimmee back to what we deserve,” Espinosa said. “Kissimmee deserves more, we have to uplift out name. So we still have work to do.”
The race was marked by tension, primarily at the Kissimmee Civic Center, which was an early voting site. Candidates accused each other of harassing voters — and each other, to the point one candidate filed a harassment complaint against another — and breaking election laws with the size and location of some of their campaign signs.
In Kissimmee’s Seat 1 for the Commission, Lisandra Roman (44.8%) and Noel Ortiz (28.2%) move on to the Nov. 5 runoff.
“We’ll just keep doing what we’ve been doing all along,” Roman said. “We’re excited to be going on.”
Incumbent Carlos Alvarez III (33.5%) lead a pack of four candidates for the District 3 seat, and will face Nichole Wagoner de Arguello (23.8%) in the Nov. 5 runoff.
St. Cloud
Chris Robertson (45%) and Tony Busby (32.4%) will move on to the Nov. 5 general election after finishing in the top two in Tuesday’s primary election over third-place Adam Wagner (22.5%)
“I’ve been running for four years, what’s another two and a half months?” Robertson said. “It’s tough to get 50 percent with 3 people in the race. I’m expecting about 30,000 people to vote in the general election, so we’re just going to keep spreading the word and knocking on more doors.”
Busby said he’s feeling great.
“We only came up 900 votes short and we’re going on to November. I feel great,” Busby said. “We know how hard the next 76 days will be.”
In the other seat up for grabs in St. Cloud — Kolby Urban was unopposed in Seat 3 — Mandy Shafer (40%) and Jennifer Paul (32.4) will go on to the Nov. 5 runoff for Seat 2.
