Wide margins in Winter Springs Commission election

Sarah Baker, Mark Caruso and Paul Diaz are Winter Springs’ newest Commissioners, closing out a contentious Winter Springs Commission election that saw two incumbents knocked out.

With three of five Winter Springs City Commission seats up for election Tuesday, and many of the Commission’s decisions coming on a 3-2 vote, the balance of many future votes on the City Commission could see a shift.

Unlike in Oviedo, where seats in the past 20 years have frequently been uncontested, Winter Springs’ Commission seats rarely don’t see a challenger. 

In District 1, incumbent Commissioner Matt Benton faced accountant Paul Diaz, who said he would improve the city’s finances.

The race for District 1 was the closest, with a margin of 54.70% for Diaz to 45.30% for Benton.

Caruso wins three-way race

In District 5, the most heavily contested district, incumbent Commissioner Rob Elliott faced challenger Mark Caruso – a former police officer, and firefighter/EMT Brandon Morrisey, in his second campaign attempt after unsuccessfully trying to become Winter Springs’ mayor in 2022.

That three-way race saw the second-widest margin of victory come in, with Caruso winning with a margin of 47.99% to 29.56% for Elliott and 22.45% for Morrisey.

“It feels very overwhelming and I’m very humbled,” Caruso said. He thanked his wife and his campaign manager. “I had a lot of teamwork and it was a big effort.”

Caruso said he’s been getting ready for the complexities of his new role. 

“I talked to [Commissioner Cade Resnick] often,” Caruso said. “He gives me pointers on what to expect like The League of Cities.”

He said he was looking forward to jumping in to fix city issues.

“We talked in the past about ideas that we think we could do,” Caruso said of speaking with fellow newcomers to the Commission. “We’re still kind of learning the process, taking it all in, listening to other elected officials and seeing what they think. It’s just a lot to take in.”

Baker wins open seat, replaces Ted Johnson

“It feels surreal.”

It was the only way Winter Springs District 3 Commissioner-Elect Sarah Baker could describe her feelings when she learned she’d won her race just a minute shy of 8 p.m. on election night. 

“I put in a lot of work over the last six or seven months,” Baker said. “And it feels really good to see that work pay off.”

Baker captured just more than 64% of the vote, defeating opposing candidate Karen Meyer with a total of 12,221 votes to Meyer’s 6,867 votes. Both her family and supporters all gathered Tuesday night at Alestone Brewing Co. in Longwood to watch and wait “on the edge of their seats” as the votes came in.

Once they had, she said all she wanted to do following her victory was to hug her family. 

“Everybody started yelling and cheering, and I was away from my family and so they start cheering and running over to me too,” Baker said with a smile. 

Despite Baker’s success, the night wasn’t full of complete wins. Baker’s watch party was a joint affair, coupled with state District 38 state representative candidate Sarah Henry with whom Baker had campaigned alongside. 

The race for state representative between Henry and incumbent candidate David Smith was a close one with a total of 44,905 votes for Smith and 44,156 votes for Henry, resulting in a 749-vote win for Smith, who was first elected to the Florida House of Representatives back in 2018. 

Smith did not respond to requests for comment before press deadline. 

“Regardless of how Sarah’s turned out, we’re just amazed that she made so much headway and with a fraction of the budget against an incumbent that’s been there and is well known in the city,” Baker said. 

But with her own win secured, Baker said she’s ready to get started in her new role. 

“I have a lot of work to do,” Baker said. “Winter Springs needs a lot of changes.”

Part of that change comes in the form of the three current commissioners who will now be leaving the dais, something Baker said came from Winter Springs residents taking notice of a need for something different. 

“I think the fact that the votes went this direction of changing every single seat just really sends a clear message that it’s time to change things,” Baker said. “That they’re ready for our infrastructure to be better, our roads to be better, our bridges to be better, our storm cleanup to be better, just everything.”

Failing stormwater infrastructure and residential flooding – long-standing concerns for many residents within Winter Springs – are not just some of the issues Baker is most looking forward to addressing, but personal ones as well.  

The new commissioner previously spoke with OCN in March of this year following a wastewater lift station failure which caused an overflow, according to the city, of nearly 1,600 gallons of raw sewage through a manhole in her backyard. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection estimated that the spill was closer to 13,000 gallons.

“That’s a huge issue for a lot of our city and while Tuskawilla, my district, isn’t the number one area that gets flooded, the fact that I do get flooded, it’s like just how bad are The Highlands or The Ranchlands or Hacienda Village,” Baker said. “The areas that these people can’t leave or are told they have to leave their home and just expect to come back to devastation (during a major storm), those are the biggest issues with our infrastructure right now that I am looking forward to tackling.”

Baker said she hopes to be more proactive than reactive about issues like flooding once she’s officially on the dais.

“We have to have a game plan and reserves,” Baker said. “You know, we all love pickleball, but we have to make sure that the things in Winter Springs are taken care of before we add new things.”

New things like development, another hot topic issue for city residents, is “inevitable,” according to Baker. But she believes the city must strive to make sure that the development that does occur “fits” Winter Springs, as just saying ‘no’ to development results in issues like the self storage facility planned for Tuskawilla Road. 

“If we would have gone to the table with the developer that’s doing the self storage place instead of fighting them so hard, we could have had a say of what went there and worked with the county and worked with the developers,” Baker said. “Instead, we fought it so hard that the county’s like, ‘Guess what? Here’s what you get, a self storage unit’.”

At the end of the day, Baker said she’s fought and will continue to fight for transparency on and off the dais. 

“I think if I’m going to vote a certain way, [residents] need to fully understand why I’m voting that way,” Baker said. “I think it’s important that people understand what’s going on in the city, not just have the meeting minutes posted and not really, truly know what’s happening.”

Though hot topic issues such as the city’s stormwater and wastewater infrastructure are first on Baker’s list, there are other areas of improvement she said she’s looking forward to bringing a positive impact to. 

“There’s other things in our community that I feel are low hanging fruit, like making our parks more accessible and making handicap spaces more compliant,” Baker said. “I personally have a child that’s on the spectrum, so making our parks more accessible to our youth that have disabilities is something that I would feel passionate about.”

As she prepares to take her new seat on the dais, Baker said she wants Winter Springs to know that her interests lie within what is ultimately best for her community, not her political career. 

“I just don’t have a political agenda,” Baker said. “I just want to help our community be the best community it can be. I think that’s what I’m most excited about, is just really giving back.”

UPDATE: This article has been updated to include additional data from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection estimating that a wastewater spill in Winter Springs was closer to 13,000 gallons, rather than 1,600 reported by the city.