ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — The crowd inside Brew Theory eagerly waited for the first speaker of the night to take the podium. Downing drinks and small sandwiches, they shook hands and glanced at the campaign posters lining the walls.
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“He’s on his own time,” one organizer said, noting the star of the hour was giving more time to a local podcast taping in a side room than the window he said he had cleared to attend the event.
Soon, though, Jerry Demings, sporting an “I Voted” sticker, picked up the microphone. Joking that his introduction was way too long, he turned to the crowd.
“Thank you for caring about our communities,” he said. “We have an opportunity to win this particular sales tax, to do something transformative, to take care of the people who live in the here and now, but also to take care of generations not born yet.”
READ: Early voting starts Monday in most Central Florida counties
Demings was using the beginning of early voting and the week’s designation as Mobility Week to inject more firepower behind the push to make his dream a reality: the 30-year, $18 billion-dollar overhaul of the county’s transit network.
The 1% sales tax increase would pay for an expanded bus system, Sunrail system and road and bike path projects throughout the county. Supporters say 51% of the tax revenue would come from tourists.
Since the referendum officially made it onto the ballot, both sides assumed the pro-tax side had the advantage.
READ: Battle lines forming over Orange County transportation tax vote
“The feedback we’re receiving from voters is that they’re excited to vote yes for transportation because they understand the difference it’ll make for them and their quality of life,” campaign adviser Rachael Kobb said. “Even if someone is not dependent on transit, there’s someone in their life that (transit) impacts them.”
The pro-tax side has been actively marketing itself online and through business and community networking. Yard signs have begun to be distributed in the county, and volunteers plan to go door-to-door this weekend to convince voters of the benefits.
Lately, the messaging has swung toward jobs — both in job creation through the boom supporters predict the projects will generate, but also through job access, as the current transit network effectively gets commuters to a tiny fraction of the possible jobs a car has access to.
However, the referendum isn’t a shoo-in for passage. A poorer-funded, but growing opposition is trying to convince voters that now isn’t the right time to hit taxpayers with another expense.
“A lot of people are just (using) common sense,” Brian Henley, leader of Ax the Tax, said. “They’re starting to think, they’re doing the math, they’re like, ‘Well, my property insurance rates are now going to go through the roof.’ Whenever there’s something like that, people tend to get more conservative with their money.”
Henley and other opponents of the tax consider Sunrail a waste of money, and say the approximately $1 per day cost to each taxpayer, or $300 to $400 per year, is too high. They want a transit overhaul as much as the pro-tax side does, but funded through other means.
Henley said he has a growing sense of optimism his side will pull off the upset.
READ: Orange County’s newest sales pitch: higher taxes, more transit
“We’ve heard this song and dance before,” he said, alluding to Demings previously being forced to withdraw his proposal.
His focus, he said, was on making sure people read their ballots all the way down. As the races get smaller and smaller, interest wanes. The question over the sales tax comes last — past the races for judges that relatively few voters pay attention to.
“The buzz, especially this year, everything is national issues,” Henley said. “Everybody’s concentrating on the governor’s race and the Senate race. I’m interested to see how many people actually vote all the way down.”
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