Tallahassee City Commissioner Jeremy Matlow is now leading in the race for Tallahassee mayor, with former state lawmaker Loranne Ausley not far behind.
With 65 of 80 precincts reporting, Matlow was in first with 36.27% of the vote, Ausley was in second with 33.83%, Daryl Parks was in third with 25.04% and Michael Foust was in last with 4.86%.
With the future of City Hall on the line, the contest for Tallahassee mayor, was easily the most expensive, negative and drama-filled race on Leon County ballots.
Polls closed at 7 p.m. in the four-person race to succeed Mayor John Dailey, who opted to bow out after two terms on a bitterly divided City Commission marked by years of infighting.
Matlow, Dailey’s longtime foil and the leader of Tallahassee’s progressive movement, decided to take a political risk and leave his Seat 3 post for a mayoral run.
He found two major challengers in Ausley, former longtime state lawmaker who was defeated in 2022 by Corey Simon in the Senate District 3 race, and Parks, a civil-rights attorney and businessman who ran for the same seat in 2024 and lost.
All three candidates are Democrats and millionaires, according to financial disclosure reports. They differed significantly in their approach to a multitude of issues, however, including development.
Michael Foust, an IT consultant and the lone Republican in the nonpartisan race, mounted an underfunded challenge but wasn’t expected to play more than a spoiler role.
None of the candidates were expected to get over the 50% mark, the threshold needed to win the seat outright and avoid a runoff in the Nov. 2 general election.
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In that likely scenario, the top two vote-getters will advance for a final round that will only see even more money attack ads go out to a broader voting audience.
Ausley, the descendant of an old Tallahassee family whose grandfather, Charles Saxon Ausley, served as mayor in the 1940s, ran on a pledge to bring civility back to City Hall, which also doubled as a dig on Matlow. She served 14 years in the Legislature, including two stints in the House and an abbreviated two years in the Senate.
An attorney and co-founder of Whole Child Leon, a nonprofit focusing on children 5 and under, Ausley began her political comeback attempt not long after a serious bike accident during a Florida Ironman triathlon in Panama City. The crash left her in a coma for three weeks.
In one of her last text blasts to voters, she said she wanted to “stop the bickering” and focus on issues like lowering costs and keeping neighborhoods safe.
“I’m ready to use my two decades of common sense bipartisan leadership to improve the quality of life for every person who calls Tallahassee home,” she said.
Parks, the former law partner of noted civil rights attorney Ben Crump and the owner of an airport concessions business, also mounted his first political comeback after the Senate loss two years ago. He pledged to focus on economic development and declared himself “proudly pro-developer” at one forum.
He first came to public attention in the 2006 beating death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson by guards at a Panama City juvenile boot camp. He also represented the fatal shootings of Trayvon Martin in 2013 and Michael Brown in 2014.
In one of his 30-second commercials, Parks pledged to work for unity.
“As I go through the community, there’s one message that’s been clear to me: the people want to see a mayor that brings the City Commission together,” he said. “I’ll be that mayor. I’ll bring the City Commission together and lead the city in a way that makes us all proud.”
Matlow, co-owner of Gaines Street Pies, pitched himself as the candidate who would stand up to developers and other special interests — and found himself the target of both through an onslaught of attacks ads.
He was first elected in 2020 on promises to clean up City Hall after corruption scandals but has been sidelined largely amid a long list of disagreements with the city manager and the 3-2 voting majority, which consists of Dailey and Commissioners Dianne Williams-Cox and Curtis Richardson.
He helped lead opposition to the $109 million sale of Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare’s hospital to FSU and the sale of city-owned golf course land to Capital City Country Club, two controversial issues that played out in the run-up to the mayoral fight.
“This campaign has smashed all the records,” he said in one social media ad. “We fought to protect Lake Jackson, to ban AI data centers. By all accounts, this has been the greatest, most energetic campaign in Tallahassee history.”
PACS and candidates push mayor’s race spending to nearly $3M
While the candidates themselves tried to stick to positive messages, the campaign turned ugly fast amid an avalanche of mostly anti-Matlow PAC-funded mailers and ads, a surprise bomb drop by Matlow’s then-campaign manager on a candidate in another city race and finger-pointing between Matlow and Parks.
At least eight political action committees dropped a barrage of mailers, most of them urging voters to support Ausley and reject Matlow. A political committee run by a Gainesville Republican operative called Vote Differently sent out wave after wave of mailers labeling Matlow a “disappointment” to progressives.
One of its last mailers of the primary showed photos of roaches, a reference to previous inspections of his pizza restaurant, and dinged him for taking $1 million in federal PPP loan money during the pandemic. Ausley and Parks, who was featured in one PAC ad attacking Matlow, denied any involvement in them.
All told, the PACs, including some active in other races in Tallahassee and elsewhere, raised nearly $2 million in the months leading up to the campaign.
The candidates raised nearly $1 million between them, with Ausley collecting $371,368, Parks raising $343,232 and Matlow taking in $219,369.
In late July, Matlow’s campaign manager dropped a video on Facebook with Orlando police body camera footage of an incident involving Talethia Edwards, a candidate for City Commission Seat 3, who parked illegally in a disabled parking spot.
His campaign manager resigned the following day. Parks held a news conference to condemn Matlow’s campaign for the video, with Matlow responding soon after with his own news conference.
(This is a developing story. Check back for updates).
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Results show tight Tallahassee mayor race between Ausley, Matlow
Reporting by Jeff Burlew, Tallahassee Democrat / Tallahassee Democrat
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jeff Burlew, Tallahassee Democrat | USA TODAY Network
