>>This week on NewsNight a look at what the recent election might mean for conservation and development in Central Florida.

Plus, several prominent Florida Republicans are expected to take up roles in the next Trump administration.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort, welcome to NewsNight where we take an in-depth look at the top storie and issues in Central Florida and how they shap our community.

First, tonight, the election of environmental advocate to the Orange County Commission and whether voters in the Orlando area are sending a signal on urban sprawl.

Incumbent Nicole Wilso saw off a challenge in district one and Kelly Semrad bea an opponent who had the backing of Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer in district five.

In district three meanwhile, incumbent Mayra Uribe defeated a challenge from former state Senator Lynda Stewart.

Alongside victories fo conservation minded candidates, two key charter amendments passed, establishing a rural boundary with greater hurdles for would be developers and handing control of annexations of county land by cities to the county commission.

Last week I talked about it with UCF political scientist Aubrey Jewett.

>>I think you could say tha Orange County voters, the vast majority of them want to protec rural land, are concerned about not just development.

I mean, they're not against development per se, but about sprawling development.

And they want to make sur that the county has sufficient regulations in place to make it difficult for developers to just go out and build, or to maybe play the city off against the county right where the county feels lik they don't have any authority.

And so, yeah, I think the Orange County voters made it very clear that they're not against development overall, but that they want it to be smart development.

They don't want it to b sprawling out into rural areas that they believe should be protected.

>>The distance between Orang County in the Orlando metro area and the rest of the state politically does seem to be great at the moment.

>>Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, basically, if you loo at the map of Florida right now in color coded red and blue based on the election results, Florida is very red.

And there are, you know maybe a half dozen blue spots.

From the Democratic perspective, they'd be the blue oases, you know, in the red desert.

But from a Republican perspective, they'd sort of be, you know, these are the apostates, you know, in these areas, but it's Tallahassee, Gainesville or Orlando and now Broward.

That's still remained fairly blue.

And Orange County is one of them.

>>Aubrey Jewett there from UCF.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

Joining me in the studio this week, Ryan Gillespie from the Orlando Sentinel writes about local government for The Sentinel.

Good to see you, Ryan.

>>Appreciate it.

>>Thanks for being here.

And for the Winter Park Voice, Beth Kasab, coming back to the program.

Good to see you as usual Beth.

>>Yeah, good to be here.

>>And, Eric Orvieto who writes for the Oviedo Community News.

Good to see you, Eric.

Before we start, we should note that Kelly Semrad is an employee at UCF and WUCF is licensed to the University of Central Florida.

Ryan, let me star with those charter amendments, including amendment nine on the rural boundary.

If you could just first of all, and you've been covering this so much, just remind us what that amendment does, amendment nine specifically.

>>Sure.

So now in Orange County there are pretty huge swaths of land, mostl on the east side of the county.

There's a lot of it generally east of like Lake Nona and the UCF area.

And then there's also some some substantia but smaller properties out west where that are essentially are carved out from urban style development.

You need if you wanted to build something on these rural lands that you might see, you know, more in the suburbs are in the city cities, you would need a supermajority vote of the Board of County commissioners, a majority plus one vote.

And then if you wanted to pull a property out of that boundary, presumably to develop it-- >>Yeah.

>>Urban style, you would also need a supermajority vote of the board.

>>This rural boundary abuts Seminole County's rural boundary right.

Whether already was one, voters had some choices to make as well on that boundary in the election.

What did they come up with?

>>Yeah.

So the Seminole Count rural boundary has been around for a couple of decade or more than a couple of decades now, and the voters had a chance to strengthen its protections and make it again, a supermajority vot from the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole to, make any changes whatsoever to the lines or or things inside the boundary.

So voters overwhelmingly approved the two amendments, the charter amendments by more than 82% of voting in favor >>82%.

>>In favor of it for each and both officials, state or city and county officials, conservationists all have said how important these charter amendments were to strengthen it for the future.

>>I do want to get to ho the public views these things, in a moment, but 82% i is pretty resounding, isn't it?

Amendment ten also passed all the charter amendments, passed it in Orange County, right.

That gives the Commission the power over approving annexations.

I mean, how do you think this will change that relationship between county officials and developers?

