David Levin is a local business person who is challenging incumbent Marianne Barnebey for the Bradenton City Council Ward 2 seat. The non-partisan race will be on the November ballot.
Levin had originally filed to run for the school board's district 2 seat but had to pull out of that race when the redrawn district no longer included his address. Once he withdrew, he immediately filed to run for city council.
Levin, 36, made news in 2016 when he wasarrestedfor hacking into Lee County's Supervisor of Elections website in a "white hat" hack meant to show vulnerabilities to the site (Levin resided in Estero at the time).
Levin said that he had discovered several vulnerabilities in the legally-accessible portion of the system and suspected that it might have been manipulated by bad actors. His misstep was in accessing the other side and although he immediately went public with his discovery, he was initially charged with three felonies.
However, when an investigation revealed that Levin had not been accessing the system prior and that negligence within the setup and maintenance of the system had allowed others to do the same, the charges were reduced to two misdemeanor offenses.
Levin has since earned a master's degree, as well as a law degree from Western Michigan's Cooley School of Law. Levin and his family moved to Parrish in 2019 and then into the City of Bradenton in 2020.
Levin was born in Connecticut and attended the New York Military Academy for high school, followed by West Point Prep. He was accepted into West Point but transferred to SUNY Albany where he earned his degree while serving in the Army Reserves.
As of the most recent reporting period, Levin had raised a little under $13,000 (just over half as much as his opponent), the majority of which has been self-funded, augmented by small-dollar donations. He was recently a guest on The Bradenton Times Podcast. Click here to listen to the episode.
This article was corrected to remove the reference David is an attorney. He has a law degree but has not taken the Florida bar.
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