With a slew of hopefuls looking to replace him, Osceola County Sheriff Marcos López is launching a re-election bid that could prove as tumultuous as his tenure.
López has attracted attention since his election in 2020 for not only being Osceola’s first Hispanic sheriff. Although he delivered on a number of his campaign promises — from expanding Spanish-language services to overseeing the agency’s first real-time crime monitoring center — his administration was at the center of controversy over its handling of the 2022 murder of Jayden Baez and providing misleading information about failed drug trafficking prosecutions cited in the suspension of Orange-Osceola State’s Attorney Monique Worrell.
It’s no surprise that he drew four challengers in the Democratic primary, most notably his predecessor Russ Gibson, who was elected Osceola County Sheriff in 2016 but lost to López by just 620 votes in the 2020 primary.
Luis “Tony” Fernandez, a former deputy, will also run again, this time as a Democrat after López cruised to victory in the 2020 general election with two-thirds of the vote, while Fernandez ran without any party affiliation.
Gibson announced his comeback bid in January 2023, the first major candidate to do so, and has pledged to return student services deputies to the county’s charter schools after López removed them before the 2021-2022 school year, citing rising costs. Gibson has already directly attacked the sitting president, most recently after López posted the photo of a dead body, believed to be 13-year-old Madeline Soto, on his campaign Instagram page.
While the Sheriff’s Office apologized for the post, López later claimed in an interview with radio station WDBO that the photo was not Soto and accused his critics of using her death for political purposes. A Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into the posting is ongoing.
Fernandez, who accused López’s team of smearing him in the 2020 election, has called for more transparency in his search for sheriff, along with improving frayed relations with the prosecutor’s office.
The competition has also attracted two of López’s former employees: Amaryllis Rivera, a one-time supervisor for the Sheriff’s Office’s community services division, and Major Wiley Black, who headed the criminal investigations division.
Rivera, who started working at the Sheriff’s Office in 2006 when she was a reservist in the U.S. Air Force, resigned last year to run for sheriff. She promised to improve community relations and clean up the agency’s image after López’s scandals. She would be the first woman elected sheriff of Osceola.
Black’s entry has raised eyebrows as he was one of López’s first choices for his top brass after three decades with the Sheriff’s Office. A decorated officer and military veteran, he was fired around the time a grand jury acquitted the officers who killed Baez but sharply criticized the department’s policies and training. The agency has not released details of Black’s removal, and López declined to explain when asked by an Orlando Sentinel reporter earlier this year.
If elected, Black promises to use his experience to bring transparency to the agency and further support recruitment efforts, among other things.
The winner of the primary will face Donnie Martinez, the only Republican candidate. A longtime businessman, Martinez has no law enforcement experience other than being a recent graduate of the law enforcement academy at Eastern Florida State College. Still, Martinez said he wants to “redistribute” money to fight crime without adding costs.
Early voting for the primaries begins on August 5 and lasts until August 18. Election day is August 20.
