A relative political unknown has gathered a surprising slew of endorsements from elected officials in and around west Orange County and raised over $200,000 in a bid to unseat incumbent District 1 Commissioner Nicole Wilson.
Austin Arthur, a first-time office-seeker and co-owner of a large gymnastics center in Winter Garden, said his burgeoning campaign shows the district’s dissatisfaction with Wilson on a series of issues.
But interviews with the two candidates and a close look at Arthur’s treasury suggests the key issue may be growth: He is collecting money from development interests, while Wilson opposed a plan to put a highway through Split Oak Forest and has been an advocate for a proposed November ballot measure to keep urban development out of rural areas.
Arthur boasts endorsements of the mayors of Apopka, Edgewood, Ocoee and Winter Garden, though only Winter Garden Mayor John Rees can legally vote for Arthur. The other cities are outside District 1, which begins on the outskirts of Ocoee and runs southwest to Disney properties.
Arthur also has an 8-to-1 fund-raising edge over his opponent.
“I think his cash advantage tells us he owes a lot of people a lot of favors,” Wilson said.
She argued development interests have backed Arthur’s campaign because they oppose strengthening the county’s “rural boundaries.”
The rural boundary charter amendment, according to Eric Grimmer, one of its authors, is intended to be a check on “suburban sprawl,” often blamed for the congestion on Orange County’s roads and the dysfunction in its transit network. The measure would create new protection areas in both east and west Orange, and make it more difficult to turn rural lands into subdivisions and commercial spaces.
Arthur insisted he and Wilson are not too far apart on the issue, but then wavered in an interview when asked if he would vote to put the measure on the ballot — a decision Wilson must make next month. Development interests in and around the county mostly oppose putting the measure before the county’s voters.
“I’m not always super in favor of these ballot initiatives. The reason is because often they’re carefully crafted with a few sentences and misleading to voters,” he said. “That’s why you get ballot initiatives that end up challenged in court and get thrown out sometimes.”
He instead pledged to protect “rural settlements,” which he described as “the rural boundaries that exist.”
Arthur referred to Avalon and Gotha, two small, historic west Orange communities where residents worry about creeping development and regularly speak up at public meetings when they believe their rural way of life is threatened by a proposed land-use change.
“Rural means rural. I say it all the time,” Arthur said. We should be leaving it the way it is.”
But he also said he’s “not necessarily in favor of expanding” rural areas.
Is Orange County’s rural boundary ballot initiative in jeopardy?
Wilson didn’t mince words on the issue.
“Regular citizens do not have enough tools in the tool chest to effectively protect their rural and agricultural lands. The scales have always favored deep-pocket development interests, but we all pay for irresponsible growth,” said Wilson, an environmental law attorney. “A rural boundary charter amendment is a potential additional tool to level the playing field in the development process.”
Among Arthur’s financial backers is Scott Boyd, a former District 1 commissioner and outspoken critic of both Wilson and the rural-boundary amendment, which the Orange County Charter Review Commission studied for nearly a year. Now a developer, Boyd wrote to the citizens panel as it was holding discussions on rural boundaries and ripped the measure as an attack on property rights and an effort “to freeze unincorporated Orange County in time and to prevent new housing, businesses, and innovation.”
He labeled Wilson and the panel as a forum for mostly “left wing radical liberals to create soap boxes and campaign platforms.”
Orange commission races are nonpartisan but Arthur is a Republican in a district — the only one of six in Orange County — in which voters registered as members of the GOP slightly outnumber registered Democrats, 50,170 to 48,693. About 50,000 other district voters identify as neither, including 46,786 who claim no party affiliation.
The commissioner’s salary beginning Oct. 1 is budgeted at $123,382, up 4% over the fiscal year 2023-24 pay of $118,637.
Commissioners get the same annual pay increase as non-bargaining employees.
shudak@orlandosentinel.com
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