As part of our commitment to providing you with what you need to make an informed decision in the 2026 elections, News 6 joined with the News Collaborative of Central Florida to present the Voting Central Florida 2026 Voter’s Guide.
Tuesday, Aug. 18 is the Florida Statewide Primary election, a mix of party primaries and nonpartisan local elections, such as school board races, judicial races, and county commission races in some counties.
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[ELECTION 2026: Make sure you’re eligible to vote|How to vote by mail|Election Myths]
Florida has a closed primary system, which means only members of a political party may vote in party primaries. To be eligible, a voter had to identify with that party by July 20.
However, judicial races and local races, for the most part, are open to all registered voters, regardless of political party.
Everything you need to know in order to vote in the Aug. 18 Statewide Primary, including how to vote by mail, vote early, and vote on Election Day, can be found in our Election 2026 section HERE.
Democratic U.S. House District 3 candidates
The Democratic U.S. House District 3 primary is open to all registered Democrats residing in District 3, which includes part of Marion County in Central Florida, as well as parts of the following counties:
- Alachua
- Bradford
- Union
- Baker
- Columbia
- Gilchrist
- Levy
- Dixie
- Lafayette
- Suwannee
- Hamilton
The primary will decide who represents the party in the November general election against the incumbent congresswoman, Republican Kat Cammack.
The News Collaborative of Central Florida created a list of common questions to ask the candidates. Questionnaires were sent to all candidates. Where possible, for candidates who did not respond, our collaborative partners sought to fill in details. These are the responses that our partners at Central Florida Public Media received.
You can also see the full Central Florida Public Media Voting Guide HERE.
Troy Albers
WEBSITE: albersforcongress.com/
If elected, what are the three most pressing problems you want to address, and what do you suggest to solve them? First, the economy. High unemployment rates plus high inflation rates are choking the economy. People are working harder to get less.
Second is health care. Rural hospitals are closing one after another. This results in people having to drive over an hour to get care.
Third is insurance. Florida leads the nation in the cost of property insurance and is second in the nation for the cost of automobile insurance. It has reached a point where people cannot afford insurance.
According to a University of North Florida poll, Floridians say housing affordability is their top issue. What are your solutions for dealing with Florida’s affordability issue? The federal government could pass the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act. This would create a tax incentive for developers, builders, and local governments to build lower-cost housing in eligible underserved communities.
Please vote yes or no on the constitutional amendment to slash property taxes and explain your position. I am a no vote on the elimination of property taxes. Cities and Counties need property taxes to pay for the services they provide citizens. I do not like paying property taxes. However, how does the county or city pay for services?
Utility costs are rising for customers in Florida, and the proliferation of data centers is expected to exacerbate that issue. How should Florida’s utility regulators respond? First, I am a big no on data centers. They consume more resources than the value they produce for society. The utility companies need to find ways to produce energy without burning something.
What do you think is the biggest environmental issue the government should address in Florida? The government should do more regarding climate change. The Earth is our landlord. If we don’t make the changes to help our landlord, we could face eviction.
Seth Harp
WEBSITE: www.sethharpforcongress.com/
If elected, what are the three most pressing problems you want to address, and what do you suggest to solve them? Florida’s 3rd District faces three urgent challenges: affordability, healthcare, and trust in government. My “13 Stripes of Strength” tackles rising housing, insurance, grocery, and utility costs through the H.E.A.R.T. and H.O.M.E. Acts. My U.N.I.T.E. Act expands affordable healthcare. I will also defend constitutional rights, strengthen public education, restore transparent, accountable government & put working families ahead of special interests every day.
According to a University of North Florida poll, Floridians say housing affordability is their top issue. What are your solutions for dealing with Florida’s affordability issue? Our 13 Stripes of Strength includes the H.E.A.R.T. Act (Housing Equity & Affordable Residential Titles Act) to restore the dream of homeownership. It increases taxes on large Wall Street investors that buy excessive numbers of single-family homes, protects homeowners and small landlords, and creates tax incentives for builders to construct affordable homes for first-time buyers and middle-class families.
Please vote yes or no on the constitutional amendment to slash property taxes and explain your position: No. We have a stronger solution: the H.O.M.E. Act (Housing Ownership & Middle-class Empowerment Act). It expands homestead property tax relief for working families earning under $85,000 and seniors on fixed incomes, creates a property tax rebate for low-income renters, and funds that relief with a modest surcharge on the value of primary homes over $2 million. It cuts taxes for those who need it most while asking the wealthiest homeowners to pay a little more.
Utility costs are rising for customers in Florida, and the proliferation of data centers is expected to exacerbate that issue. How should Florida’s utility regulators respond? Regulators should require rigorous cost-of-service studies before approving new data center projects, prohibit utilities from shifting infrastructure costs onto residential customers & strengthen oversight of rate increases to block unjustified hikes. We also need to invest in grid modernization and energy efficiency to help homeowners lower their monthly bills through weatherization incentives.
What do you think is the biggest environmental issue the government should address in Florida? We should be doing more to both mitigate the causes of climate change and adapt to its impact, especially in a state like Florida, where stronger storms, flooding, extreme heat, and rising insurance costs are already affecting families and businesses.We must modernize our electric grid, expand renewable and nuclear energy, protect Florida’s freshwater resources and coastlines, invest in stronger infrastructure & encourage innovation in clean technologies.
