The sole Democrat running for a seat on the Sarasota County Commission garnered an unlikely champion when the chair of a local MAGA group endorsed her campaign earlier this fall.
Conni Brunni, who heads the Sarasota MAGA Patriots, said it was the first time in her adult life that she has pushed for a Democrat to win a seat in any office, noting that her endorsement was not on behalf of the right-wing club she helps run.
“I believe Julie London is the only thing standing between us in this community and unbridled development,” Brunni said.
London’s campaign is still a long shot.
Less than a quarter of registered voters in her district are Democrats. Her Republican opponent, Jim DeNiro, has raised nearly six times the money. And a Democrat hasn’t won a seat on the Sarasota County Commission in more than half a century.
But the prominent conservative’s endorsement signals a deep dissatisfaction among some local GOP voters who are frustrated with money in politics and what they see as local decision-making that privileges large real estate developers.
Brunni is among a few high-profile Republicans on the Suncoast who have opted to endorse Democrats in elections this year. In September, Manatee Commissioner Jason Bearden took to social media to urge his supporters to vote for Democrats for two open seats on the commission. Then, Manatee County Commissioner George Kruse announced he would campaign for gubernatorial candidate David Jolly and U.S. congressional candidate Kelly Kirschner.
In interviews with Suncoast Searchlight, officials, candidates, activists and political observers said they have been frustrated with the pace of new development in the region, while also pointing to other concerns — like the proliferation of Flock surveillance technology and state preemptions on local control.
National polling shows Democrats gaining ground in Republican strongholds as approval for President Donald Trump plummets. In the heavily conservative Suncoast, hyperlocal issues like infrastructure and development have galvanized residents across the political spectrum — and could shift voters away from Republicans downballot.
“I think we’re gonna see, potentially, Republicans crossing over this time, or just choosing not to turn out,” said Lonna Atkeson, a political scientist at Florida State University whose research focuses on elections and voter behavior.
Julie London is a soft-spoken, senior-care advocate who runs the local political blog Dear Bubbie. After years of following area politics, she told Suncoast Searchlight she decided to run for County Commission because she personally wanted another option on her ballot.
London pointed to regulating real estate development and county negotiations over property sales, as well as measures to support seniors in the community, as key issues in her platform. She added that she hoped to bring transparency to the position if elected.
She criticized the county’s attempt to purchase 2 acres on Stickney Point for $18 million, saying that small business owners who would be impacted by the sale had been disrespected in the process.
London said she supports the county’s recent efforts to block proposals for large-scale residential developments in rural areas. Developers have sued Sarasota County over its narrower interpretation of the Live Local Act, which allows developers to bypass local zoning regulations when they build large residential developments that include below-market-rate housing.
The law has drawn ire from residents in rural and suburban areas, and scrutiny from housing experts who said it will do little to increase the affordable housing supply.
“With the Leave Local Act, I believe people are losing their voices,” London said. “So what do we do? We do fight it.”
On issues relating to land development and infrastructure, London said she would turn to resident groups like Philippi Creek Coalition, which has advocated for maintenance and dredging in Philippi Creek in the wake of 2024 flooding.
London’s personal views lean liberal. She has attended and praised the anti-Trump “No Kings” rallies, decried Gov. Ron DeSantis’s gerrymandering efforts as “racist” and wrote of the conservative Christian crusader James Dobson’s 2025 death: “I ain’t crying.”
But her tough stance on developers has drawn some support from people she may in other circumstances count as political opponents.
But Brunni decided to endorse London anyway because of the outsize role the county plays in regulating growth, despite holding some “diametrically opposing” views.
Brunni said other right-wing activists are also privately supporting London’s campaign. Even the conservative Facebook group Sarasota County School District - Transparency Project, which proclaims it aims to “keep leftist indoctrination OUT of our schools,” has shared London’s campaign materials.
“She’ll do what’s best for the community, not the developer community,” Brunni said. “On that, I believe she and I could at least have a conversation.”
London said she has had productive conversations with Republican voters in her community. She has come to feel that “if our campaign is a microcosm of how the nation is going to go, we’re not going to have this horrible divide,” a realization she said “made it worthwhile for me to run.”
