The next Manatee County Supervisor of Elections will be decided in the August Republican Primary. The race pits Scott Farrington, who until recently was the county’s deputy SOE, against first-term Manatee County Commissioner James Satcher, who was appointed to the position after the incumbent, Mike Bennet, retired.
The Manatee County Supervisor of Elections Office has long been one of the most respected in the state. For decades, Republican Bob Sweat and his eventual replacement, Republican Mike Bennett, ran a streamlined operation that produced impeccable results on the sort of bare-bones budget that was once a pillar of the conservative ideology.
When Bennett unexpectedly retired earlier this year, he credited Farrington, who had been his top lieutenant for the entirety of his eleven years in office, as a major factor in the success the office had enjoyed. In his resignation letter, Bennett gave a full-throated endorsement of Farrington, recommending that he be named the interim SOE upon his retirement.
This should have been an easy decision. Farrington not only had more than a decade at Bennett’s side but had also spent a decade in Sarasota County’s Supervisor of Elections office, where he rose from a temp employee to deputy SOE. With a background in software development, Farrington had a keen grasp of emerging voting technology while earning multiple certifications in the field. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more qualified successor.
In contrast, James Satcher has exactly zero qualifications to be the Supervisor of Elections. He has no background in elections and has not even filled the county commissioner spot on the election canvassing board.
What’s more, Satcher did not prove himself capable as a county commissioner, routinely demonstrating a neophyte understanding of the issues the board oversees. Rather than becoming a student of public administration, Satcher seemed content to bloviate on red meat national issues upon which the BOCC had little to no bearing.
Satcher has also demonstrated himself to be hyper-partisan, something that we find most troubling in a candidate for a position that absolutely demands an ability to put personal ideology aside in order to serve all voters equally. In mere months as the interim SOE, Satcher has proven these concerns valid, routinely making partisan accusations without any proof of their merit.
Satcher claims to be a conservative, yet one of his first moves as the interim SOE was to ask for a massive budget increase, the need for which he completely failed to articulate. Conversely, the budget under Bennett and Farrington delivered the lowest cost per voter among all 67 of Florida’s counties.
The fact that Satcher’s former colleagues on the county commission approved the request without requiring a detailed explanation lends credence to the concern that Satcher’s instillation as SOE was purely political. The very first action he took as SOE—hiring a county commission ally’s spouse with a very troubled past and no relevant qualifications—compounds that concern immensely.
In addition to having no experience whatsoever administering a large organization and its staff, Satcher’s history of financial missteps gives us great pause as to his fitness for this office. He and his wife have multiple evictions on their record, and the filings for their “non-profit” are concerning, at best. When Satcher was elected county commissioner in 2020, he even bounced a $10 check required to certify his election. These are not the marks of someone the public should entrust with a seven-figure budget, let alone something as important as supervising elections.
The choice in this race is clear. One candidate is a highly qualified expert in the field, while the other is a developer puppet who has given voters a multitude of reasons not to trust him in any position of authority. Free and fair elections in which all voters are accorded the same level of stewardship for their vote is a cornerstone of democracy. Electing someone of Satcher’s repute to oversee their administration would be a grave miscarriage of our responsibility as voters.
Despite the absence of other candidates on the ballot, the write-in loophole has effectively closed this primary to Republican voters, adding a sense of urgency to the situation. The Bradenton Times not only recommends Republican Scott Farrington for this race, but we urge non-Republicans to consider changing their registration ahead of the July 22 deadline so as to exercise the voice in political representation that our constitution intends despite politicians' best efforts to see it denied.
