Tom Knight unseats appointed Sarasota Co. Commissioner Neil Rainford

Former Sarasota Co. Sheriff Tom Knight has upset appointed Sarasota County Commissioner Neil Rainford in a Republican Primary.

Knight won the district-level Republican Primary with nearly 61%, while Rainford took 39%. Knight now faces Shari Thornton, a candidate with no party affiliation, in the General Election.

The victory comes more than a year after Gov. Ron DeSantis passed over the Sheriff for an appointment to the District 3 seat. Instead, he tapped Rainford to serve out the term of late County Commissioner Nancy Detert.

But Knight said he discussed a potential run before Detert’s unexpected death. He argued the board needs an experienced public servant, rather than yet another businessman tied to the development community.

“When you get a board controlled by developers, you get Commissioners who really don’t know how to govern,” Knight said. “They don’t understand millage or policies, and they make decisions contradictory to what the community wants.”

Knight said that over three terms as Sheriff, not to mention a lengthy Florida Highway Patrol career before that, he learned the needs of a public agency better than most people who have sat on the board in the past.

But Rainford said he already proved he can do the job. Before his appointment, he served on the Sarasota County Planning Commission and won election to the county Charter Review Board, both positions where he needed a board majority for any decision to carry weight.

“Being a Sheriff is way different than being a County Commissioner,” Rainford said. “You need three votes on anything you want to do. My colleagues listen to me because of the relationships I have and build and because I am well-prepared for meetings.”

Another relationship he could claim: one with the sitting Sheriff, Kurt Hoffman. The current Sheriff previously served as Knight’s Chief Deputy. But in this election, he delivered a slight of not only endorsing Rainford, but cutting an ad critical of Knight.

In the ad, he criticized Knight for choosing to participate in a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020, something Knight said helped diffuse a tense situation in the wake of the George Floyd murder in Minnesota that year.

“I told them they had a right to peacefully protest. But it didn’t have to happen on private property or destroy or hurt anything or anyone,” Knight said of his interactions with protesters. “And we never had any arrests.”

But Knight notably has also come out against a Hoffman request for a new Sheriff’s Office headquarters, calling it an unnecessary waste of money as Rainford got behind the plan.

Rainford also accused Knight of being soft on immigration and gun control, part of the reason he believed DeSantis made the choice he did last year.

“The previous Sheriff caved when it came to Black Lives Matter and gun legislation in the past,” Rainford said.

As for Rainford’s own record, he rejected accusations he coddled development interests, and said his voting record on the County Commission and Planning Commission included votes for and against requests to allow more building.

“Applicants will want more density or more height, want to stretch those rights,” he said. “I have looked and said that’s too much, that, yes you have property rights I will never take away as a conservative, but I won’t give you additional capacity.”

Knight said the tenor of the campaign proved to be negative, but nothing he could not handle.

“It’s a little more on steroids than we anticipated,” Knight said. “The direction from my opponent and his supporters didn’t surprise us, but we were surprised how early they started and by the nastiness they have created.”

The race was a costly one. Rainford through Aug. 16 spent nearly $275,000 in an effort to retain his seat, while Knight burned through more than $224,000. All that went to reach voters in a single-member district covering about a fifth of the county.