You know, might it impact things that, you know, that were envisaged like that, that huge Deseret Ranches land development that's been talked of?

>>Well, yes.

And for example, with the desert ranches, which the last time I was here, we were talking about that deal totally fell apart.

There's now a new arrangemen where, a whole bunch of things were settled between city and county, and the city abandoned that annexation effort.

But what I think amendment ten will do for the county i I think it gives them leverage over, over developers.

Because if you talk to people on on the county side of these things, what they say is you go into these meetings with some with some developers, not all of them.

And the county says, we want you to do X, Y, and Z with your development and the developer doesn't agree.

The developer can com or the landowner can come back with, okay, well, we're just going to annex into this into the city of Orlando, or we're going to annex into Apopka or whatever city we were dealing with.

And so that gave what, you know, County Mayor Jerry Demings and some other people have said an outsized position fo the developer over the county.

So I think that element changes here, especially when we tal about desert ranches, where now they are forced to come bac to the table with Orange County.

Orange County can basically assert themselves more, but there's also a whole bunch of hurt feelings now on both sides of this, between the county and city.

And the desert ranches crew and the county.

So that relationship's got a lot of work to do between now and whatever the heck they they want to develop this thing.

>>I mean, there had been a feeling, hadn't there, on the county side, that maybe Orlando and the Mormon church were trying to get something through before amendmen ten went to the voters, right?

>>The idea that was explicitly said, yeah, I think everybody involved to do that, they mean they scheduled the vote, presumably to approve it the day before the election.

With with that clock in mind.

But but this, you know, the settlement came for something like a week ahead of that.

So it never ended up coming to be.

>>What about the, Orange County Commission results?

Beth you've you've covered this pretty closel there at the Winter Park Voice.

Particularly that battle between Kelly Semrad and Steve Leary in District five.

That was a pretty contentious race there, right?

We've talked about that on the show, but but remind us about what the issues were that were at play in that election.

>>Well, a lot of it goes hand in hand with these charter amendments because one of the central issue in the race was development.

District five happens to ru from downtown Orlando through Winter Park, ou east into the rural area where that some of these amendments, you know, specifically touched on.

And, there was a huge effort to get more commissioners or to get more commissioners elected by the development community.

They heavily funde not just Steve Leary's campaign, but we saw that play out in districts 1 in 3 as well.

And I think it's you know, when you talk about district five, you can't really do that without talking about those other two races too.

Resoundingly the voters in all of these districts where seats were up for reelection, said no to development interests and to tourism interests.

Those were the two heavy industry funders of opponents in in all three of those county commission races.

>>It was interesting, wasn't it, that Steve Leary had the endorsement of the Orlando Mayor, Buddy Dyer, as well?

Right.

What did, the Orlando mayor have to say about that race?

Do we know why he backed him?

>>You know, officially, the campaign's released statements that said Buddy Dyer backed Steve Leary because, Steve Leary had been the mayor of Winter Park.

They had worked together.

They had a relationship.

But if you look at who funded the campaign, you not only had Dyer putting in mone from his own PAC into that race, you also had, people who were trying to get development passed out east, people who were suing the county over develope previous development decisions that directly affected the city of Orlando, because this is City of Orlando was trying to annex some of these lands.

So, so, you know, you can draw your own conclusions.

Looking at some of the money there.

>>Well, I'm going to put this question to all of yo about what you think the support for the amendments and for these environmenta advocates indicates about voters priorities when it come to development and conservation?

It seems like, as we discussed, that this is mirrored in Seminole County, right?

There seem to be very similar sentiment.

>>Most definitely the battle between conservation and conservation land development is is one that's ongoing in Seminole, throughout the state, throughout orange.

And I've written a lot about it.

When we did the corridor pieces-- >>It's the oldest story in all of Florida.

>>Exactly you and and the reason that it's so important is even in areas that are not within the rural boundary itself, that might be up against it or be relatively close to it.

It's not just for conservation and land.

It's practical reasons as well.

Any development into annexe into potentially annexed areas in the rural boundary in Seminole will lead to issues with traffic.

Huge traffic increases, huge pollution increases, stormwater, drainage issues-- >>Real impacts on-- Real infrastructure impact to people's lives on a daily basis that would be noticeable immediately.

