Collier County Supervisor of Elections Melissa Blazier at work. (Photo: Author)
April 2, 2024 by David Silverberg
The election for the Mayor and City Council of the City of Naples is now finalized, certified and complete—and holds some lessons for voters both in Southwest Florida and beyond.
On Friday, March 29, the Collier County Canvassing Board certified the results for the non-partisan election.
The incumbent mayor, Teresa Heitmann, won her race by 22 votes over competitors Councilman Gary Price and Ted Blankenship. A race for a third seat on the city council was decided by 34 votes.
The final results of the Naples City election. (Chart: Supervisor)
Because the margins were so tight—in the initial, unofficial count on election night, Heitmann was leading by just 12 votes—both races were subject to recounts.
For those unfamiliar with it, the City of Naples, Florida is a small, incorporated municipality of roughly 19,000 people. It resides within Collier County, whose Supervisor of Elections oversees its elections. There were 16,726 eligible voters in this contest, according to the Elections Office and turnout ran about 51 percent.
On the one hand, the smallness of the sample and the specificity of the issues—chiefly, controlling development—in the race make the election results unique to the city.
But on the other hand, given the closeness of the races and the ideological intensity of some of the partisans and candidates, there are larger lessons to be learned.
Lesson 1: Competence won
First, despite the smallness of the electorate, this was not a simple election. Whenever an election is this close and the outcome this uncertain, the supervisor and team overseeing the election count have to be at the top of their game to ensure the accuracy, integrity and legality of the results.
Indeed, sometimes simply making a system function as it ought is a true test of competence and effectiveness. Elections have been under scrutiny and pressure ever since Donald Trump decided to reject the results of the 2020 ballot and lie about its outcome.
In this regard, the Collier County elections office, under the leadership of Supervisor Melissa Blazier, acquitted itself in exemplary fashion. It’s in such instances that the 17 years of experience she had in election management come into play and prove its value.
While there were rumors and accusations about the results, Blazier addressed them in an X posting around noon on the day of the recount.
“Hi! Us again to alert you to some misinformation regarding the City of Naples mayoral race. We get it – the City of Naples races were CLOSE! So close we did a machine recount for both the mayoral race and for city council. The recounts confirmed the results of both races.
“There are some rumors out there that provisional ballots could have changed the results of the mayoral contest, particularly provisional ballots that were cast due to party affiliation,” she wrote. She noted that Florida is a closed primary state where voters must be members of the party on the ballot to vote in the primary and that they had to change their party affiliation by Feb. 20 to vote in the Presidential Preference Primary, which was held the same day.
“On March 22, the canvassing board was presented with 18 provisional ballots due to voters disputing their political party affiliation and casting an illegal ballot which were all rejected by the canvassing board in accordance with Florida election law.”
She continued: “During the review of these 18 provisional ballots, the canvassing board and members of the public who observed the process were presented with the voters’ information and evidence as to why the provisional ballots should be rejected in accordance with Florida election law. This included where the voters live. All 18 of these provisional ballots were not located within the City of Naples which means that the ballot they were issued did not contain the mayor or city council race.”
To date, these conclusions have not been challenged.
In fact, Councilman Ted Blankenship, the third place finisher in the mayoral race, conceded defeat the night of the election, stating in a Facebook post:
“God Bless Naples!
“Thank you to each and every one of you for standing behind me. Together, we ran a race focused on the issues important to our community and our country.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t work out in our favor.
“It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve the people of Naples these last four years. I am disappointed in the results of tonight’s election, but my love for this community has not diminished in the slightest.
“Best wishes to those who were elected to serve our great town!”
Blankenship demonstrated civility and his concession was principled; unlike Trump, he didn’t call fraud or disparage the parties involved.
But his defeat provided its own lesson.
Lesson 2: MAGA doesn’t rule Naples
Alfie Oakes shakes hands with Ted Blankenship during a campaign meeting at his restaurant, Food & Thought 2. (Photo: Blankenship Campaign)
The city election was non-partisan in the sense that the candidates did not run under party labels. But that is not to say that parties and partisans weren’t involved.
Blankenship was the Make America Great Again (MAGA) candidate, endorsed by grocer and farmer Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, an extreme Trumper and MAGA activist. Oakes’ Citizens Awake Now Political Action Committee contributed to his campaign. He was also endorsed by the Collier County Republican Executive Committee, where Oakes is a committeeman, and which contributed $20,000 and an advertisement worth $1,500.
The city results contrasted with the past results in Collier County, where in the 2022 election all the Oakes-endorsed candidates won their races for the county Board of Commissioners and School Board, giving him almost complete dominance of the county. In this he effectively mobilized his thousands of MAGA followers and his Seed to Table market as a political platform.
The resulting county dominance has resulted in passage of anti-federal ordinances, an anti-science inspired restrictive public health law and termination of fluoridation of the county’s water.
But the city election proved that Oakes’ sway stopped at the city line. This came despite the overwhelming Republican advantage in registered voters (10,526 Republicans to Democrats’ 2,523). The results prove that a majority of Naples Republicans are not MAGA/Oakes Republicans—essentially, they’re two separate parties.
Lesson 3: Every single vote counts
There is nothing like an election whose outcome is decided by 22 ballots to drive home the point that absolutely every single vote counts—and that the counting must be done honestly and accurately.
The City of Naples election will hardly rock the nation—but in the upcoming election that will determine the next president, whether women will have the right to choose and if marijuana will be legalized, every single ballot will be precious and prized.
That election will also determine whether Blazier will retain her position as Supervisor of Elections. In this she’s up against two opponents who have absolutely no previous experience in election management and whose chief motivations for running are the discredited conspiracy theories and Big Lie allegations lingering from the 2020 election.
Tim Guerrette in particular, is backed by Oakes and as of last November had received over $89,000 in cash and over $18,000 in in-kind contributions as compared to Blazier’s roughly $62,000 and nearly $9,000 in in-kind contributions.
Guerrette has nothing like the experience and knowledge that Blazier brings to the task. Oakes has attacked machine counting of ballots, which was crucial in ensuring the accuracy of the Naples results so Guerrette would presumably terminate that if he was able.
Ultimately, if a MAGA candidate won the Supervisor of Elections position in November, voters in Collier County would never again have the confidence that their votes were being accurately, competently and neutrally counted—and in a tight election like that of Naples, that would make a big difference.
While the City of Naples election may not have been a preview of the outcome of the August 20 primary election and the Nov. 5 general election, these are some of the important lessons it provided.
And it brought home again just how critical it is for every citizen to have the vote, to exercise it—and to preserve it by keeping America a democracy.
For more information and analysis of the City of Naples election and in particular the funding behind it, see Sandy Parker’s Analyzing the 2024 Naples Mayor and City Council Elections.
Liberty lives in light
© 2024 by David Silverberg