George Hubac
WEBSITE: hubacforcongress.com/
If elected, what are the three most pressing problems you want to address, and what do you suggest to solve them?
A kidney stone taught me how Washington works: at best, they ease the pain; they rarely treat the cause, and this year they took the pain meds away.
My treatment plan:
1) Put the safeguards back: reverse the cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, and health insurance.
2) Bring our money home: our congresswoman refuses to request community project funding; I’d fight for our share, clean water and mobile clinics.
3) Change the diet: co-ops so what’s made here stays here, and a permanent income floor.
According to a University of North Florida poll, Floridians say housing affordability is their top issue. What are your solutions for dealing with Florida’s affordability issue? Housing got unaffordable when homes became investment assets, bought in bulk by funds and rented back to us. I’d curb Wall Street’s bulk-buying of single-family homes, fund community land trusts and co-ops so housing is owned locally instead of extracted, and pair that with a basic income floor. Affordability isn’t just the sticker price; it’s whether a paycheck earned here can cover a life here. When a dollar earned here gets spent here, it does the work of three.
Please vote yes or no on the constitutional amendment to slash property taxes and explain your position. No. Eliminating property taxes sounds like relief, but it guts what they fund: schools, fire, police, roads. The money still has to come from somewhere, and the usual replacement is a higher sales tax that hits working families hardest while big property owners pocket the savings. I’d instead expand homestead protections and circuit-breaker relief so seniors and working homeowners aren’t taxed out of their homes, without defunding our kids’ schools.
Utility costs are rising for customers in Florida, and the proliferation of data centers is expected to exacerbate that issue. How should Florida’s utility regulators respond? Data centers should pay their own way, not put their costs on your bill. Pause speculative projects until the water and grid math adds up; for those built, set dedicated rates so AI demand doesn’t raise household bills, and make big users bring their own generation. For families, guarantee the right to generate and store your own power with fair two-way buyback: if the utility sells us power at retail, it buys ours at retail. Energy should be owned close to home, not rented from one utility.
What do you think is the biggest environmental issue the government should address in Florida? More, and Florida is ground zero. We’re already paying through a collapsing home-insurance market, flood-exposed property, and saltwater creeping into our aquifer. I treat it as an opportunity, not just a threat: clean energy people own themselves. Give every household the right and the means to generate and store power, with fair two-way buyback. That’s lower bills and real resilience, built from the bottom up, not handed down as a mandate or rented back by one utility.
Tom Wells
WEBSITE: www.tomwellsforcongress.com/
If elected, what are the three most pressing problems you want to address, and what do you suggest to solve them? 1) The Supreme Court - the supreme problem. I’ve said this to 5,000+ folks at public events in CD3; 99+% concur.
2) The Florida aquifer is collapsing. The pending Hyperscale AI Data Centers are insane as: A) They drive cost of power, water, hence crops (e.g. peanuts) - crushing the export market and B) China now has a glass substrate chip 100x the speed, 10% the heat. That market is theirs.
3) ICE is murdering people in the streets; 6 Justices gave Trump the OK. We live in a Fascist State.
According to a University of North Florida poll, Floridians say housing affordability is their top issue. What are your solutions for dealing with Florida’s affordability issue? There is a bill in Congress to limit the number of houses investors can buy in a given market. I have little confidence in the efficacy of bills brought by our corp Congress. Basically, homes cannot be an investment opportunity. We ought to have learned that from the 2008 home mortgage collapse. Clinton, 9 years before, had ‘modernized’ banking. The crash was predicted. The banks made many billions. A few million families lost their homes. We must restore Glass-Steagall now or the crash will recur.
Please vote yes or no on the constitutional amendment to slash property taxes and explain your position. Yes, but with reservations. The text giveth here and taketh away there - so the range of results is difficult to quantify. However, if the folks in Tally wanted, at any time in the last 17 years, to help their constituents, they could simply accept the ACA Medicaid benefits - to provide healthcare for those just scraping by; bringing 10s of B$ and 1000s of (tax-paying) doctors and nurses into the state.
Utility costs are rising for customers in Florida, and the proliferation of data centers is expected to exacerbate that issue. How should Florida’s utility regulators respond? Nominally, this is a state-level issue. This problem ought to have been finessed by Congress banning data centers. Our Congress represents corporations quite generously; the people - rarely. I will legislate to delay data centers until they can demonstrate engineering innovation competitive with China. A month or 2 ago, the five AI teams laid off 96,000 US engineers. As AI will not innovate, tossing the engineers looks like a total collapse of the sector.
What do you think is the biggest environmental issue the government should address in Florida? We have been destroying the Climate faster than any other nation. Behind a facade of Greening, oil and natural gas production increased every year under Obama and Biden. It dropped significantly at the end of Trump 1 due to COVID. The Congress has stacked the stock market like a Jenga endgame. And the Keynesian way to build our way out of this pending depression: climate collapse: Gift solar (China has massive excess capacity), sodium batteries (US has 90% of global proven reserves).