Katherine Waldron has unseated Palm Beach County Mayor Sara Baxter in the race for the County Commission's District 6 seat, flipping a district that stretches from the suburbs of Wellington to the farm towns of Belle Glade and Pahokee. The Democrat's win ends Baxter's single term on the commission and hands the sprawling western district to a former state lawmaker who campaigned hard on affordability and skepticism toward sprawling data-center development.
According to Florida Politics, Waldron had 58% of the vote to Baxter's 42% with 104 of 111 precincts reporting on election night. A separate count from WPBF put Waldron's final share at 58.13% once all 111 precincts had reported. Either way, it was a decisive result for a Republican incumbent who had flipped the same seat with 52.5% of the vote just four years earlier, per Florida Politics.
Baxter, a 42-year-old business owner who lives in West Palm Beach, was seeking a second four-year term, according to WPBF's reporting. She describes herself as a second-generation Palm Beach County resident, small-business owner and mother of three who, with her husband, runs the auto-repair shop Foreign Auto Specialists. Before entering public office, she worked at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and earned a business administration degree from Palm Beach State College. Baxter defeated Elizabeth Accomando, president of the Indian Trail Improvement District, in the August primary, WPBF reported.
Two Very Different Resumes
Waldron, a West Palm Beach resident, brings a different background to the commission. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Palm Beach Atlantic University, and is a former telecom executive and businesswoman. She previously served two terms on the Port of Palm Beach Commission and represented the area in the Florida House from 2022 to 2024, after easily beating Democrats Rudolph Tinker and Mario Guzman in the August primary, per WPBF.
That legislative run wasn't Waldron's only recent brush with a close contest. As WLRN reported ahead of this race, she lost her state House seat in 2024 to former Wellington Mayor Anne Gerwig by just 348 votes. This time, polling suggested a much wider cushion: a Beacon Insights survey conducted in September had Waldron leading Baxter 52% to 37%, a margin that widened to 59% to 41% once respondents were shown what pollsters called “balanced biographies” of the two candidates, according to Florida Politics. That same survey found only 24% of respondents viewed Baxter positively, against 38% who rated her unfavorably.
Affordability, Traffic and a Fight Over Data Centers
Both candidates agreed that affordability and traffic topped voters' concerns in the fast-growing district, which the WPEC reporting on the race says includes Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Loxahatchee Groves, Westlake, Belle Glade, Pahokee, South Bay and surrounding unincorporated communities of western Palm Beach County. Waldron said affordability was her chief concern and made insurance costs, traffic and the pace of development central campaign issues, arguing new projects should account for traffic, water supply and environmental impacts before winning approval. She also pointed to housing access for unhoused seniors and seniors at risk of losing their housing as a priority.
Baxter framed her own campaign around making the county more affordable for families and small businesses by cutting what she called unnecessary spending, fees and regulations. Per her voter guide, she called past haphazard overdevelopment the district's biggest challenge, and she said western Palm Beach County needs more careful stewardship after years of development approvals. She also made traffic and infrastructure central issues, saying the county's five-year infrastructure plan is fully funded and should be completed so road capacity keeps pace with growth, while pledging to protect agricultural and rural areas and give residents more say over projects affecting their communities.
The sharpest divide centered on data centers. According to WPBF, both candidates supported a pause for further research on artificial-intelligence data-center development but disagreed on whether the district would ultimately need them. Baxter supported further study and a pause before proceeding with Project Tango, a proposed hyperscale AI data center near a school and residential community, saying, “I believe they're going to have to go somewhere.” Waldron opposed Project Tango as proposed and backed a broader moratorium on hyperscale AI data centers, arguing the district simply doesn't need them.
That debate played out against a real policy shift: Palm Beach County commissioners voted 6-0 in September to pause new applications for large data centers for up to a year, according to CBS12. That pause did not revoke Project Tango's earlier approval for two 100,000-square-foot data-center buildings, the station reported.
Amendment 3 Adds a Budget Wildcard
The candidates also split over Amendment 3, which would expand homestead property-tax exemptions. Waldron called the amendment flawed and warned it could substantially reduce county revenue, saying commissioners would need to protect core services while making difficult budget decisions if that happened, per WPBF's reporting. Baxter supported the amendment but said county government would need to review essential services, seek efficiencies and consider additional revenue sources without unfairly shifting the burden onto residents if it passes.
The stakes behind that fight are substantial. A Florida Policy Institute calculator estimated Palm Beach County governments and special districts could face nearly $1.18 billion in reduced property-tax revenue across fiscal years 2028 and 2029 if Amendment 3 passes, according to CBS12, with $413.2 million projected for fiscal year 2028 and $771 million for fiscal year 2029. The institute cautioned those figures were revenue estimates rather than forecasts of specific budget cuts.
Whoever holds the District 6 seat will join six other commissioners in setting county policy, approving budgets and overseeing transportation, public safety funding, parks, affordable-housing initiatives, environmental programs and land-use decisions that extend well beyond any single district. The seven-member commission elects one of its own as county mayor, a role that presides over meetings but carries just one vote like any other seat. Waldron now takes her place at that table representing a district that, over the past two election cycles, has swung from Baxter's 2022 win to a decisive rejection of her re-election bid.
