Politics
All 4 candidates qualify for Special Election to replace Joe Casello in HD 90
All four candidates running to replace the late Rep. Joe Casello in House District 90 have qualified for the contest.
HD 90 is a Democratic-leaning district that spans a coastal portion of Palm Beach County including Boynton Beach, Delray Beach and part of Highland Beach.
The qualifying period for the Special Election closed at noon Tuesday, but candidates weren’t confirmed to have qualified on the Division of Elections website until after 4 p.m.
Each candidate qualified by paying a qualifying fee.
The race — which includes a City Commissioner, a nonprofit founder and community activist, a political operative who has spurred conspiracy theories, and a serial litigant who has sued several governments and banks — will include a Republican Primary culminating Sept. 30 between two GOP members.
A Democrat and a no-party candidate are also running.
The General Election is Dec. 9.
Here’s a look at each candidate.
Rob Long — Democrat
Atop the list, alphabetically, is Delray Beach Commissioner Rob Long, who was campaigning to take the House District 90 seat in 2026 with Casello’s blessing before the lawmaker’s passing July 18.
Long, 40, also carries nods from Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman, Boca Raton state Sen. Tina Scott Polsky, state Reps. Tae Edmonds, Kelly Skidmore and Debra Tendrich, and former Palm Beach State Attorney Dave Aronberg.
A political consultant, author and loss prevention expert, Long won his City Hall seat in March 2023.
Long has served on numerous government, advisory and advocacy boards, including those of the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency, Greater Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce, Friends of the Arthur R. Mitchell Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge and the Palm Beach Soil and Water Conservation District, where he helped build the Ambassadors to the Everglades program for high schoolers.
According to Long’s campaign website, he wants to advance at the state level many of the priorities he pushed for locally, from boosting the economy, supporting small businesses and protecting the environment to promoting sustainable development.
Addressing Florida’s property insurance crisis and supporting abortion rights are also high on his list.
Between February and June 30, the most recent quarterly deadline for campaign finance reporting, Long raised nearly $69,000 between his campaign account and political committee, Long Lasting Progress PC.
Bill Reicherter — Republican
Repeat candidate Bill Reicherter has again thrown his hat into the political ring, rerouting his short-lived candidacy for Governor to instead try to flip HD 90 red in December.
Reicherter, 56, has long owned and operated a signage company. He is also a licensed Realtor, runs a local nonprofit and offers court expertise as a witness for construction-related cases, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He serves on the Palm Beach County Zoning Commission, Palm Beach County Construction Board of Adjustment and Appeals, the Board of Directors for foster parent organization ChildNet and is Board Chair of Inspiring My Generation, a suicide prevention and mental health foundation.
Other involvements include previously serving as Chair of the YMCA of Broward County — where state records show he’s long lived, outside of HD 90. His campaign also lists Parkland, which sits in Broward in House District 95, as its address.
Reicherter challenged Casello last year and lost by 12 percentage points. He ran unsuccessfully against Polsky in 2022.
His campaign website says that, if elected, he’ll support legislation benefiting small businesses and trades, expand mental health resources with an emphasis on first responders and veterans, allocate state appropriations to the district, and provide aid to seniors.
He also vows to support more skilled worker training, clean water initiatives and legislation to protect the environment and boost local resiliency.
Supporters his site cites include Palm Beach County Commissioner Marci Woodward, Delray Beach Mayor Tom Carney, Boynton Beach Commissioner Thomas Turkin, former state Rep. Rick Roth, former Palm Beach City Commissioner Mack McCray, BLU-PAC of Boca Raton and the Association of Builders and Contractors’ Florida East Coast chapter.
His campaign account reported no activity between when he filed to run June 12 and the end of the month.
Maria Zack — Republican
Longtime Georgia lobbyist and conspiracy theorist Maria Zack, who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, is hoping to make the jump from political operative to elected official this year.
It’s not clear whether she still wields the same fundraising might; she filed to run July 30 and, as such, has not yet reported any campaign finance activities.
Zack, who turns 61 on Aug. 21, owns and operates Quantum Solutions Software Inc., which her LinkedIn page describes as a company that assists “productivity in business, non-profits, and clubs while propelling value driven success and enhancing people’s lives.”
State records show she was registered to vote in Broward County between 2018 and 2021, when she moved from Pompano Beach to Palm Beach.
In 2014, while still living in Georgia, Zack founded the federal-level political action committee Stand for Principle PAC, which through 2017 raised and spent nearly $420,000 backing Cruz’s failed presidential bid. She also ran former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Atlanta campaign office during the 2012 presidential race.
In 2017, Zack launched Nations in Action, a Lantana-headquartered nonprofit that claims to have uncovered evidence of “shadow government” conspiracies to “depopulate countries a COVID attack” and rig the 2020 election by beaming software hacks from foreign satellites over Italy into voting machines.
Her pinned post on X references that second, QAnon-affiliated claim, known in conspiracy circles as “#ItalyGate.”
Zack, who does not yet appear to have created a campaign website or published platform, appeared in the 2024 film, “Stopping the Steal,” about Trump’s disproven assertion that the 2020 election was fraudulent. IMDB credits her in the film as a “conspiracy theorist.”