Alexandra Coe, a member of the Sarasota County Charter Review Board who chairs the Republican Liberty Caucus and sits on the Republican Executive Committee, said she could not endorse anyone running against a Republican due to her role in the party.
But she understands why some would.
Coe pointed to the flow of special-interest money into elections as a key source of frustration among Republicans — especially those who closely follow local and state politics.
“You cannot really have free and fair elections,” Coe said. “That’s what everybody cries for. ‘We got all these immigrants, you know, they’re voting [and] they’re not even citizens.’ It's like, you know what? A bigger issue than that is the way that voters are emotionally manipulated by millions and millions of dollars that are poured into these attack ads.”
Coe said she and other members of the Liberty Caucus have started a working group focused on the issue of surveillance in policing — another issue on which she said local residents should push back against elected officials.
“At the Republican Liberty Caucus, one of our mantras is we look to make Republicans Republican again,” said Coe, “bringing the Republican Party back to some of the core principles of limited government.”
In Manatee County, two Republicans elected to the commission — Kruse and Bearden — have also come out to endorse Democratic candidates for local, state and federal offices.
Their endorsements come two years after Kruse was elected alongside other conservation and slow-growth minded Republicans that rode a wave of anti-developer sentiment to win primary elections despite being outspent by their opponents.
Since taking office, the Manatee County commissioners have sought to implement modest reforms, including restoring wetland protections and increasing the local impact fees, which require developers to finance infrastructure needs associated with building projects. They’ve faced a major hurdle, though, in the form of Senate Bill 180, a controversial measure blocking local governments from imposing regulations on development in the wake of major storms.
After the commission moved to pass the wetlands and impact fees measures, the DeSantis administration wrote commissioners letters threatening “consequences,” including litigation. In July 2025, DeSantis’s chief financial officer, Blaise Ingoglia, made Manatee the first county subject to a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) audit.
Bearden, who describes himself as the county’s “most conservative commissioner,” has put out videos on social media calling for an end to what he described as “corruption” on the board — and endorsing Democrats Charles Smith and Reggie Bellamy in the November commissioner elections.
“Republicans risk losing trust of Floridians when special interests have more influence than the people,” said Bearden in a video he posted on Facebook on Oct. 5. “Floridians are sick and tired of being sick and tired. They’re tired of sitting in traffic, they’re tired of watching infrastructure fall behind growth, they’re tired of higher costs, they’re tired of political insiders having access that ordinary citizens don’t have.”
Wearing a “Kingdom Gatekeepers” polo shirt — the name of a group in Sarasota and Manatee counties that seeks to bring together a “body of believers empowered by the Holy Spirit to transform the culture” — he accused Republicans in office of straying from conservative principles.
He added that roads, sewers and traffic maintenance aren’t “Republican or Democrat” and called on voters to “stop blindly supporting somebody because there’s an ‘R’ next to their name.”
Kruse has not endorsed Democrats for the commission. But he has endorsed District 16 congressional candidate Kelly Kirschner and co-chairs the group Republicans for Jolly, which has thrown its support behind the Democratic gubernatorial candidate.
“What they’ve been doing in Tallahassee has been destructive,” said Kruse, who said he felt the Republican Party’s domination in state politics has led to unaccountable governance.
“They all row in the same direction,” Kruse said. “What we’ve seen from that is nothing that reflects what the people want. We begged them not to vote for Senate Bill 180, and we begged them to fix Senate Bill 180 … and they did not.”
Whether or not voters who are further removed from the political process agree with Kruse is a separate question.
Atkeson, the FSU professor, emphasized that voters may be more likely to cast a ballot for a candidate from the opposing party in hyperlocal elections, where officials have little influence over hot-button issues of national interest.
She noted that party affiliation is a helpful “cue” for voters looking for candidates who align with their values, but added that entrenched partisanship could erode elected officials’ responsiveness to voter concerns overall.
“Where’s the accountability?” Atkeson said. “If all that matters is party, then we don't really have a democratic society.”
Alice Herman is a watchdog/investigative reporter for Suncoast Searchlight. Email her at alice@suncoastsearchlight.org.
This article first appeared on Suncoast Searchlight and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 
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