Not to mention the cost of building out utilities into these areas that don't have utilities there, and the cost that it would it would be for the municipalities themselves to tha it would be the burden on there.

So any potentia you know, some of the arguments from developers is, oh, we can bring in tax money, more property tax money, but that would be offset pretty, pretty quickly from the the necessity of building such new infrastructure into these areas that just don't have it in there.

From water, electric, everything.

>>Yeah.

And I think that's why those issues and I think that's a really key point.

It's not just about environmentalism, it's also about, you know, voters sitting in th core of Winter Park or downtown Orlando saying, hey, wai a second, what's in this for me?

If land is developed out here, that puts pressure on my schools, my roads and police and fire, too.

So you're talking about a huge taxpayer investment to make those developments really work.

>>And you look at the flooding over the last few years, you know, from Hurricane Ian since in in municipalities like Winter Springs.

And if-- >>Seminole particularly hard hit.

>>Which was super hard hit and had so many infrastructure problems, that that led to that.

And if there's stormwater coming in and stormwater retention issues from the rural boundary where they're using that land to really collect a lot of that stormwater, the flooding, the amount of flooding, extra flooding would be just catastrophic.

>>I guess these are common issues in areas that are growing really fast, urban areas that are growing fast.

I mean what do you think, Ryan?

What do you think that says about the sensibilities of, you know, when it comes to Central Florida voters?

>>Well, I think we talk a lot when we're in politics and whatnot about how divisive things are now and how everything is so partisan, this is kind of one of those bipartisan issues because, you know, these amendments were passing at such a margin that this is Republicans and Democrats.

And to bring in a totally unrelated, topic but similar, if you remember, a couple of months ago, out of the state, we had plans to develop state parks.

That was bipartisan pushback.

They were Republican members of Congress pushing back at the Republican state government alongside a lot of Democrats who were outraged by that.

So I think with environment and development, that kind of meld, you've got a pretty good bipartisan coalitio that we've seen play out here.

>>And on that in my reporting for on on environment, on environmental issues, in the corrido and within the rural boundary, both Republican and, Democratic and nonpartisan, officials all said this isn't a partisan issue of the environment protection in Florida specifically, is does cross party lines.

It's so vital to so many things that it's a it doesn't matte whether one area is red or blue.

It's really about all of these other issues around it.

>>I mean, the environment in Florida has sort of been nonpartisan for a while.

And in a practical sense, we also see this ou West, right, with water issues, particularly in places like Arizona.

It's become, a bipartisan issue.

I mean, I'm interested though, because the area is still growing, there's no doubt about that, about how, that pressure between the desire of voters to keep things in check and the pressure on, local leaders to allow development.

I wonder how you see that playing out.

What are those?

What is the balance that that lawmakers are having to, to come up with now?

>>So I think if you look specifically at these board of count commission candidates, you know, I think it's it's easy to think of like, oh, there's pro-developmen and then there's another side.

I don't think the, the winning candidates would say they're anti-development.

>>Yeah.

>>What they have said is they've taken this what they call smart growth mindset of just because we're growing doesn' mean we have to grow everywhere.

We can grow very dense in urban areas.

So if you think of downtown Orlando and yeah, we can we can keep building up and we can infill and do all of these things to add more people to population center and also protect the environment in places where it's natural lands out east.

There are challenges with that.

You know, if yo if you look at the projections of the hundreds of thousands of people that we're expected to add to this regio in the next couple of decades, you know, if we were to put them all in current urban areas, we don't have like a transit system right no to support that, for instance.

So that's something that needs to be figured out.

The infrastructure that we have is really old.

It's 100 years old in some sense, underground with the storm water pipes.

Those are things that we need to figure out.

Those are certainly going to be the challenges ahead.

And when you look at some of the 20, 30, 40 and 50 projections on population.

>>The thing I hear consistently from from people, from officials is we have to build up, not out.

And that's so important.

And then you get into the issues with housing and affordability and, and all of that.

What does that look like?

Is it is it more if it's building up, is it luxury apartments which then put prices people out?

So it's such a giant issue.

>>In Florida, no doubt a reminde you can find my full interview with Aubrey Jewett breaking down the outcome of the election in Florida on our website wucf.org/newsnight.

