With the election under two months away, the ballot that voters will vote on is coming into shape. One election that local Florida voters will decide on in November is Florida House of Representatives District 81. The Florida House of Representatives works a lot like the House of Representatives in Washington D.C., except that it only contains representatives from Florida and it has 120 representatives compared to the 435 in the United States House of Representatives.
The Florida House of Representatives have many key roles in running the State of Florida. With the Florida State Senate, they can come up with legislation, make budgets and set taxes for the State of Florida. After the 2022 elections, Republicans hold 85 of the 120 seats in the House of Representatives.
The district and candidates that will be covered today, are in Florida’s District 81. District 81 stretches all across coastal Collier County. The seat is currently held by Bob Rommel, who did not seek reelection. There are two main candidates vying for the seat, Yvette Benarroch and Charles Work.
Yvette Benarroch won the Republican primary on August 20th, ensuring that she would be on November’s ballot. In the primary, she defeated Greg Folley, a current Marco Island councilman. She received 56% of the vote against Folley in August.
Benarroch spent time in the Air Force and served during both Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. After that she became a co-owner of Affordable Landscaping Services, a local area landscaping company.
According to her own website, she has five different key issues she wants to focus on. The first issue she wants to focus on is, “Stopping Illegal Immigration”. She stated on her website that, “Yvette stands with Governor DeSantis to stop illegal immigration in Florida.”
Additionally, Benarroch wants to “Defend the Second Amendment”. Another promise of her campaign website is, “Getting Wokeism Out of Our Schools”. She described our current school system as being, “infested with radical ideologies”, which she wants to fix.
The final two campaign promises are, “Economic Opportunity” and “Supporting Florida Family Values”. She stated that she approved of Florida’s unrestrictive economic approach to COVID, and increasing Florida’s viability as a state for business opportunities. For family values she also stated that she wants to, “support traditional marriage” and protect the “sanctity of life”.
In the November election, Yvette Benarroch will face Charles Work for District 81’s seat. Charles Work, who also is known as Chuck, is the Democratic Party’s candidate for the seat. The Democratic primary was canceled, and Work automatically qualified for the general election as the candidate for the Democratic Party.
On his own website, he stated that he was the, “the first prosecutor on the scene at the infamous Watergate burglary” and also stated that Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford appointed him as the, “Deputy Administrator of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration”.
Work’s first issue on his website is, “Defend Women’s Rights to Health Care in Florida”. Work called Florida’s law on abortion, “unacceptable, dangerous government overreach.” Additionally, Work also endorsed Amendment 4, which prevents the Florida government from restricting most abortions.
Work also promoted what he perceived to be the benefits from the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, and said that Floridian’s will see further benefits in reducing prescription drug prices. Work also discussed the insurance crisis in Florida, and blamed it partly on the Desantis administration’s legislation on insurance companies.
Another goal of Work’s agenda is fighting climate change. He stated that climate disasters in Florida such as Hurricane Irma or Hurricane Ian, “lie at the feet of Governors Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis due to their dismissal of the crisis.” He also criticized the Desantis administration for limiting government transparency. He criticized the Desantis administration for hiding details about COVID and migrant data.
Finally, his website promised that he would help fight for local governments against the state government. He shared several examples of the state government making laws over city governments, which he viewed as governmental overreach. He used the term, “home rule” to describe how city governments should govern.
The election will be held on November 5th, and early voting begins in Florida on October 26th.
