Jesse Scheckner
Lake Worth Beach voters have re-elected Mayor Betty Resch to a second three-year term — by a landslide Tuesday.
With all 23 of the city’s precincts reporting, Resch had 61% of the vote to defeat former Commissioner Andy Amoroso for the city’s top elected office.
Of the city’s roughly 42,000 residents, 2,572 cast ballots on Election Day, and 535 votes separated the candidates.
A runoff was called last month after neither Resch nor Amoroso secured more than 50% of the vote to win a four-way contest for the mayoralty. Resch, who took 48% of the vote, and Amoroso, who took 31%, were the top two vote-getters.
Resch, 73, is a lawyer in private practice and longtime Lake Worth Beach resident with more than a decade and a half of public service experience. She worked as Lake Worth Beach’s City Attorney from 1993-1998 and the Town Attorney for Lake Park from 1999-2002. Before that, she was an Assistant State Attorney for five years.
Her campaign platform highlighted past successes, including passing term limits for elected officials and securing final approval of the Gulfstream Hotel restoration. She said she wanted to see a parking garage built downtown, address flooding issues and address incivility issues at City Hall that contributed to the December firing of then-City Manager Carmen Davis.
“When I ran for Mayor three years ago, I pledged to give our residents more input into issues that directly affect your lives,” she said in a statement. “With your help, we have done just that. Yet, there is more to do.”
Amoroso, 60, served from the city dais from 2011-2020, including as Vice Mayor. He has lived in Lake Worth Beach for 45 years and is a small owner, currently running a novelty shop.
He agreed with Resch that hostilities among elected officials had gotten out of hand, but blamed Resch for the problem, calling her a “weak mayor, challenged even more by the anarchist-led Commission majority that got her elected.”
He told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in February that it was “heartless” to fire Davis two weeks before Christmas and after she’d been given a raise.
He said in a statement that he decided to “step back into the arena” to reverse the City Commission’s “destructive path and move forward with real transparency, positivity, professionalism, respect, common sense, and address the real issues our residents care about and the very reason many … new residents chose Lake Worth Beach.”
Resch carried endorsements from U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, state Sen. Bobby Powell, state Rep. Jervonte “Tae” Edmonds, Professional Firefighters and Paramedics of Palm Beach County, the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, Hispanic Political Action Committee and LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus of Palm Beach.
She led fundraising with $48,500 collected and $31,600 spent by March 28, the most recent date for which campaign finance information is available.
Amoroso, meanwhile, raised $33,000 and spent $26,000.
