A single vote separated two candidates in the race for St. Cloud City Council Seat 5 after Osceola County election officials completed a hand recount Saturday, flipping what had been a three-vote gap on election night into a narrow, decisive outcome. Alex Rodriguez, an HOA president who ran on a shoestring budget, edged out Jim Moore for the second spot in the November runoff, where he will now face frontrunner Kirk Zilke.
The tight finish triggered Florida's recount procedures almost immediately. As reported by the Orlando Sentinel, Rodriguez's margin of victory over Moore came in at about 0.03%, well under the threshold that mandates a full manual review. Under Florida Statutes § 102.141 and § 102.166, a machine recount kicks in automatically when a race is decided by 0.5% or less of the vote, while a hand recount of undervotes and overvotes is required once the margin narrows to 0.25% or less, according to Verified Voting. Rodriguez's razor-thin edge easily qualified for that deeper, ballot-by-ballot review.
On election night, results showed Zilke leading the three-way race with 40.33% of the vote, Rodriguez at 29.86%, and Moore at 29.82% — a gap of just three votes for the second runoff slot, per election-night figures reported by the Sentinel. Once the hand recount was finished Saturday, that three-vote cushion evaporated into a single-vote edge for Rodriguez, according to the Osceola County Supervisor of Elections.
A Door-Knocking Campaign Against a $15,000 War Chest
The financial mismatch between the two runoff qualifiers is stark. The Sentinel's reporting notes Zilke spent more than $15,000 on his campaign, previously serving as deputy chief of the St. Cloud Police Department before entering local politics. Rodriguez, by contrast, raised less than $1,000 and spent about $350 total, relying on an unconventional campaign built around door-knocking rather than paid outreach.
Rodriguez called the recount process “nerve racking,” per the Sentinel's account, and said afterward that “every vote truly matters.” He now says he plans to buy campaign signs and launch a website ahead of the November runoff — a modest upgrade from his shoestring primary approach, though still a far cry from Zilke's spending.
The two runoff candidates aren't opposites on every issue. Both Rodriguez and Zilke list reducing traffic congestion as a priority for St. Cloud, a city that grew by nearly 20% between 2020 and 2024 to top 71,000 residents — far outpacing Kissimmee's 7% growth over the same stretch, according to data from Maury L. Carter & Associates. That growth has pushed infrastructure strain to the center of local campaign debates. Where the two candidates split is on a proposed state constitutional amendment to cut property taxes: Rodriguez supports it, while Zilke opposes it, per the Sentinel's reporting.
St. Cloud operates under a council-manager government, meaning five nonpartisan elected council members set policy while an appointed city manager runs day-to-day operations, according to background compiled on Wikipedia. The Seat 5 runoff between Rodriguez and Zilke will now head to voters in November.
A Second Recount, Same Razor-Thin Margin
St. Cloud's council race wasn't the only contest decided by a handful of ballots. In the Osceola County School Board District 3 primary, Alyssa Noel defeated Natalie Guzman by 29 votes, a margin the Sentinel reports held at roughly 0.4% and survived the machine recount without changing outcome. Noel and Guzman were separated by the same vote count after the recount was finalized.
Because school board primaries in Florida are nonpartisan, a candidate who clears a simple majority wins the seat outright without advancing to a November runoff, per Ballotpedia. Noel's total was enough to cross that threshold, meaning she will take her seat on the school board later this year rather than facing Guzman again in the fall. Noel currently chairs the Bellalago Academy School Advisory Council and sits on the Osceola County School District's school safety committee.
The District 3 seat became open after elected member Anthony Cook resigned in December 2025 for family reasons, and interim appointee Jolene Shieve opted not to run for the seat this year, according to reporting from The Florida Trib. Guzman had entered the primary with a substantial financial edge, raising $19,700 — including $10,000 of her own money — compared with Noel's $6,780, per the same outlet. Noel won anyway, a reminder that fundraising totals don't always predict outcomes in low-turnout local races.
Low Turnout Made Every Ballot Count
Both nail-biter finishes trace back to unusually thin voter participation. Osceola County recorded turnout of just 18.05% in the August 18 primary, with 41,837 ballots cast out of 231,802 registered voters, according to Positively Osceola. With so few voters turning out countywide, small swings in raw vote totals were enough to flip outcomes that would otherwise be statistical rounding errors.
Not every local race was this close. Positively Osceola's tally shows Greg Filak winning School Board District 1 outright with 60.25% of the vote, a decisive margin that stands in sharp contrast to the single-vote and 29-vote finishes elsewhere on the ballot. Osceola County Supervisor of Elections Mary Jane Arrington, who has held her office since 2008 and won a fifth term in November 2024, oversaw the canvassing board that certified both recounts.
-4.webp?w=160&h=400&fit=crop&crop=edges)