Smith defends record as Sargent seeks Sarasota County commission seat

For years, growth has dominated politics in Sarasota County.

Residents have packed commission meetings to oppose condo towers, subdivisions and hotels. Candidates routinely campaign on promises to protect neighborhoods and rein in development. And developers have become power brokers in local elections.

Once again, that dynamic is shaping one of the county’s two commission races.

Republican incumbent Mark Smith faces challenger Kristina Sargent in the District 2 Sarasota County Commission race, a contest to represent the county’s most politically moderate district. Both candidates say they support responsible growth. Both have criticized county spending and infrastructure shortcomings. And both have faced questions about campaign support from development interests.

The race comes as Sarasota County confronts mounting concerns about traffic, flooding, infrastructure and property taxes — issues many residents tie to years of rapid growth. 

Smith is running on his experience and deep roots in the community against Sargent, a political newcomer who moved to the area five years ago.

“We’ve got some real challenges,” Smith told Suncoast Searchlight. “This is no time to put a rookie on the commission.”

Sargent has argued county leaders like Smith have failed to keep pace with growth and have spent taxpayer dollars unwisely.

“We are a rapidly growing area; that’s not the issue,” Sargent said. “The issue is how the commission collects the money and spends it. That is what we need to focus on.”

District 2 includes the city of Sarasota, the white sand beaches of Lido, Longboat and Siesta keys and surrounding neighborhoods, including the historically Black community of Newtown. While Sarasota County is overwhelmingly Republican, District 2 has a larger share of Democratic voters than other districts and has often been viewed as the commission’s most politically moderate seat.

As the election stands, the primary election between Smith and Sargent will likely decide who the district’s next commissioner will be. Democrats have struggled to field a legitimate candidate as the June 12 filing deadline approaches.

Sargent faces uphill battle for recognition

Sargent faces several obstacles: She is fighting for name recognition against an opponent who has been civically involved in the area for decades, even before winning a commission seat. Sargent’s campaign funding also lags behind that of Smith, who has also outraised her by more than double, according to the most recently filed campaign finance disclosures.

And she has earned the reputation of being a developer-backed candidate, largely stemming from a $10,000 contribution to her campaign by Rex Jensen, the developer behind Lakewood Ranch. Sargent said she resents the label. 

“If there’s an issue with development, look around. They (developers) have to come through the commission,” Sargent said. “I don’t understand why it’s taboo to say, ‘she’s a developer’s candidate,’ but it’s not true.”

Smith, too, had collected at least $53,000 from local development interests during his 2022 campaign. That included $9,000 from Jensen, according to analysis by Suncoast Searchlight. 

As she knocks door-to-door in District 2, Sargent has been working to shake off that label and appeal to voters about her campaign priorities: county spending and infrastructure, especially when it comes to stormwater.

Sargent said the current commission has spent unwisely and inefficiently amid budget hikes in recent years. 

“There seems to be an overwhelmingly large amount of spending happening without anything that’s measurable,” Sargent said. “My priority is infrastructure. My priority is addressing the aging areas of Sarasota.”

Smith joined the commission in 2022, amid an era of hyper-friendliness from the board towards development and a willingness to spend the increased property tax revenue that came with the post-COVID housing market boom.

The county budget jumped by about 71% since Smith joined the board – from about $1.46 billion to $2.5 billion. His first year, the budget spiked by 38%. 

Smith noted during last year’s budget workshops that the county “is going to be a lot more austere when it comes to the budget” in 2026 and that the county was “heading in the wrong direction.” He voted in favor of each budget increase during his time in office.

Since then, Smith has stood up to developer interests. For example, he does not support major hotel developments on Siesta Key; allowing them would require a supermajority commission vote that has thus far eluded developers.

Smith acknowledged the previous developer support but said he has not seen that kind of financial backing for his reelection. 

Development and stormwater infrastructure are key 

Among those watching the race closely is Lourdes Ramirez, the president of the Sarasota County Council of Neighborhood Associations and longtime advocate for Siesta Key; Ramirez was defeated by Smith in the 2022 GOP primary.

“Mark made himself known to the district,” Ramirez said, by regularly attending gatherings of the Sarasota Coalition of City Neighborhood Associations, homeowners association meetings, and by building relationships with neighborhood groups.

He also is seen by many stakeholders as someone who will stand up against overdevelopment, Ramirez said.

She also said Sargent’s biggest obstacle in the campaign is a lack of name recognition and visibility. She acknowledged that the label of a “developer-backed candidate” for Sargent may not be fair when Smith was supported by many developers in 2022.

“They all accept developer money, they all play that game,” she said. “Now let’s see how you vote.”

David Lough, a keen and longtime observer of Sarasota City Hall, as well as the former president of the Downtown Sarasota Condo Association, said it would be important to see how a Smith or Sargent will manage growth in areas that have seen sharp population increases, such as North Port and downtown Sarasota.

