Maria Zack — who wants to end all vaccine mandates, eliminate property taxes, and believes Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election — is the new Republican nominee to run for a vacant seat in the Florida House of Representatives.
Unofficial results posted by the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office showed Zack with 53% of the vote and Bill Reicherter with 47% in Tuesday’s primary.
Zack received 1,419 votes to Reicherter’s 1,260.
A handful of mail ballots remain uncounted. But the number is so small the outcome won’t change.
The newly minted Republican nominee will face Democrat Rob Long in a December special election to fill the vacancy created by the July death of state Rep. Joe Casello.
Reicherter said Wednesday that voters should cast ballots for Long, not Zack, in the special general election in December. “I believe they should elect Rob Long,” he said in a telephone interview. “I don’t feel she’s the proper candidate to win that election and serve the people of District 90.”
Zack didn’t immediately respond to a question about Reicherter’s support for Long.
Earlier, she said via text that she attributed her victory “to God’s will in my life and to concerned citizens who are determined to elect someone who will work relentlessly to fix the outrageous property taxes and waste in government. We must and can guarantee Good Governance for generations by providing full transparency and audits in government, and that is what will restore trust in government.”
As is typical of special elections at unusual times, the primary turnout was exceedingly low. Of the 31,208 active registered voters in the 90th House District, 2,686 — just 8.6% — voted in the primary, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections unofficial results whow.
Florida is a closed primary state, so only Republicans were eligible to vote. Long is the only Democrat running, so his party had no primary.
Zack doesn’t accept that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. Asked in a September interview who won, she said, “I can’t tell you. I assume it was President Trump, but I can’t tell you until there’s a full investigation with all its affidavits and transparency.”
Reicherter said Biden won a majority of electoral votes and was president. And in a written questionnaire answer, he called Zack “a single-issue conspiracy theorist.” Zack objected to the way Reicherter characterized her. “To call people names is very ridiculous and very unprofessional,” she said.
The two Republican candidates disagreed on several issues.
Zack said all vaccine mandates should be eliminated. Reicherter said longstanding childhood vaccine mandates should continue. He said he opposes mandates for what he termed “new vaccines.”
Zack said she’d like to see property taxes eliminated. Reicherter said he’d like to see relief for property taxpayers but said elimination isn’t realistic because without that revenue local governments wouldn’t have the money to pay for vital services.
District 90 is essentially a Delray Beach-Boynton Beach district bordered by Hypoluxo Road in the north, Military Trail on the west (with a couple of pockets west of Military), the Delray Beach-Boca Raton border on the South and the Atlantic Ocean on the east.
Besides the newly minted Republican nominee and Democrat Long, who is a member of the Delray Beach City Commission, no party affiliation candidate Karen Yeh will be on the Dec. 9 special general election ballot.
Long’s campaign declined to comment about the Republican primary results.
His campaign did, however, release an additional list of endorsements on Wednesday, including six Democratic elected officials and eight organizations. The new endorsements include the Broward, Palm Beaches & St. Lucie Realtors association and from Associated Industries of Florida.
The endorsement from AIF — which bills itself as “The Voice of Florida Business” dedicated to the “principles of prosperity and free enterprise” — is notable because it usually endorses Republicans. In 2024 it endorsed 95 Republican legislative candidates and 13 Democrats.
“Rob Long is the kind of leader Florida needs — someone who has shown he will work with anyone, whether they are a Democrat, Republican, or Independent, in order to find common-sense solutions that help Florida families,” AIF President and CEO Brewster Bevis said in a written statement. “Rob understands what it takes to build a strong, pro-business economy that works for everyone.”
The 90th House District is heavily Democratic.
Registered voters are about 40% Democratic, 30% Republican, 27% no party affiliation/independent with the rest in various minor parties. In the 2024 presidential election, Democrat Kamala Harris won 54.6% of the vote in District 90 and Republican Trump received 44.2%, according to an analysis by Democratic data analyst Matthew Isbell.
“My comment is unfortunately that the Republican Party in my personal opinion doesn’t understand the district, the district’s needs and the type of candidate that is best suited for District 90,” Reicherter said Wednesday. “Instead they push far right Republican values over the needs of the people.”
That’s not what happened, Zack said. “Elected officials must protect the values that the majority of Americans hold dear, that is what I am providing, and that is why I won.”
Special elections almost always have low turnout, making the outcome trickier to predict since a small number of voters can have a huge impact. And the final stretch of the District 90 campaign — between Thanksgiving in November and Hanukkah and Christmas in December — isn’t a prime time for politics, with most people focused on other things.
Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.
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