Karen Yeh — no party affiliation
Also running is Karen Ching Hsien Yeh Ho, also known as “Karen Yeh,” who has no party affiliation.
Yeh Ho, 63, has filed multiple, mostly property-related lawsuits in Florida, including a challenge to the loss of her homestead tax exemption and allegations of unconstitutional property tax assessments.
In one case, she sued several Palm Beach County government officials and agencies over how her property tax was valued. In another filed in February, she sued a Florida subsidiary of Northland Investment Corp. over what she contended was a fraudulent property transfer.
She has also sued multiple banks.
Like Zack, Yeh Ho filed to run July 30, so her fundraising and campaign spending numbers aren’t yet available.
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The cold war between Florida’s Governor and his predecessor is nearly seven years old and tensions show no signs of thawing.
On Friday, Sen. Rick Scott weighed in on Florida Politics’ reporting on the Agency for Health Care Administration’s apparent repayment of $10 million of Medicaid money from a settlement last year, which allegedly had been diverted to the Hope Florida Foundation, summarily filtered through non-profits through political committees, and spent on political purposes.
“I appreciate the efforts by the Florida legislature to hold Hope Florida accountable. Millions in tax dollars for poor kids have no business funding political ads. If any money was misspent, then it should be paid back by the entities responsible, not the taxpayers,” Scott posted to X.
While AHCA Deputy Chief of Staff Mallory McManus says that is an “incorrect” interpretation, she did not respond to a follow-up question asking for further detail this week.
The $10 million under scrutiny was part of a $67 million settlement from state Medicaid contractor Centene, which DeSantis said was “a cherry on top” in the settlement, arguing it wasn’t truly from Medicaid money.
But in terms of the Scott-DeSantis contretemps, it’s the latest example of tensions that seemed to start even before DeSantis was sworn in when Scott left the inauguration of his successor, and which continue in the race to succeed DeSantis, with Scott enthusiastic about current front runner Byron Donalds.
Earlier this year, Scott criticized DeSantis’ call to repeal so-called vaccine mandates for school kids, saying parents could already opt out according to state law.
While running for re-election to the Senate in 2024, Scott critiqued the Heartbeat Protection Act, a law signed by DeSantis that banned abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy with some exceptions, saying the 15 week ban was “where the state’s at.”
In 2023 after Scott endorsed Donald Trump for President while DeSantis was still a candidate, DeSantis said it was an attempt to “short circuit” the voters.
That same year amid DeSantis’ conflict over parental rights legislation with The Walt Disney Co., Scott said it was important for Governors to “work with” major companies in their states.
The critiques went both ways.
When running for office, DeSantis distanced himself from Scott amid controversy about the Senator’s blind trust for his assets as Governor.
“I basically made decisions to serve in uniform, as a prosecutor, and in Congress to my financial detriment,” DeSantis said in October 2018. “I’m not entering (office) with a big trust fund or anything like that, so I’m not going to be entering office with those issues.”
In 2020, when the state’s creaky unemployment website couldn’t handle the surge of applicants for reemployment assistance as the pandemic shut down businesses, DeSantis likened it to a “jalopy in the Daytona 500” and Scott urged him to “quit blaming others” for the website his administration inherited.
The chill between the former and current Governors didn’t abate in time for 2022’s hurricane season, when Scott said DeSantis didn’t talk to him after the fearsome Hurricane Ian ravaged the state.
Enforcing what Gov. Ron DeSantis calls the “rule of law” violates international law and norms, according to a global group weighing in this week.
Amnesty International is the latest group to condemn the treatment of immigrants with disputed documentation at two South Florida lockups, the Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome) and the Everglades Detention Facility (Alligator Alcatraz).
The latter has been a priority of state government since President Donald Trump was inaugurated.
The organization claims treatment of the detained falls “far below international human rights standards.”
Amnesty released a report Friday covering what it calls a “a research trip to southern Florida in September 2025, to document the human rights impacts of federal and state migration and asylum policies on mass detention and deportation, access to due process, and detention conditions since President Trump took office on 20 January 2025.”
“The routine and prolonged use of shackles on individuals detained for immigration purposes, both at detention facilities and during transfer between facilities, constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and may amount to torture or other ill-treatment,” the report concludes.
Gov. DeSantis’ administration spent much of 2025 prioritizing Alligator Alcatraz.
While the state did not comment on the report, Amnesty alleges the state’s “decision to cut resources from essential social and emergency management programs while continuing to allocate resources for immigration detention represents a grave misallocation of state resources. This practice undermines the fulfillment of economic and social rights for Florida residents and reinforces a system of detention that facilitates human rights violations.”
Amnesty urges a series of policy changes that won’t happen, including the repeal of immigration legislation in Senate Bill 4-C, which proscribes penalties for illegal entry and illegal re-entry, mandates imprisonment for being in Florida without being a legal immigrant, and capital punishment for any such undocumented immigrant who commits capital crimes.
The group also recommends ending 287(g) agreements allowing locals to help with immigration enforcement, stopping practices like shackling and solitary confinement, and closing Alligator Alcatraz itself.
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