Florida Politics - Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government.

Scott PowersJune 6, 2017

Attorneys for Orlando’s State Attorney Aramis Ayala and Gov. Rick Scott will give their oral arguments on June 28 in the legal battle over the death penalty in Florida’s 9th Congressional District. Each side is being given 20 minutes that day in oral arguments in the case that both sides and multiple friends of the […]

Scott PowersApril 13, 2017

From the outside, BRIDG may not look like a high-tech building that Osceola County, Central Florida and state officials are counting on as a “transformation” of the area’s economy. It looks like an office building. But the BRIDG building, the first structure in the Neo City high-tech industrial park east of Kissimmee on U.S. Highway […]

Scott PowersApril 10, 2017

A new poll by Public Policy Polling finds that a strong majority of voters in State Attorney Aramis Ayala‘s Orange and Osceola counties prefer some form of life-in-prison sentence for first-degree murderers rather than the death penalty. The poll, commissioned by the Center for Capital Representation at the Florida International University College of Law, finds results that […]

Scott PowersApril 7, 2017

Former Osceola County chairman, Florida state representative, and Kissimmee Mayor Frank Attkisson was killed Thursday night when the bicycle he was riding was struck by a car, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Attkisson, 61, was riding on Kissimmee Park Road near St. Cloud around 6:30 p.m. Thursday when his bike was struck from behind […]

Scott PowersMarch 23, 2017

In January, when she took office, new Denver District Attorney Beth McCann reaffirmed her campaign promise on an extraordinary policy: There would be no death penalty cases in her district under her watch. The reaction? Virtually nothing. No expressions of shock or outrage from other politicians, no calls for cases to be stripped from her, […]

Scott PowersJanuary 12, 2017

Leah Carius said she knows something about being in a medium- or small county and feeling largely ignored by Democratic Party leaders Tallahassee, yet she also knows more than a little about strengthening a Democratic powerhouse. Carius, the chair of the Osceola County Democratic Party, is one of the dark horses seeking election as chair […]

Scott PowersDecember 20, 2016

The number of visitors to Florida choosing to stay in private homes through the Airbnb home-sharing app continues to explode and has topped 1.5 million for the 2016 year, the company announced Tuesday. With Florida attracting more than 100 million visitors a year Airbnb still represents a tiny fraction of the market. But it now […]

Larry GriffinNovember 17, 2016

The Orlando Political Observer, a local political news site, has changed hands — now it’s owned Doug Kaplan, a Winter Park-based pollster and president of market research firm Gravis Marketing. Kaplan purchased the Orlando Political Observer from founder Frank Torres, according to a story on the site written by Torres himself. Kaplan assured readers in the OPO story […]

Michael MolineNovember 14, 2016

Citrus greening may chase one of Florida’s largest landowners out of that industry. “We’re going to shift out if it and transition, probably, to cattle production,” Erik Jacobsen, president of Deseret Ranches, said in a speech in Tallahassee Monday to the Economic Club of Florida. Deseret, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter […]

Scott PowersNovember 8, 2016

Tuesday night’s election was just a formality, but now it has become official: upstart Democratic candidate Aramis Ayala of Orlando was elected state attorney in Florida’s 9th Judicial Circuit, making her the first African-American state attorney in Florida’s history. Ayala effectively won the race when she upset incumbent Jeff Ashton in the Democratic primary in August because there were […]

Tag: Osceola County
Image via St. Pete Catalyst.

Supreme Court sets oral arguments in Aramis Ayala-Rick Scott case

Osceola officials cut ribbon on high-tech ‘molecular manufacturing’ center

PPP poll finds Orange, Osceola counties prefer life punishment to death sentence

Frank Attkisson killed in bicycle-car crash

If Aramis Ayala had been in Denver, people might have shrugged

Leah Carius seeking to be the local-control candidate for state Democrats

Airbnb housing in Florida doubles again in 2016, reaches 1.5 million

Orlando Political Observer purchased by Doug Kaplan-led group

Blaming greening, Deseret Ranches foresees the end of its citrus production

Aramis Ayala becomes first black state attorney in Florida’s history