ORLANDO, Fla. – With two months to go before the deadline to qualify to run for office, a Florida State Senate seat in Orange County is shaping up to be a battle between two heavyweights in the Black community.

Randolph Bracy, a former state senator who left to run for Congress in 2022, is challenging incumbent State Sen. Geraldine Thompson for Florida Senate District 15, a seat that represents large parts of western and center Orange County.

Bracy told News 6 that his decision to primary a fellow Democrat, longtime lawmaker and family friend was not personal.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with Geraldine Thompson,” Bracy said.

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Thompson told News 6 she is “actively campaigning” for reelection.

“I have remained a steady and stable advocate for the people of Senate District 15. I look forward to continuing to work for my constituents and the state of Florida,” Thompson said.

Both Bracy and Thompson have represented the area off and on for years. Both have accomplishments to tout in the legislature and deep roots in the community.

According to community leaders, the winner must prove they can put that expertise to better use.

Community needs

Florida Senate District 15 represents a large swath of Orange County, from the northwest corner with Apopka down south to the central part of the county, including parts of Winter Garden, Ocoee, the Pine Hills neighborhood, Holden Heights and Tangelo Park.

Jae Fortune, a community activist and founder of the Pine Hills Culture and Economic Partnership, said the prospect of two experienced lawmakers campaigning against each other is a win-win for his part of the district.

“It’s reassuring to have two options that know the issues,” Fortune said. “There’s not really going to be a learning curve. Honestly, I’m actually really interested to see what issues they don’t agree on, because they’re pretty familiar with each other. And I hope that this provides an opportunity for a robust conversation about the issues, more than a personality thing.”

For Fortune, transportation and pedestrian safety are top of mind in the Pine Hills area. He worries for his 90-year-old grandmother, and other area residents trying to cross Silver Star Road, a major thoroughfare that runs through the district.

Since the state manages Silver Star Road, Fortune said state leaders need to push for improvements.

“Six lanes of traffic, 24/7, we lose neighbors, we lose family members, we lose friends to traffic incidents on a weekly basis,” Fortune said. “It’s not as sexy as the whole crime conversation, but it’s a crisis – it’s literally a health crisis.”

Fortune also wants to see more talk about an issue that’s a crisis across the state – affordable housing, and how it is driving homelessness. He would like to see more tourism dollars and benefits from economic development go to the issues affecting the community.

“What does economic development look like? What does economic prosperity mean if certain communities are being left behind,” Fortune said. “I don’t expect dollars from I-Drive or I don’t necessarily expect dollars from Disney for expansions or what have you to get here, but at what point do we talk about ‘OK, how do we make this a little bit more equitable?’ Like, how do we make sure that at least Pine Hills is part of the conversation, and that’s what this seat represents.”

Family, community ties

State data shows more than 271,000 of the district’s 408,000 voting-age residents are registered to vote.

Florida Senate District 15 is also slightly majority-Black. According to Florida Senate data, 37.48% of voting-age residents are Black, compared to 30.96% white residents, 25.35% Hispanic residents and 8.1% residents of other races.

Bracy and Thompson both have strong ties to the local Black community.

Bracy, who runs several businesses, is the son of pastor Dr. Randolph Bracy Jr., who founded New Covenant Baptist Church in Orlando.

Thompson, a former educator, founded the Wells’Built Museum of African American History and Culture, housed in a historic hotel in Parramore that Thompson helped save from destruction.

Issues facing the Black community are also hallmarks of both lawmakers’ time in office. Among their successes, Bracy and Thompson worked together in 2021 on legislation that eventually created the Randolph Bracy Ocoee Scholarship program, which funded scholarships for the direct descendants of the 1920 Ocoee Election Day Riots.

Bracy had some success during his time in the Senate with bills on fire safety and juvenile justice.

“I was probably one of the more successful Democrats across the state to get things done,” Bracy said.

Thompson helped get the “Project Addiction” specialty plate through the legislature this year.

“To address the stigma faced by people who are recovering from addiction and to provide counseling services and heighten awareness regarding the potential of overdoses which have increased in Florida,” Thompson said.

She also successfully shepherded a bill to reform attraction safety after a teenager died on a ride in Orlando in 2022. Thompson worked on that with State Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis, a Democrat from Orlando, and Bracy’s sister.

Thompson has other ties to the Bracy family – she said she roomed with Bracy’s mother, Dr. LaVon Wright Bracy, at the University of Miami, who was also the maid of honor at Thompson’s wedding.

“I have loved the Bracy family for more than 50 years,” Thompson said.

In a statement to News 6, Thompson pointed out that Bracy left his Florida Senate seat in 2022 to run for U.S. House District 10. He lost in the Democratic primary to now-Rep. Maxwell Frost. Thompson said that and the death of Bracy’s father a year later were major losses.

“I am praying for him and hope that he regains his footing,” Thompson said.

Bracy seemed to acknowledge to News 6 that losing the U.S. House primary was tough.

“It was honestly a blessing in disguise, after being in politics for 16 years, I was able to step back and focus on myself and my business,” Bracy said.

Bracy said he now wants to lift the community up “in a different way,” which he planned to explain in the future.

“We’re at a time where we need to require more of our elected officials, not just here in Tallahassee, but back here at home. We need more resources to help people achieve their goals,” Bracy said.

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‘These are not radical issues’

Despite any successes Bracy may have in the Florida Legislature, records show he also has dozens of failed bills over his time in the Florida House and Senate, as does Thompson, including bills regarding criminal justice, education, elections and more.

In truth, many state lawmakers have failed bills in their records – only about 10% of bills filed in an annual Florida Legislative Session make it to the governor’s desk. The session only lasts 60 days.

Another problem that may be impeding success – they’re both Democrats in a Legislature run by Republicans. That means some bills may not jibe with the majority’s priority that session, or there are ideological conflicts.

District 15 is heavily Democratic – 127,727 registered Democrats to nearly 76,000 no-party-affiliate voters and nearly 61,000 Republicans, according to the Florida Division of Elections.

Republican candidates rarely step up to run in the district. Thompson won a universal primary against Democrat Kamia Brown in 2022 with 53% of the vote. Bracy beat a Republican challenger, Joshua Adams, in 2020 with 65% of the vote. Bracy faced two write-in candidates in the 2016 general election.

Fortune said being in the minority is a problem, but that can’t be an excuse for Democratic representatives anymore, because they have been out of power for more than two decades.

“I don’t care that you’re not in charge,” Fortune said. “I don’t care that you don’t have the governor’s mansion. I don’t care that you guys don’t have a majority. These are not radical issues. I’m saying these are not issues that you can’t make popular to a majority of Floridians, especially Central Florida’s, like our issues are pretty straightforward. Just be on the right side of it.”

So far, no one else has filed to run for the seat except for the two Democrats. If that remains the case through the end of the qualifying period on June 14, all voters in the district would be able to decide between Bracy and Thompson in a universal primary on Aug. 20, regardless of political party.

Fortune said he would like to see more voices jump in the race, including local Republicans like Nate Robertson, who ran for Ocoee commission in March, because he wants to see a larger conversation about the issues. However, a return to the Florida Senate for Bracy or Thompson would be great for the district as well.

“These are two names that, especially when it comes to representing a minority party in Tallahassee, that people whose names carry weight or people’s names carry cachet, or at least they have a network of people they can call at any given point, and bring their influence to bear, I think that’s a good situation for us to be in,” Fortune said.

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