Scott Powers
State redistricting has transformed west Orange County’s Senate district from a longstanding African American-dominated base to a broader, still Democratic-leaning base where environmental operative Chuck O’Neal sees a route to Tallahassee.
Apopka resident O’Neal, who has been active on issues ranging from protection of springs and estuaries to opposition to Florida’s bear hunt and oil and gas fracking, to promotion of solar energy, said he sees what he calls a “real void” emerging in the Florida Legislature with the pending departures of two lawmakers he said have championed such issues, Orlando’s Democratic state Sen. Darren Soto and Palm Beach Democratic state Rep. Mark Pafford.
“That leaves a real void that needs to be filled by someone. Of course, I hope to be that someone,” he said. “But it is a major concern to me as someone who has been following these issues for years.”
The Democratic race for Senate District 11 has become one of the more interesting contests in Florida. State Rep. Randolph Bracy of Orlando and former state Sen. Gary Siplin of Orlando are both pursuing their longstanding bases rooted deeply in the area’s large African-American and Hispanic communities. Former Orange County Commissioner Bob Sindler is seeking to reconnect with his old base.
The new district takes large swaths from two old districts and neither of the incumbents, state Sens. Geraldine Thompson, an Orlando Democrat, nor Alan Hays, an Umatilla Republican, are seeking re-election.
So far, no Republicans have filed to run in SD 11.
O’Neal, a first-time candidate, has no voter base. However, his work on environmental issues, chiefly through the League of Women Voters, has made him well-known in political circles from South Florida to Tallahassee. He predicted he will be able to tap into fundraising resources statewide, though he has not yet done so.
His campaign thus-far is largely self-funded. O’Neal, a real estate investor, has loaned $60,000 to his campaign and by the end of February had raised another $11,000. That puts him ahead of Bracy, whose account includes $56,000 total, while Siplin and Sindler had only just entered the race in February.
O’Neal is not willing to concede anything to Bracy, Siplin or Sindler on Democratic positions for social or economic issues. His platform includes proposals for health care, education and employment (including plans to create a solar energy economy in SD 11), and to assist prison parolees with getting back to work and being re-enfranchised to vote.
“The voters in this district really need to pay attention not just to whose name they recognize on the ballot; they need to find out where these individuals want to take Florida. What direction is Florida to go? Because this is a pivotal point in Florida’s history. We need to move forward. We need to work progressively. We need to reverse some of the ill effects of our current state government,” he said.
Still, it is his environmental advocacy that has given him what he describes as a mission. That mission, though, has less to do with environmental protection and more to do with government accountability, he insisted.
“I fee as though the state Legislature, the state government in general, is not respecting the will of the people. In the instance of Amendment 1, for instance, 75 percent of the people clearly stated that they wanted the Land Acquisition Trust Fund money set aside for conservation purchases, acquisition of new lands, restoration of the springs, estuaries and our aquifer. What we saw was basically a redo of the lottery, in which, through an accounting maneuver, expenses of existing agencies were slid over into that LATF, and it left actually less money for actual conservation in the 2015 budget than before Amendment 1 passed.”
O’Neal describes similar scenarios of government responses to groundwater contamination, bear population, guns on college campuses, open carry of guns, and other issues that have brought him into the halls lobbies of Orlando and Tallahassee government as first vice president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, and on his own.
“Over and over again we see these things play out in our state government, where the will of the people are ignored, where the governor and Legislature are in opposition to the will of the people,” O’Neal said.
Despite such tough talk, O’Neal insists his work with the League of Women Voters (he resigned his post to run for the Senate) has taught him to work with both sides of the aisle: “I’m a reasonable person. As long as I’m working with a reasonable person, we can get things done.”
