SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) — Former Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight, who served in the position for 12 years, ran for the District 3 county commission seat and won big.
In the primary election, he defeated incumbent Neil Rainford, who was appointed to the position by Gov. Ron DeSantis, by more than 20 percentage points. In Tuesday's general election, Knight beat NPA candidate Shari Thornton by almost 40 percentage points.
He said he hopes to make a positive impact in the community and be a part of making "good public policy that works for the community".
"For me, going into this seat, that is what I enjoy doing is fixing problems, and being part of the fix of the problem," Knight said.
On his campaign website, three pledges are listed.
- stop overdevelopment and hold developers accountable
- report locally on the costs of illegal immigration
- stop budget and tax bloat
The topic of overdevelopment is something that has taken center stage in the county many times in the past several years. Residents from Old Miakka to Siesta Key have worked to fight off high-density development and some have even taken the issue to court.
"We have had a lot of problems where the county is just rubber-stamping every development that goes before them," Siesta Key resident Lourdes Ramirez said. "Even when they realize it is not in tune with the comprehensive plan, they just approve it. I really did feel that we weren’t being listened to. In 2021, when we had the hotel hearings, the county commission listened to hours of testimony from lawyers, from citizens, from staff, and they still approved it with very little discussion. I don’t think a question was even asked."
The former sheriff said he wants to bring back a "representative government."
"A lot of things are being neglected, ignored and the public wasn’t being heard, and I didn’t think the new communities going in are being good neighbors," Knight said. "We all want to live in nice neighborhoods, we all want people to move here, we are going to build houses and that is going to happen, but we want it done the right way."
Knight said he hopes to see a change in how the commission operates as a whole.
"I think as the community sees us work and we start to work more openly," he said. "What I am hoping for is for not everything to be done behind closed doors and put on the consent agenda and voted on. My hope is that we can have open dialogue, and the public could be heard and that if we disagree with the public, we can give that answer and in the future, the public can decide if they want to keep us as their elected official or not. It is as simple as that."
We reached out to the existing county commission to see if they had a response to the former sherrif's comments about bringing back a representative government, but have not received any responses back.