How Wesley Chapel Voted For President & Local Races On Nov. 8

President-Elect Donald Trump.

For almost exactly half of the country, that was either a sad or terrifying (or both) prospect, but the possibility apparently pleased Pasco County voters enough that the New York real estate developer and reality-TV star was a decisive choice county-wide on Nov. 8 — as Trump won Pasco with 58.4 percent of the 244,620 votes cast, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received only 37 percent.

Nationwide in the 2016 General Election, Trump won the Electoral College 290-228 with Michigan still counting votes as of our press time, although the former First Lady won the popular vote, with 62,829,832 votes to 61,488,190 for Trump, with a few million votes still outstanding..

Trump’s 141,943-89,998 advantage in votes cast in Pasco, where turnout was at 72.8 percent — compared with just 56.8 percent nationwide, wasn’t a surprise in Republican-leaning Pasco.

In Wesley Chapel’s precincts, however, the margin was much closer than it was countywide: Trump grabbed 49.9 percent of the vote, while Clinton was at 45.2 percent. With 30,324 votes cast, Trump finished with a 1,423-vote edge.

Nowhere in Wesley Chapel was Trump fever stronger than in the Quail Hollow area, where 2,284 votes were cast for the President-Elect at the polling booths at Quail Hollow Country Club. That was 63 percent of the votes cast, with Clinton receiving 1,179 votes.

The only other polling place in Wesley Chapel where Trump received more than 51.1 percent of the ballots cast was Meadow Point IV, where clubhouse voters gave him a 737-502 advantage, or 56.6 percent to Clinton’s 38.6.

Take away those two precincts and the race between Trump and Clinton was virtually even in zip codes 33543-45.

Clinton, who leads the national popular vote by roughly 1.5-million ballots, won four of the 11 precincts in Wesley Chapel. She received more votes at Bridgewater Church on Wells Rd. (48-46 percent), Meadow Pointe III (50-45), Northwood Community Center (55-41) and Meadow Pointe II (51-43).

In the four combined precincts in Meadow Pointe, the Wesley Chapel community was split right down the middle, casting 4,347 votes for Clinton and 4,344 for Trump, a difference of only three votes.

Clinton’s vaunted “ground game” did not materialize on Election Day nationwide, or in Pasco. While she actually led after the early voting period by 55 votes, ballots cast on Nov. 8 in Wesley Chapel’s precincts favored Trump 6,453 to 4,994. 

Many voters, according to various media reports, also may have just been plain disgusted by both candidates — or perhaps an election season filled with political ads, name-calling and scandals — and didn’t bother to cast a vote for either candidate, despite going through the trouble of finding a polling station, standing in line and filling out a ballot.

In Pasco, there were 1,388 undervotes, or ballots cast where the voter elected not to make a choice for president, more than twice the 616 undervotes in 2012. The number of undervotes in many other places also was more than twice what it was in 2012. In Michigan alone, for example, more than 87,000 undervotes were tabulated.

While Clinton couldn’t get more votes from Pasco County residents than Trump received, Ron Oakley did.

Oakley, 71, decisively won the District 1 County Commission seat, which represents much of Wesley Chapel, with a decisive victory over retired U.S. Coast Guard commander and no-party candidate Dimitri Delgado.

After all 112 precincts were counted, Oakley more than doubled Delgado’s vote total with 151,849, or 69.2 percent of the vote. Delgado was the choice on only 66,503 ballots, or 30.3 percent.

Oakley, a Zephyrhills resident who formerly served on the Southwest Florida Water Management District governing board and whose family is well known in the local citrus and ranching industries, put $150,000 of his own money behind his bid in June to help win the seat, which includes the area in Wesley Chapel north of S.R. 54.

In 2012, Oakley also ran for the District 1 seat, but was defeated in the Rep. primary by Ted Schrader, who elected not to run for the seat again and instead lost in the Republican primary in his bid to become Pasco’s new property appraiser.

This year, Oakley defeated Rachel O’Connor and Mary Wells in the primary to earn the right to face Delgado, who had no party affiliation.

Oakley led a Republican sweep of the three commission seats that were up for grabs.

In District 3, Kathryn Starkey, 58, rolled past Democrat Barry Horvath 62.2-37.8 percent, or a little more than a 55,000-vote advantage. Starkey’s district runs all the way from the west coast of the county to just east of I-75, and includes a small part of Wesley Chapel bordered by I-75, S.R. 56, Bruce B. Downs Blvd. and County Line Rd. In District 5, Jack Mariano, 56, ran virtually unopposed, garnering 96 percent of the vote.

In the U.S. Senate race between Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Patrick Murphy, it was the incumbent (and failed presidential candidate) winning comfortably overall with 4,822,182 votes, or 52 percent. Murphy received 44.3 percent, or 4,105,251 votes. In Pasco County, Rubio was the pick of 134,631 voters, or 56.6 percent, while Murphy received 88,520 votes, or 37.2 percent.

Don Peters (below, center) didn’t win his Community Development District (CDD) race, but these folks did: Rick Carroll (Lexington Oaks, Seat 1), Michael Cline (Meadow Pointe II, Seat 1), John Picarelli (Meadow Pointe II, Seat 5), Mimi Kilpatrick (Northwood, Seat 1), Brian Quigley (Northwood, Seat 3), Barbara Cruz (Northwood, Seat 5), Sam Watson (Oak Creek, Seat 4), Charlie Cacioppo (Seven Oaks, Seat 2), Gerald Cruz (Seven Oaks, Seat 4) and John Christensen (Seven Oaks, Seat 5).

For more Wesley Chapel Election results, visit WCNeighborhoodNews.com.