Candidates for St. Johns County Commission District 4, from left: James Galloway, Krista Joseph and Sam Williams | Photos submitted or shared from candidate's campaign social media page.
Published on July 16, 2026 at 3:05 pm
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Voters in northeast St. Johns County will decide next month whether County Commissioner Krista Joseph will retain her seat on the board or give it up to one of her two challengers.
The August primary election for the County Commission seats is not only open to all voters regardless of their party affiliation, it will also decide who wins the seat — no November general election needed.
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Joseph says another four-year term on the board that makes decisions about how and where the county grows will enable her to continue her slow-the-growth agenda. Two candidates, James Galloway and Sam Paul Williams, are looking to unseat her.
Running for County Commission
Krista Joseph was elected in 2022 to represent District 4 on the County Commission — that includes Nocatee, Palm Valley and Ponte Vedra.
Joseph has been a firebrand on the board, sitting at the center of arguments about St. Johns County’s growth and earning herself a censure that was later overturned for taking time on the dais to talk about the opportunity to vote some of her fellow county commissioners out of office.
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Joseph says she almost didn’t run for a second term on the commission.
Earlier this year, her husband’s health was in decline. Ronald Joseph had spent several years fighting ALS, with his wife as his caretaker. But just days before he passed away, Joseph says something he told her made her reconsider.
“He pulled me over and said, ‘Look, you must run again. It gives you purpose and you love helping people.’” Joseph says. “That’s the day I decided.”
That was in January, but Joseph did not submit her paperwork to run for office until March. In the meantime, another candidate had already filed to run two months prior: Sam Williams.
Williams says his position on slowing the area’s growth isn’t very different from Joseph’s, and that had he known she was planning to run again, he may not have thrown his hat into the ring.
“I wasn’t looking to unseat her, but by the time she decided she wanted to run, I already had several hundred donors and a lot of support behind me and a lot of people that invested time and money in me,” Williams says. “The train was already moving.”
By mid-March, the candidates for the seat included Joseph, Williams, local attorney James Galloway and Heather Lane Neville, an employee with the embattled waste processing facility Indianhead Biomass.
Neville was heavily criticized on the social media page Fight for St. Johns County — run by Joseph’s longtime supporter Nicole Crosby — and eventually withdrew from the race, leaving Galloway, Joseph and Williams.
Neville cited the race’s “crowded field” as a reason for stepping away. She endorsed Williams for District 4.
Experience of different kinds
As the two candidates with the most governmental experience — and the most money in their campaign coffers — Joseph and Williams each made a different case for their candidacy.
Williams is a lifelong North Floridian, with deep ties to the area through a 30-year career with the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office. He has lived in Ponte Vedra for nearly 40 years, he says, and retired from the Sheriff’s Office in 2020 after rising to the position of running the county jail.
“Nobody has 30 years of experience working in this community already that’s running for any of the county commission seats,” Williams says. “We need some leadership. I bring a pretty good amount of leadership training and experience with me.”
Joseph moved to Florida in 2007 and has lived in the Ponte Vedra area for 13 years. She stresses the experience of her four years as a county commissioner.
If County Commissioners Sarah Arnold and Christian Whitehurst are removed from the board for their recent criminal charges, Joseph says she would be the most senior elected official on the five-member board. The two other commissioners, Clay Murphy and Ann Taylor, were elected in 2024.
“Do you want to take the risk of having a brand new commissioner in my seat, having to get up to speed over a year and a half or two years and not know what to do, with two other inexperienced commissioners?” Joseph asks. ”There is not a chance that that is a good thing for our county.”
Galloway, speaking at a St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce campaign forum, says his experience comes from his time working as an attorney and serving as the president of his homeowners association.
A fifth-generation Floridian, Galloway said he put down roots in St. Johns County when he moved to the area from Jacksonville in 2019.
“I like to keep things local,” Galloway said during a candidate forum last month. “I like farmers markets, I like local parks, our beaches, and I want to preserve that so my family, my son, will have a wonderful place to grow up in.”
Running for office
Although Galloway, Joseph and Williams may cite similarities in their policies, their campaign finances and supporters illuminate key differences.
As of the end of June, Galloway had the smallest campaign warchest in the race with roughly $7,600, most of which he financed himself.
Joseph, meanwhile, had raised just over $30,000 by the end of June. Just $6,000 of that came from her own pockets, while the rest came from donations.
Williams, meanwhile, as of the end of June, had raised more than double what Joseph had: almost $65,000. Aside from covering the cost of campaign yard signs, stamps and other expenditures, next to none of those campaign funds came from Williams himself.
Among Williams’ donors are some big names. Republican congressman John Rutherford and his wife, Patricia, contributed $500 to Williams’ campaign, as did former St. Johns County Commissioner Henry Dean and Clay County Sheriff Michelle Cook.
Williams also received $1,000 donations from the St. Johns County Lodge #113 Fraternal Order of Police and former St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar.
Campaign promises
All three candidates for the District 4 seat have expressed, in one way or another, skepticism about the pace of growth in St. Johns County and a desire to maintain a good quality of life for residents.
Like their approaches to development, Joseph and Williams have both expressed a desire to curb the potential construction of data centers in the area as well as continuing to slow residential growth.
Joseph leans on her past four years in office as evidence of her keeping her promise of slowing the growth. She points to St. Johns County’s receiving fewer plans for single-family homes this year compared to last as a win.
She has also tied her own campaign to that of County Commission District 2 candidate Martin Pyszczymuka. By electing her and Pyszczymuka, another candidate advocating for slowing the pace of residential growth, Joseph says the board will have the majority of votes needed to say “no” to development proposals.
As for Williams, a big focus of his campaign is communication with the community.
If elected, one of his priorities is holding town hall meetings within the community and workshops where county commissioners can hash out issues ahead of when they’re expected to vote.
Town halls, Williams says, would give himself and other commissioners an opportunity to hear from more than just “the 20 people that show up every Tuesday.”
The deadline to register to vote in the Aug. 18 primary election is Monday. Unlike in recent years, the races for the St. Johns County Commission are universal primary contests — meaning you don’t have to be a registered Republican to cast your vote for Republican candidates.
Early voting begins Aug. 8 and runs through Aug. 15. Click here for the full list of early voting locations at the St. Johns County supervisor of elections website.