Okay finally tonight it was a mantra from some DeSantis supporters during the Florida governor's presidential run that he would make America Florida.

Well, it turns out Donald Trum is doing a bit of that himself.

While Florida's U.S.

Senator Rick Scott failed in his bid to take over the GOP leadership role in the Senate this week, there will be significant roles for Floridians in the incomin Trump administration, among them Florida Congressman Matt Gates, who Trump nominated this week to be attorney general, and Trump soon to b chief of staff Susie Wiles, a Florida political operativ and Trump campaign co-manager who also led governor DeSantis' successful 2018 gubernatorial campaign.

She'll be the first woman to ever hold the White House Chief of Staff job.

In addition to Gates and Wiles, Florida's U.S.

Senator Marco Rubio is nominated as America's top diplomat, bringing his Senate experience to the U.S. Secretary of State role.

Rubio is now seen as loyal to president elect Trump.

But amid the incoming administration's Americ First agenda, political watchers point to the Florida senator's often hawkish views on foreign affairs.

>>I think that's what life will be like on this planet for the next generation.

We'll be determine very much by what we do or failed to do here over the next 2 to 3 years, and certainly with the issue that are before us today.

>>Al Qaeda has established eight new training camps in Afghanistan.

>>Meanwhile, Volusia Count Congressman Mike Waltz, a former Green Beret, has been tapped by Trump to be his national security advisor.

Waltz has taken a tough stance on China and cautiousness over future U.S. aid to Ukraine.

He's been a staunch critic of the Biden administration, including on the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which he talked about on NewsNight.

>>It was a mistake, and I've been consistent on that acros multiple administrations.

What we can't d is fall into the false choice that I thin is currently being presented by the Biden administratio that it was complete withdrawal go to zero or, you know, Switzerland style nation building or a D-Day style invasion o hundreds of thousands of troops.

What I've long called for, and, and and with the Trump administration and Biden, was a small forc of special forces intelligence, our, our drone, capability, but importantly, that support is capability to the Afghan military.

And what we just saw is tha we withdrew all at once there.

Air support, intelligence support, maintenance support, and, and logistic support.

And, you know, we really pulled the rug out from under them at the height of the fighting season, and they needed that.

>>Congressman Mike Waltz there from, Volusia County.

Okay.

Ryan, let me start with you on this one.

Marco Rubio is in line with the for th for the secretary of state role.

The governor will need to appoint someone to fill that vacant seat.

Now, who's being discussed in the reporting that you've read and how significant a choic could that be for the governor do you think?

>>It could be a very significant choice especially depending on which way you go.

I don't think this is likely outcome, but there's nothing stopping hi from appointing himself to the US Senate or appointing his wife.

I haven't seen a lot of reporting that that touts that is a realistic possibility.

But he could do something like that.

There's been talk of his chief of staff, a man named James Uthmeier as a potential candidate.

Former House Speaker Jose Oliva.

And really all kinds of other Republicans.

>>Lara Trump.

>>Lara Trump, also another one.

All of this is sort of held up because the governor has been in Italy for the past week as lik the entire leadership of Florida outside of them has been shaken up.

So, I don't know how serious the conversations have been at this point, but, I'm assuming once the governor gets back stateside that that's going to be, top of list.

>>The Rubio and Waltz picks, are interesting out there.

Mike Waltz fo for National Security Advisor.

They run a very sort of similar kind of hawkish page, if you like, when it comes to US foes, I guess, like China and Iran, Venezuela and so on, international terrorism.

I mean, do you think, the pick of these two Florida Republicans says something about how the incoming administration might sort of tackle foreign affairs?

I mean, these are not isolationists.

>>Yeah.

I don't know if if anyone can really say what the the focus will be becaus everything is in such up.

It's so up in the air, you know, Rubio and Waltz, like you said, have been traditionally hawkish, although they've recently kind of stepped back from that, Waltz making comments about Ukraine or his his stance on Ukraine changing and focusing more on China.

Rubio, who's been hawkish against China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela has started talking more about, you know, falling in line with the peace through strength and, lines that, that that the Trump campaign ran on.

So I don't know, it's it's really up in the ai to see kind of which way it goes of how they're going to focus from those two, those two positions.

