Palm Beach County Commissioner Sara Baxter will host a candidate forum Thursday, July 25 at 6:30 p.m. at the Royal Palm Beach Cultural Center, located at 151 Civic Center Way in Royal Palm Beach.
Candidates for Indian Trail Improvement District Board of Supervisors Seats 2 and 4; State Representative District 94, which includes parts of Royal Palm Beach, Loxahatchee Groves and the Acreage/Loxahatchee area, and State Representative District 93, serving Wellington and areas to the east, will be invited. The session will be moderated by Palm Beach County Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller Joseph Abruzzo.
Baxter said she planned the gathering because “a lot of different areas of the county have organizations that host candidate forums. We don’t really have one in [the western communities] that does that.”
Baxter, whose District 6 includes all the areas represented at the candidate forum, added, “I feel like voters would like to know where candidates stand on issues relevant to our area.”
The session is expected to last two hours, she said. Each candidate will get one minute to introduce themselves before being questioned by the moderator. Attendees also will be allowed to ask questions at the end of the evening.
In the District 94 race, the four Republican candidates are nuclear engineer Christian Acosta; Anthony Aguirre, who manages inpatient hospitalist medicine; Gabrielle Fox, a self-described “conservative activist” and small business owner; and Meg Weinberger, who for the last 10 years has been focused on her animal sanctuary Rescue Life.
Rachel Litt is the only Democrat in the race. She was elected to the Palm Beach Gardens City Council in 2017 and served as the city’s mayor and vice mayor. Litt will face the winner of a primary among the Republican candidates set for Tuesday, Aug. 20. The winner of the general election will replace State Rep. Rick Roth, a Republican who is vacating the seat.
In District 93, the candidates are incumbent State Rep. Katherine Waldron, a Democrat who is completing her first term, and Republican Anne Gerwig, who recently stepped down as Wellington mayor due to term limits. There is no primary in this race, which will be decided at the general election in November.
In ITID Seat 2, five candidates are challenging incumbent Supervisor Keith Jordano, a longtime Acreage resident, insurance agency owner and former president of the Acreage Landowners’ Association. Jordano is seeking his second four-year term.
The other candidates in the primary are: Lou Colantuoni Jr., Kirk Allen Ljongquist, Stian Oksavik, John Rivera and Richard Vassalotti II. Colantuoni, Ljongquist, Oksavik and Vassalotti are making their first runs for public office. Rivera ran unsuccessfully for ITID Seat 5 in 2018 and 2022.
Under Florida law, if more than two candidates qualify for a nonpartisan race, they must go through the primary. The top two vote-getters will advance to the November general election, unless a candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote and is elected outright.
In Seat 4, the contest is between two-term incumbent Supervisor Betty Argue and trucker advocate Natalia Melian Torres. Because there are only two candidates in the race, they will skip the August primary and go straight to the general election ballot in November.
