Steve Leary goes negative against Kelly Semrad in final week of county race

The attacks in the race for the District 5 County Commission seat, which represents Winter Park, lack context

Oct. 30, 2024

By Beth Kassab

With less than a week until Election Day, the battle for the only open Orange County Commission seat on the ballot took a negative turn.

Steve Leary, the former mayor of Winter Park, unleashed a barrage of attack ads against Kelly Semrad, a UCF professor who bested Leary in the Aug. 20 primary by 2,800 votes.

The contest has pitted Leary, who is heavily backed with financial contributions from developers and the tourism industry, against Semrad, an outspoken advocate for checks on growth, particularly in the still rural areas of the county’s eastern edges.

But in a television spot, Leary attempts to paint himself as the environmental advocate and Semrad as supporting sprawl.

Semrad has “no plans to protect Orange County’s environment from urban sprawl,” the ad’s narrator says, going on to say that Semrad’s neighborhood is the “very definition of sprawl” and that her husband works for a developer.

Leary did not respond to a message seeking comment for this story. The Voice reported last month on a text poll sent to some voters that attempted to test potential attacks against Semrad, including the line about her husband. 

Semrad called the assertions “outlandish” and pointed to Leary’s list of campaign donors that include companies tied to proposed developments in Orange County that she has worked to stop.

Semrad is an officer in Save Orange County, a group that dates back more than a decade to protect rural lands and fight some proposed housing developments. The group was instrumental in building support for two county charter amendments that will appear on next week’s ballot. One would protect the rural boundary and the second would require county approval for voluntary annexations into other jurisdictions such as the city of Orlando.

She lives in a subdivision just south of Lake Pickett Road in the eastern section of the county where a number of development fights have unfolded. She purchased the home in 2013, according to property records, as she left a job at the University of Florida to become a professor at the University of Central Florida.

She said plans began to unfold in the 1990s for her subdivision to replace diseased citrus crops, a history she learned after moving to the area and said she began to understand what was at stake across east Orange County.

“The entitled rezonings that I live in were the first step in losing the east,” she said. “I didn’t know that when we purchased our house … So we had two choices: to move out or to try to stand up and advocate with (other east Orange residents) and I have been very relentless about trying to advocate for them and with them for a very long time. I’ve never hid where I live.”

Her life partner (they aren’t married) is an engineer who works for a Sanford-based contractor that prepares development sites with clearing, paving, utilities and other services, according to the company’s web site.

Semrad said her opposition to sprawl and her push for more checks and balances of large tracts of land being turned over for development should not be mistaken for a blanket opposition to all development.

“We need development and we need growth,” she said. “If I could say anything about my partner’s line of work it’s that he designs the infrastructure that Orange County needs so desperately,” though she said he does not work on projects in Orange County.

The ad promoting Leary also says that he “turned developers down” as mayor of Winter Park and “put a stop to out-of-control growth.”

It’s not clear what specific developments the ad is referring to and the campaign did not respond to a request for an interview.

As mayor, Leary oversaw major zoning changes to the stretch of Orange Avenue between Park Avenue and U.S. 17-92. The changes to the area known as the Orange Avenue Overlay raised concerns among some residents in the city who did not want to see six-story buildings there that they believed would erode Winter Park’s small town charm and character.

The City Commission elected after he left office took swift action to alter the overlay rules, reducing building heights and adding more green space, among other changes. Those changes prompted large landholders along Orange Avenue to sue the new commission.

Another Leary ad says Semrad has “extremist ideology” and has “met with leaders from Iran and Palestine.”

The basis for those claims?

Semrad spoke at a 2013 meeting in Turkey on behalf of the University of Florida, where she worked as the assistant director of the university’s tourism institute. A number of tourism leaders, including from Iran and Palestine, attended a meeting of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

“This was an organization that was trying to use tourism as a catalyst to alleviate poverty and provide a catalyst for peace between nations,” she said.

According to notes from the meeting on the organization’s web site, Semrad gave an academic presentation about the costs and benefits of tourism in the least-developed countries.

“When you take something so far out of context to try to manipulate someone’s mind, I’m just going to call that a lie,” Semrad said of the assertion that she’s a political “extremist” because she attended a conference related to her job.

WinterParkVoiceEditor@gmail.com