>>I mean, there are a lot of unknowns, right?

But in sharp contrast, to those sort of what we migh see as more traditional picks, we have Panhandle Congressman Matt Gaetz who's been picked for th for the attorney general role.

He's a sort of a firebrand, a MAGA loyalist, if you like.

It's been interesting, hasn' it, to to see how his nomination has been received by not only Democrats but also his fellow Republicans.

>>Yeah.

The it has been really surprising because a lot of the GO senators and congresspeople have started coming out either questioning it or flat out against it.

I know Lisa Murkowski came out and said she was shocked, and Susan Collins was surprised by it.

And there's a lot of a lot of people kind of up in the air where they haven't had that same response to other cabinet picks t to what they did with the Gaetz And so that will be interesting to see how that plays out, if he will even be confirmed because of those questions up in the air.

>>Those of us here know that he's spent quite a lot of time in Central Florida.

Some of his best friends liv here-- >>Very locally relevant.

>>One of those best friends is is now in federal prison.

But for a long time they were seen around town together-- >>You're referring to Joel Greenberg.

>>To Joel Greenberg.

And so he is familiar to people and and definitel a controversial pick.

Of course, on top of the announcement that he is Trump's pick came Matt Gaetz's announcement that he's actually resigning from his seat and-- >>Tha raised a lot of eyebrows yeah.

>>Right.

And just days before, my understanding was there was going to be a vote on whether to release a report related to the ethics investigation that's been under way.

So I think there's a lot of question marks in terms of what's going to happen there.

I thin because of the local connection to the Greenberg scandal, the Matt Gaetz, nomination has gotten, a lot of local buzz.

>>I did want to talk a little bit about, the president elect's choice for his chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

And those of us who've been around a while would have come across her.

She and Governor DeSantis have, I think it's fair to say a fairly strained relationship.

Remind us how that relationship has evolved over time.

>>Right.

So, Susie Wiles another huge Florida connection to what's playing out nationally.

She's known as, the person who has steered the Trump campaign for, I believe, a couple elections now and also had steered Ron DeSantis's, initial campaigns and was very close to the governor, was my understanding there was a falling out between these two, which is which is interesting.

That's going back a few years now.

And, you know, under normal circumstances, let's say 20 years ago, people would probably still remember that there were a number of stories about how the governor, during his earlier term was, potentially selling golf outings.

I mean, to put it simply, there, some of the fundraising was taking place in this way and some of the documents were leaked.

And the reporting show that the governor blames Susie Wiles for these leaks, I believe she said now wasn't me.

But regardless, they are, no longer as tight as they once were.

>>It does add an interesting dynamic to what's already a fascinating relationship between the governor and the the incoming president.

>>Yeah, the the two of them.

Their relationship has been very tumult up and down.

It's had its highs and lows.

And, you know, during the primary season, Donald Trump was calling Ron Ro DeSantis "Ron DeSanctimonious" and but it seems since they've met and they've they have a connection.

I don't think you'll be seein Oval Office visits necessarily, from the governor, but I don't think there's going to be anythin policy wise that'll be negative toward Florida, especially since Donald Trump calls Florida home now.

And, I don't think there's any support.

Even Susie Wiles, you know, people around her have reportedly said that, you know, she's a pro.

She's not going to take anything out on DeSantis or for the state.

So I don't think that's anything to worry about.

>>And to kind of bring tha this conversation full circle.

I think you will see, you will get a commentary, maybe, on the relationship between the governor and the president with, governor DeSantis, his appointment to fill the Marco Rubio Senate seat.

There's been a lot of talk out of Trump circles that I've seen reported tha that they're pushing Lara Trump, understandably, very heavily.

We'll see if the governor goes with that or if, maybe somebody closer to him.

>>So many fascinating things to watch.

And I know you guys will be doing that for sure.

We'll talk much more about these issues in the coming weeks.

As presiden elect Trump firms up his plans for the next administration.

Meanwhile, be sure to join this conversation on social media.

We're at WUCF TV, on Facebook and Instagram.

We're also on X as well @NewsNightWUCF but that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Ryan Gillespie, Beth Kassab, Eric Orvieto.

Thank you guys so much for coming in.

Really appreciate your time today.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

For all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.