If Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez wants another term as the county’s top cop in 2024, he’ll again have to defeat his predecessor.
Russell Gibson, Osceola’s sheriff from 2016 until losing the 2020 Democratic primary to Lopez, announced this week on social media that he intends to run again for the position, and has filed with the Osceola County Supervisor of Elections for next year’s race.
“After 32 years serving the people of Osceola County, I never lost my desire to continue my service,” he said on a Facebook video. “I will work hard to gain your trust and gain your support.”
Reached by phone Friday, Gibson, 58, a 36-year Osceola resident who has since worked with the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, and an Orlando private security firm since September, said he felt he didn’t get to finish the plans he set out to do in his first term.
“I learned I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines and complain,” he said. “By filing and starting my campaign early, I’ll be able to develop a plan for me and Osceola County, and make it a different place with a different Sheriff in town. I won’t be afraid to make changes.”
He hesitated to discuss platform particulars at this stage, although he did emphatically note that he would “not run a campaign of mudslinging.”
In early 2020, Gibson got in a noteworthy war of words with 9th District State Attorney Aramis Ayala over whether the state would file murder charges against the father-in-law and estranged husband of St. Cloud mother Nicole Montalvo. Gibson and the Sheriff’s Office arrested them in her slaying, but Ayala initially refused to file the charges, and the two nearly went free thanks to the state’s speedy-trial laws. Gibson’s push to Tallahassee led to a review by Attorney General Ashley Moody, and the case being reassigned to Fifth District State Attorney Brad King.
“I did what I had to do to be able to look Nicole’s family in the eye and tell them we were going to get justice for her,” Gibson said.
