Race Analysis: Bradenton City Council Ward 4

The Bradenton City Council Ward 4 race will see two very qualified candidates challenging first-term incumbent Bill Sanders in what will be perhaps the most interesting local race on the November ballot.

Bradenton City Council races are non-partisan and conducted citywide, which means that every voter who lives within the city limits has the chance to vote on each race, even if they don’t live in the ward being contested.

A few years back, the city switched from a runoff system, in which the races appeared first on the primary ballot with a runoff in the general, to the current winner-take-all format.

Sanders pulled off a historic upset when he beat multi-term incumbent Bemis Smith in a 2018 landslide, in a two-person race. This time around, Sanders faces challenges from attorney Lisa Gonzalez Moore and planning commissioner Kurt Landefeld.

Sanders has been deeply embattled at City Hall almost from the time he was seated, feuding with two consecutive city managers, the mayor, staff, and fellow council members regularly.

On the one hand, he has been refreshingly willing to raise issues surrounding obvious conflicts of interest such as the law firm that provides the city’s legal counsel also representing the politically-connected development firm that gets nearly all of its contracts while supporting most of its office holders, and the process through which that firm has received perks related to its projects from the city coffers.

This has long been a concern of good government advocates and Sanders is pretty much the first city council member to ever even broach the subject.

On the other hand, Sanders has delivered some self-inflicted wounds such as a scandal at the DeSoto Seafood Festival that made national news in 2019.

Sanders has also been frustrated by a lack of access to public records he has requested regarding issues he’s championed, and, that frustration, combined with a fairly curt and direct style has led to numerous complaints from administrative staff and an ensuing report that has been used as something as a cudgel against him during this campaign.

Sanders says that it was a political hit-job and points to the timing of the matter having coincided with his questioning of what looked like a plan to rush the sale of city hall to that same politically-connected development firm without seeking other bidders.

Both of his opponents question whether the incumbent can be effective going forward, given his strained relationship on the board and the need for three votes to enact policy. Wherever you stand on his personality and tactics, and, personally, I believe that his unwillingness to go with the flow and continue the council’s pattern of rubber-stamping the whims of developers is, at the very least, a contributor to his current woes, his opponents raise a fair point in terms of his ability to act as anything more than a watchdog.

Lisa Gonzalez Moore is a local real estate attorney and, of the three candidates in the race, has lived in the ward the longest. Moore brings an infectious degree of enthusiasm to the race, which has helped her build a strong base of grassroots support, despite having raised, by far, the least amount of campaign cash of the three candidates.

Moore is intelligent, articulate, and beaming with positivity, while also coming across as someone who is not afraid to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work of policymaking. She has raised many similar concerns regarding the ward as Sanders, such as connecting the River Walk to the somewhat forgotten portion of the riverfront east of U.S. 301, and delivering on the long-promised commercial development that was supposed to augment the development of the sandpile.

More than anything, Moore offers voters a stylistic alternative to Sanders that some voters may prefer, and she would be the only council member with a legal background.

Kurt Landefeld brings a considerable amount of experience in public policy, including his time on the planning commission, as well as stints on the River Isle HOA board that he has chaired, and time as a member of a county parks commission in his native Ohio. He was a supporter of Bemis Smith and said that when Smith would not take another run at the seat that was the deciding factor in his decision to run against Sanders, who he has called unfit for office.

Landefeld has built good relationships with other council members and the mayor, which would obviously be of value in terms of building the coalitions needed to enact policy. Landefeld’s biggest question mark, however, is the fact that he’s being strongly supported by members of the same city political clique and developers who have perpetuated a status quo that, in my opinion, hasn’t acted in the best interest of taxpayers.

Landefeld acknowledges this, as well as the difficulty in attempting to convince voters who are wary of such support that they should give him their vote now, trusting that he has the fortitude to act independently later. To this end, he said he would ask them to look at his record of community service and judge his character based on his actions rather than on who sees him as the best alternative to the incumbent.

In this race, all three of the candidates agreed to be guests in separate episodes of The Bradenton Times Podcast, in which we went into much detail about all matters above. For City of Bradenton voters, I would strongly recommend investing a bit of time into listening to the episodes and then forming an opinion on which candidate you believe would best represent your interests.