A candidate forum for the Orange County elections supervisor race turned contentious on Wednesday, and most of the criticism was aimed not at anyone on the panel but instead at Glen Gilzean, the embattled Orange elections chief sitting silently in the audience.
Gilzean, a Republican appointed to the job in March by Gov. Ron DeSantis, was not a listed candidate at the time of the event, but has until noon Friday to file to run for a full term. He told the Orlando Sentinel afterward he would be “announcing my decision” that day.
But Gilzean, who was in attendance at the League of Women Voters event at the Winter Park Library for a speech on his office’s operations, faced boos and at least one cry of “shame” when candidates and questioners criticized him over issues ranging from problems in counting candidate petitions to whether a citizens referendum would appear on the ballot in November.
The forum’s four Democrats — Karen Castor Dentel, a former state lawmaker and current Orange County School Board member, Wes Hodge, a former Orange Democratic chair, attorney Dan Helm, and former Orlando mayoral candidate Sunshine Grund — joined non-partisan candidate Cynthia Harris in answering questions from elections office attorney Nick Shannin.
Elections chief Gilzean got $20K-a-month consulting deal with Disney district
The candidates all agreed they would open the maximum number of early voting locations for the maximum number of days and hours mandated by law. State law says early voting must last at least eight days, but supervisors can expand that by as much as six days.
Asked about whether he would run the office in a non-partisan way, Helm alluded to Hodge in saying he “wouldn’t want the Republican chair of the party to be the one counting votes. I wouldn’t want a former chair of the Democratic Party to be the one counting votes.”
Hodge responded by saying the state’s Democratic supervisors “have the maximum days of early voting and the maximum hours of early voting, and the Republicans do not. You need to know what you’re getting when you vote.”
Audience questioning led to some of the event’s biggest fireworks. One asked about concerns that signature petitions, which allow candidates to qualify for the ballot without paying thousands of dollars in filing fees, were slow and sometimes late in getting counted.
A Sentinel report last month detailed how Republican and Democratic candidates said they heard nothing from the elections office about their petitions for weeks.
“What has transpired in this election is that we have turned in our petitions and they were never counted on time and they weren’t filed with the Division of Elections on time,” Harris said. “So therefore all the candidates that you see up here have to pay to play. And not just us up here, but other candidates that are running for office.”
Candidates accuse Gilzean’s office of ‘radio silence’ on needed info about petitions
Gilzean said afterward he had personally called every candidate about the petition problems.
“When I took over the office in March, the petition deadline was right around the corner and we saw that [there] was a breakdown in the system,” Gilzean said. “We actually made some amendments and some changes to the office to ensure that that never happens again.”
Kelly Semrad, a candidate for Orange County commissioner, asked about her own citizen’s initiative to protect the county’s rural development boundary.
“Right now, the citizens are being told that we don’t know when the deadline is for the supervisor of election to get that ballot language on,” Semrad said.
Hodge slammed Gilzean in his response to Semrad. “No person, let alone an appointed person, should be making a decision for 800,000 Orange County voters,” Hodge said. “We should not be playing games with people’s initiatives.”
Gilzean did not confirm afterward whether the initiative would make the ballot. He said he would meet with the county administrator later this week, “and we’re going to sit down and come up with a process for that timeline.”
Son of ex-Orange elections chief Cowles works for key voting machine vendor
Castor Dentel drew applause by calling for a code of ethics for the supervisor’s office, citing a Sentinel report that Cowles supported a no-bid contract for $3.5 million in voting equipment from Election Systems & Software, a firm where his son worked.
Cowles said the county purchasing department fully vetted the situation and that it played no role in his decision to leave with about a year left on his term.
“Procurement contracts will be out for competitive bid,” Castor Dentel said. “Even though there is no wrongdoing, you must make sure that there is no appearance of any impropriety.”
Gilzean earns $205,000 as the elections supervisor. He is also making $20,000 a month through December in a consulting agreement with the district overseeing government operations at Walt Disney World, where he served as administrator before DeSantis appointed him elections supervisor.
Asked if there was a conflict for an elections chief in being paid by a board answering to DeSantis, Gilzean said, “I don’t understand the question.”
“Just like my predecessor, every person who left that role had a transition document,” Gilzean said of his payment from the Disney district. “It’s not anything abnormal, and my role was to assist the district administrator as she saw fit going forward.”
The winner of the Democratic primary in August, as well as any potential GOP candidate or the winner of a GOP primary if more than one Republican files by Friday, will face non-partisan candidate Harris in November. The winner’s four-year term begins in January.
