GAINESVILLE, Fla. – A Florida appeals court on Wednesday rejected Republican efforts to make it easier for the GOP to win elected seats on the all-Democrat governing commission in Alachua County, one of the few remaining mostly blue strongholds across the state.
The three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeals in Tallahassee rejected efforts by former Republican state Sen. Keith Perry and three others to block Alachua County from electing its five commissioners through at-large voting, meaning that everyone in the entire county votes for every county commissioner.
The alternative process elects commissioners through districts, where only voters who live within a boundary can vote for commissioners from that part of the county. It could have allowed Republican voters in the county outside the progressive City of Gainesville to concentrate their political influence to win seats on the commission.
Wednesday’s ruling means that, unless the Florida Supreme Court intervenes, next year’s elections in Alachua County for two seats on the commission will take place under a political structure where Democrats have been remarkably successful.
The vice chair of the commission, Democrat Ken Cornell, said in an interview Wednesday that the ruling helps protect residents from what he called unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles. In the past, residents of one district had only one option for directing their issues to their commissioner. If their commissioner disagreed, they could find themselves out of options.
“From their perspective, they had no representation, because they couldn't go to another commissioner because they weren't represented by another commissioner,” Cornell said. “So they went from having five people that they could talk to to zero, because that person disagreed.”
Cornell said commissioners elected from districts focused on issues more narrowly rather than countywide.
“When you have a single-member form of government, it structurally changes how you govern, from having a countywide focus to having a district-only focus,” Cornell said. “This causes the commissioners to horse trade back and forth, as opposed to doing what's best for the county as a whole.”
The losing attorney, Seldon J. Childers of Gainesville, declined through one of his employees to answer questions about the ruling.
The Republican-controlled Legislature in 2022 passed a bill – proposed by then-Rep. Chuck Clemons, R-Newberry – requiring Alachua County to elect commissioners using districts. Perry sponsored the Senate version of the bill. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the measure into law that summer. Voters approved the change 51-49 in that November’s election.
Clemons, the former speaker pro tempore in the House, is now the vice president for government and community relations at the University of Florida.
In the 2024 election two years later, voters approved 72-28 changing back to at-large commission elections – over the objections of Perry and the three others, Kimberly Hord, Jose Lopez and Sharla Head. In a lawsuit, they said the ballot language was illegal. The trial judge, Olin Shinholser of Sebring in central Florida, agreed the ballot was illegal but allowed the election to proceed.
“Republicans are at a disadvantage,” Perry testified at the trial in the case in October 2024. “We've had two Republicans elected to the county commission since Reconstruction. They were only one-termers.”
Perry said Black voters within the City of Gainesville complained that at-large voting across the county disenfranchised their political power, and said Republicans are hurt by college students at the University of Florida who he said overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
“It is inherently difficult, if not impossible for a Republican to win any seat in Alachua County,” Perry told the trial judge.
The appeals court decision Wednesday said the trial judge was wrong when he ruled that specific phrases must have been used on the ballot: “Had the Legislature wished to include specific language that must be included on the ballot for a return to at-large voting … it could have done so,” the judges wrote.
The appeals judges who issued the ruling were Joseph Lewis, appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush; Stephanie W. Ray, appointed by Gov. Rick Scott; and Adam Tanenbaum, appointed by DeSantis.
The 2024 elections for county commissioners occurred under the district structure, and Democrats won every seat where they competed. The change mandated by the Legislature in 2022 didn’t redraw district boundaries in ways that would have benefitted Republicans.
All five Alachua County commissioners are Democrats. The last Republican to serve on the commission was Sue Baird, who chose not to seek re-election in November 2014.
Alachua County, which includes the City of Gainesville and is home to the University of Florida, is one of only six of Florida's 67 counties that voted against President Trump in the 2024 elections. The others are Broward, Gadsden, Leon, Orange and Palm Beach counties. Republicans in Tallahassee have sought for years to make inroads here.
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