Weightman, Teachers Big Winners On Primary Night

As far as surprises go, Pasco County didn’t have many (if any) on Primary Election night (Aug. 23).

But, the Wesley Chapel area most likely has a new commissioner lined up to replace the departing Mike Moore in District 2. Buoyed by the backing of Moore and other well-known local Republicans, Seth Weightman coasted to an easy win over opponents Christie Zimmer and Troy Stevenson.

Weightman picked up 48.9 percent of the vote, while fellow Republicans Zimmer (27.1 percent) and Stevenson (24 percent) basically split the rest.

A regional manager for waste-hauling company Republic Services, Weightman was backed by county tax collector Mike Fasano, former Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford and current Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson (who won the GOP nomination for Florida Secretary of Agriculture and will face Democratic nominee Naomi Esther Blemur in the General Election on Nov. 8).

Only registered Republicans voted in the two County Commission primaries. If only Republicans had entered the races, the primaries could have decided the elections, as voters of all parties would have been allowed to cast ballots.

But, Louie Rodriguez entered the Dist. 2 race as a write-in candidate with no party affiliation, which closed the primary to only Republican voters.

On Nov. 8, Weightman and Rodriguez will “run” against each other. 

In Dist. 4, challenger Gary Bradford was accused of employing the same closed primary strategy when he defeated incumbent Christina Fitzpatrick 43.9-37.7 percent, avenging his loss for the same seat in 2020. 

According to the Tampa Bay Times, Bradford acknowledged that a friend of his, Cory Patterson, filed as a write-in candidate in order to close the primary to Republicans only. 

As the Times noted, Patterson, who has donated to Bradford’s campaign and has a Bradford campaign sign in his yard, will “run” against his friend on Nov. 8.

Only about 1 in 4 (24.8 percent)registered voters in Pasco County cast ballots in the 2022 Primary Election. However, that was still up from just 21 percent for the midterm Primary Election in 2020.

Meanwhile, there were three Pasco School Board seats up for grabs on Aug. 23. In Dist. 1, which includes all of Wesley Chapel, Al Hernandez (44.8 percent) and James Washington (31.5) were the top two vote-getters of the three candidates. Since Hernandez failed to pass the 50 percent threshold, he and Washington will square off in November to determine who replaces retiring Allen Altman, the Dist. 1 member since 2006.

Cynthia Armstrong edged Matthew Geiger by 2,159 votes on Election Day, but by then, had already built a massive 13,000-vote advantage via mail-in ballots, to hold on to her Dist. 3 seat with 58 percent of the vote. Megan Harding retained her Dist. 5 seat with 71 percent of ballots cast.

In other races, Dist. 12 U.S. Congressman Gus Bilirakis easily won his primary with 84 percent of the vote. His 33,883 votes were more than five times the combined amount of his four challengers, who received roughly 6,000 votes total. Bilirakis is in a safe Republican district and is expected to easily win re-election in November against Democrat Kimberly Walker and Charles Smith, who has no party affiliation.

And, in one of the more interesting votes of the night, Pasco’s millage referendum to raise funds to increase teacher salaries easily passed (59-41%), even though a similar measure narrowly failed in neighboring Hillsborough County.

In Pasco, registered Republicans, generally advocates of lower taxes and less spending, outnumber Democrats 165,856 to 114,335. But, in Hillsborough, which has more registered Democrats, its millage referendum failed in a vote so close a recount was ordered.