He also said whoever represents District 2 would have to address what he described as the “diverging ecosystem” of wealth in northern Sarasota County. District 2 has some of the clearest wealth disparity on the Gulf Coast, ranging from the mansions of Longboat Key to the historically underdeveloped neighborhoods north of downtown Sarasota.

“There’s a potential growing divide between the haves and the have-lesses,” Lough said.

Other issues he said would be important to District 2 are potential property tax reform coming from Tallahassee and whether commissioners favor a new performing arts center to replace the Van Wezel, which has been a hot topic in city politics.

Smith eyes reelection amid budget uncertainty

Smith told Suncoast Searchlight that he is against the property tax proposal pitched by Gov. Ron DeSantis and approved by the Legislature this month and that will appear as a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot. If passed by voters, it would sharply reduce property taxes and could cost Sarasota County $140 million in the first two years alone, according to some estimates. 

The commissioner is primarily running on his experience: A resident of Siesta Key, Smith has lived in Sarasota County for decades and is deeply entrenched in northern county neighborhood associations. 

A major reason he was able to defeat his Democratic opponent in 2022 — former Sarasota Mayor Fredd Atkins — by a razor-thin margin was his connection to the neighborhood associations, which he has maintained through his first term in office. 

Those groups tend to skew liberal, and many Democrats spoke highly of Smith, whom they see as responsive to their concerns and a friendly moderate.

“I wouldn’t run against Mark Smith; I think he does a great job,” Sarasota City Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch previously told Suncoast Searchlight.

Smith was in office during the historic storm season of 2024, when back-to-back hurricanes walloped the Suncoast and caused widespread wind damage and catastrophic flooding, inundating hundreds of homes and businesses, including the office of Smith’s architecture firm. 

In the wake of the storms, many residents who faced the worst of the flooding questioned why the county had not done more to prepare. Reports of poor planning, inadequate infrastructure and lapsed maintenance plagued the county for months after the devastation — criticisms Sargent has echoed throughout her campaign.

Smith acknowledged that the county’s stormwater needs had been deferred by officials for “20 to 25 years.” He argued that many of the problems Sargent highlighted predated his time on the commission. 

“I feel like I bought a used car and found out nobody had ever changed the oil on it,” Smith said.

Since the storms, Smith strongly pushed for the creation of a Stormwater Department to beef up infrastructure, tackle maintenance and alleviate resident concerns. That measure passed in 2025 and the office is already hard at work.  But he conceded it would take the county time and money to “catch up.”

Sargent and Smith were complimentary of each other personally, but the commissioner said that amid major issues like the impending ballot measure for property tax reform, he felt his experience would be needed to steer through turbulent waters.

Sargent rails against county spending

Sargent lives outside of Sarasota’s Pinecraft neighborhood, where she had a front-row seat to the historic flooding caused by storms in 2024. The county’s stormwater infrastructure was heavily criticized at the time. Sargent said part of her inspiration to run for office came after a local girl, Zaria Miller, was killed when she was sucked into a storm drain after a water main broke.

Although she is involved in a variety of local Republican clubs, Sargent began her race for the county commission as a relative unknown to most of the area’s political establishment. A former prosecutor for the local State Attorney’s Office, Sargent is now a managing partner at Harris, Schlossberg & Sargent, where she handles civil litigation. Before that she spent over 15 years in the Army National Guard, where she was deployed to the Middle East.

Sargent told Suncoast Searchlight that outside the contribution by Jensen, she has not received significant backing from a local developer, although the next round of campaign finance disclosures will not be made public until June 10. She emphasized that her campaign is about the county efficiently spending its budget, which has grown by nearly 90% since 2021 – although some of that has been boosted by federal hurricane recovery money.

Sargent pointed to major projects like the county’s $100 million new administration building set to open this summer off Fruitville Road as a misplaced priority. 

The county sold its downtown headquarters to Benderson Development and approved construction of its new administration building near the Fruitville Road exit on Interstate 75 before Smith took office. At the time County Administrator Jonathan Lewis told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune the move was made to make services more accessible to residents and closer to other county facilities.

“New development has its infrastructure, but the impact it has on the pre-existing infrastructure of Sarasota also needs to be the focus of the commission,” she said.

Sargent also blasted the county’s recent effort to fight the Florida Live Local Act, which she called a waste of time and taxpayer money for what would ultimately be a losing effort. County Commissioners in April moved to block developers from using the law to develop apartment complexes near rural homes and farmland. The Live Local Act allows developers to bypass local zoning regulations if they include some affordable housing.

She characterized the county government as more focused on improving its own workplaces and operations than on the infrastructure of longtime residents, which she said is embodied by the residential streets that flood after just a bad thunderstorm.

Christian Casale is a local government/politics reporter for Suncoast Searchlight. Email him at christian@suncoastsearchlight.org