Lake County Property Carey Baker in 2020 he pulled off a move that seemed simultaneously cheap, smart, and successful. He won re-election for a four-year term without paying a cent.

But this year, the same trick It cost him his job.

Baker, for the second consecutive cycle, qualified as a write-in candidate to avoid paying a qualification fee, believing he would face no opposition. But moments after Baker left the building, and minutes before the qualifying period ended, Marcos Jordan He also applied, paying the $10,685 fee to qualify as a Republican candidate on the ballot.

Even though Baker ran the most expensive campaign for a write-in candidate in Lake County history, Jordan just won the office by more than a Margin of 51 percentage points.

Nearly 44,000 Lake County residents voted in the general election for a write-in candidate for Property Appraiser, and presumably nearly all of them will eventually count for Baker once officials verify that voters scribbled his name on a dedicated line. But nearly 141,000 voted for Jordan, who enjoyed the almost immeasurable benefit of having his name appear on the ballot literally in front of a blank space.

Now, Jordan is preparing to take office after spending more time in court defending himself against lawsuits brought by Baker and his allies. Baker, former state representative and senator, now analyzes his first days of the 21ststreet century in which the republican does not hold public office. But that may not last forever.

“My political future is bright,” Baker said. “Most people realized what this would be like. My support remains strong and I have many options. The easiest thing is to just sit out for four years and run again, and as long as my name is on that ballot, I can easily win.”

Of course, anyone reading the election results would see that Jordan just unseated an incumbent by a landslide. And he did it with minimal expense. Financial reports through Oct. 31 show Jordan raised a little more than $25,000 over the course of the campaign, while Baker raised nearly $233,000.

“He had a political advantage,” Jordan said. “Why yell and scream?”

Jordan largely kept his head down throughout the course of the race. He also spent thousands of dollars with SimWinsa Tampa-based political consulting firm. But records show that his biggest campaign expense was the qualifying fee that sparked the entire bitter race.

To this day, Jordan insists that he had no certain knowledge that Baker would choose to qualify as a write-in candidate, but acknowledges that he did know that Baker had done so before in 2020. He sat in the Supervisor of Elections Office on the day of qualifying at the same time as Baker. Both men had completed the paperwork in advance and signed before the noon deadline, and Jordan said he had no way of knowing what paperwork Baker would provide, nor could he change his political strategy after the deadline.

“He (Baker) had the documents in his hand and he had a check taped to the top,” Jordan said. Jordan noticed his brother, the tax collector. David JordanHe even asked if Baker would pay the fee this time. “My brother told him: ‘Are you going to make the change?’ And my brother even said, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.'”

David Jordan told a similar story in julyshortly after the qualifying date. Baker said both men are not telling the truth about their interactions in the office.

After that, Baker sued the Supervisor of Elections and Mark Jordan, but the courts said nothing they did violated the law. He Lake County Republican Executive Committee He censured David Jordan and called on Mark Jordan to resign as a candidate.

The irony, Mark Jordan points out, is that a portion of his qualifying fee as a partisan candidate went to the local party. Since Baker did not pay any fee to qualify as a write-in candidate this year or four years ago, the party received no such windfall from him. But the party spent resources funded partly from Jordan’s own pocket to then attack him and his brother, who also paid a qualifying fee and won office unopposed.

“What would they have done if a Democrat had done this?” said.

Mark Jordan said defending his actions in court ultimately cost him tens of thousands of dollars. But he said he always had the same right to run for office as any citizen. Other elements influenced his decision to apply for Property Appraiser, he said, and his decision to remain silent until the final day of qualifying.

“Looking at that office, I thought things could certainly be done better,” he said. “Looking at it, I was certainly going to run as a Republican.”

But Jordan felt that if he were to challenge an incumbent, he wanted an open primary where Democrats and non-party voters could also have a vote. Had he announced it earlier in the week, he assumed Baker’s allies would, ironically, present a write-in candidate to close the primary to Republican voters. He writing loophole has been exploited by candidates of both parties in the state for decades, often by incumbents who only want party loyalists to vote.

Jordan also wanted to run a short campaign in which Baker would not have time to amass a fortune before the August 20 vote.

Ironically, Baker ended up being the write-in candidate, but that gave him until the Nov. 5 election to compete for money and campaign aggressively for the seat. In recent months, freshly printed signs encouraging voters to “Write in Carey Baker” have appeared around the county, especially before Election Day. Before the end of October, he spent more than $151,000 on the race.

But Baker acknowledges that he always knew the race would be a long shot. That was especially evident on Election Day, when he campaigned outside precincts and found little interest in a so far negative race.

“What drove our record turnout was the top of the pile, the presidential race,” he said. “I talked to people, but they were there to support their favorite presidential candidate. Everything else was secondary.”

In fact, more than 227,000 votes were cast for president in Lake County, including 140,393 of them for donald trump only. Jordan, who ran with his party’s designation on the ballot, received 140,828, with fewer than 185,000 voting for Property Appraiser.

When Baker filled out his own ballot, he also realized for the first time how much he was asking voters to break with common practice. Never in his life had he voted for a write-in candidate, filling out a bubble and writing the 10 letters of his own name on a line. “It was just different,” he said.

But Baker still felt empowered that his campaign reached so many people.

“Over 43,000 people in Lake County wrote my name,” he said. “Frankly, it warms my heart.

He is still drawn to apply and is leaning toward applying in 2028 as a Property Appraiser.

“People won’t forget what happened,” he said. “It touched them personally. “I think, unfortunately, this will remain fresh in many people’s minds.”

Jordan knows he’ll face some of that when he takes over as Property Appraiser in a matter of weeks. He wants Baker employees to know he’s not out to take anyone’s job.

“This work is truly ministerial,” he said. “My background is in emergency services and I have held a variety of roles. But it’s mostly about teaming up and working together within particular parameters. How the office will work and how we will produce a good product for taxpayers, we have trained people. I hope they appreciate having a fresh breath of new leadership.”

You will look for ways to improve customer service for Lake County residents, and that will involve evaluating operations at all times.

Notably, some of the few contributions Jordan raised came from companies linked to the developer and former US Senate candidate. Carlos Berufwho has pending legal action against Baker’s Office for local property appraisals.

“You inherit whatever business is left over from your predecessor,” Jordan said. “I will consider it with legal counsel and look for any way to move forward towards a resolution. That’s the goal. But I’m not making any assumptions about the case.”

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