Democrats and Republicans have options in District 18 state House race

The Aug. 18 primary election is around the corner, and four candidates are running to represent state House District 18, which covers the northern half of St. Johns County in Tallahassee.

Incumbent Rep. Kim Kendall is running for reelection against one Republican opponent. The winner of that primary race will face off in November against the Democrat who wins the most votes next month.

Kendall, who was first elected in 2024, is defending her seat against Diana Jordan-Baldwin, a military veteran with more than 20 years of experience as an army logistics officer. 

On the Democratic side of the primary, two candidates are running: public defender Art Stresing and Heather Anne Smith. 

Little information is available about Smith. She has no campaign website, has received no donations to her campaign and did not respond to Jacksonville Today’s requests for an interview. Voter records and the address she provided to the state elections office note that she lives in Ponte Vedra. 

Growth in District 18

Both Republican candidates highlight St. Johns County’s rapid growth as a top priority issue to tackle. 

In response to a questionnaire from Jacksonville Today, Kendall calls infrastructure her greatest priority. 

“I’ve secured funding for major road improvements, including the International Golf Parkway and I-95 interchange upgrade, to improve safety, reduce congestion, and support economic growth,” she writes. “I will continue prioritizing transportation investments that keep our communities moving safely and efficiently.”

Growth is the top issue Kendall ran on in 2024 when she was elected to the Florida House. Since her election, Kendall has voted for a number of measures that have proven unpopular in her district. 

Among those are a development bill that, in some cases, makes it harder for local officials to stop affordable housing proposals. The St. Johns County Commission asked Gov. Ron DeSantis to veto the bill, but he did not.

Kendall also voted for a bill that fast-tracks some large-scale parcels of land for development and a controversial disaster-recovery bill that has been used to stop counties from adopting stricter development regulations. 

While she did vote for it, Kendall said that last minute changes to the disaster-recovery bill caught her off guard and that she wanted to see it altered. An effort to change that law did not pass the Florida Legislature during this year’s session.

Among the bills Kendall sponsored that became law are a measure to curb land swaps like one that nearly opened up environmentally sensitive lands in the Guana Wildlife Management Area to development. Another aimed to protect students from traffic if they are walking to school.

If elected, Jordan-Baldwin says she would vote to push back against bills in Tallahassee that take power away from cities and counties. 

“[W]hen you … make government at the higher level have more responsibility in our counties that they aren’t involved with every day,” she says, “you leave a gap for us to not be represented.”

The Democratic ticket

On the other major political party’s ticket, Democrat Art Stresing says his No. 1 issue is school funding, an issue tied in with St. Johns County’s rapid growth. 

Like many parents, Stresing says he bought a house in St. Johns County so his children could enroll in one of the state’s top-rated school districts. He says he wants to do something about the way public schools have been “bled dry” by the state’s voucher program. 

The St. Johns County School District is facing a multimillion-dollar deficit fueled in part, according to the district’s superintendent, by an increase in state funding allocated to private and charter schools. 

Stresing says problems like that could be solved if the state cut what he calls wasteful spending, like the money spent to operate the now-shuttered “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center and, as reported by Seeking Rents reporter Jason Garcia, to develop anti-communist curriculum.

“We could easily be using that money to help fund our schools, to help make sure that we retain teachers that are already here, that we attract teachers to come over here,” Stresing says. “We are expecting teachers that don’t even make half of the median income to live in St. Johns and continue teaching.”

Party politics 

After the August primary election, the Republican and Democrat winners in the District 18 race will face each other in the general election. Stresing acknowledges that, in deep red St. Johns County, he is fighting an uphill battle. 

He says he can relate to Republican voters — he grew up in a poor, conservative household and came to the Democratic Party only later. 

Stresing also says some of his campaign volunteers and supporters are Republicans themselves who have become disillusioned with the party.

“Obviously some people got fooled. They got fooled by the lies that they were told and you see them realizing it,” Stresing says. “You see them realizing that, ‘Hey, this isn’t what I was sold.’ They were told they were going to have a better economy. The whole platform was the price of eggs. … When I see that, I think now is as good a time as ever.”

Republicans outnumber Democrats 3 to 1 in St. Johns County. The Supervisor of Elections Office reports 47,983 registered Democrats, 134,287 registered Republicans and 57,128 voters registered with a minor political party or unaffiliated with a party. 

Although she is currently registered as a Republican, Diana Jordan-Baldwin has ties to the Democratic Party, too. 

According to voter registration information, Baldwin was registered as a Democrat until three years ago. 

Even though she grew up in a Democrat-leaning household, Baldwin says she has always leaned conservative. She just didn’t make the jump over the party line until recently. 

“I realized I wasn’t true to myself because I’m a conservative. I believe in responsibility … I’m not a fan of abortion. I don’t believe that we should tell families what to do,” she says. “We’re constantly changing, and if you’re not, you’re not living. … You have to look and reevaluate.” 

Campaign finances

As far as cash goes, incumbent Kendall has far outraised her opponents. 

As of last week, Kendall had raised nearly $120,000 toward her campaign. A good chunk of that came from individual donors, but Kendall also has received thousands of dollars from political action committees, or PACs. Because of Florida’s campaign finance laws, it isn’t always easy to determine where PACs get their money. 

Among those donations are 13 of $1,000 from PACs that share a single Tallahassee address. A number of those PACs do not have websites or public information beyond what is legally required. And they are connected to a handful of individuals like Noreen Fenner.

Fenner works with Republican candidates across the state, but she also worked on campaigns for two suspected ghost candidates in the 2024 election. 

As of last week, Baldwin and Stresing each had raised $8,000 to $9,000. 

Baldwin’s campaign is largely self-financed, with around $4,000 coming from herself or businesses she runs. 

Along with a $3,000 contribution to his own campaign, Stresing’s donations include a $500 donation from Reach out Florida, a PAC that, according to its website, seeks to “directly help elect progressive and Democratic candidates for elected office in Northeast Florida and statewide.” 

As of last week, Heather Anne Smith had reported only $2,000 in her campaign coffers, all of which she contributed to herself.

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Early voting begins Aug. 8 and runs through Aug. 15. Click here for the full list of early voting locations in St. Johns County.