ST. CLOUD– The battle for one of several Florida House seats Democrats hope to regain from Republicans this year pits two Osceola County residents against each other who couldn’t be more opposite in their views and backgrounds.
Maria Revelles, 54, is a single mother of six and cancer survivor from Puerto Rico with a long career as a community organizer and union representative. Like many who live in the sprawling House District 47 that includes St. Cloud, Kissimmee, Lake Nona and Buena Ventura Lakes, she is a transplant from another state and a registered Democrat.
Paula Stark, 67, the incumbent, is an Alabama-born, Florida-raised Republican and a former Miss Osceola. She is a grandmother, and a well-known fixture in St. Cloud and Kissimmee, having spent decades running the Osceola News Gazette and St. Cloud Main Street, an economic development nonprofit.
A Democrat occupied the largely Hispanic and Democratic seat until Stark won during a Red wave in 2022 that witnessed a collapse in Hispanic voter turnout. The Florida Democratic Party is putting thousands of dollars into Revelles’ campaign to win back District 47 and flip blue several other seats surrounding Orlando in an effort to break the supermajority hold that Republicans currently possess in the House.
Stark knows she is in the minority in a district that voted overwhelmingly for President Biden in 2020 and where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans four to three. But she said her moderate views fit with the district’s diverse constituency.
“I’m going to try to represent everybody to the best of my ability,” Stark said during an interview with the Orlando Sentinel.
She voted against Florida’s six-week abortion ban last year and against a state preemption of local rent control, as her constituents wanted, she said.
But her voting record the last two years shows she has sided with her Republican colleagues more often than not on several controversial and high-profile issues, including anti-immigrant and anti-union measures that Revelles said hurt the families that make up much of the district’s population.
“She’s in the wrong place,” Revelles said.
And when Stark, who was a delegate for former President Donald Trump at this year’s Republican National Convention, shows up at a Democratic events like a recent rally for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for President, people don’t buy it, Revelles said.
Stark is seen “as someone who lives in this district but votes against our interests,” Revelles said.
Stark also has also been called out for failing to file district expense reports on time and filing them riddled with errors and missing receipts. House officials froze her account as she works with them to resolve the errors and omissions.
Her biggest betrayal to the community, Revelles said, was her vote with the Republican majority to pass an anti-immigration bill pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The bill makes it a felony to bring people into the state who got into the country illegally, punishes them for helping migrants get official identification cards, and creates penalties for companies that knowingly hire undocumented aliens.
The new law also requires any hospital that accepts Medicaid to identify whether the patient is a U.S. citizen and report the number of patients hospitals treat who are in the country unlawfully.
“Not only is she not representing her constituents, but she is making life more difficult for people who may or may not have all their documents,” Revelles said. “And it endangers those who are citizens or documented. You can’t just look at someone and decide if they are documented or not.”
Many of the district’s constituents work low-wage jobs in hospitals, theme parks, hotels and restaurants would benefit from union representation, she said.
Stark criticized the Legislature for getting “mixed up with social issues, not real issues,” but voted for many of the Republican culture war bills, including dissolving Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District after Disney opposed DeSantis’ so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill prohibiting teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender issues in the classroom. She also voted to ban the use of preferred pronouns and prohibit gender-affirming care for minors.
Revelles said she would have voted against those measures.
Stark also sided with Republicans on other controversial bills that pushed conservative causes, including prohibiting cities and counties from passing regulations to protect workers from extreme heat, banning homeless people from outdoor camping, targeting theaters and other venues that put on drag shows, and carrying a concealed firearm without a permit.
Stark said she couldn’t vote against every Republican bill and expect to get her own legislation passed, including a bill that gives mobile home residents a way to dispute rent increases.
And she felt the heat from GOP leaders when she opposed some of their signature legislation.
For instance, after Stark voted against tort reform legislation by Rep. Tommy Gregory, R-Lakewood Ranch, he kept her bill to require autism training for police from getting heard in the House Judiciary Committee, which he chaired.
If she is elected, Revelles said, one of her first acts would be to file a bill to expand Medicaid, which many others have tried to do but failed.
“For 15 years I was a union rep for nurses, and many times I lobbied for healthcare funding,” Revelles said, “so it won’t be my first rodeo.”
She also said she would not be “a rubber stamp for the insurance industry” and wants to take a “harder look” at insurance costs.
“Whether you are a homeowner or not, insurance affects you,” she said.
