Samuel Vilchez Santiago, a former chair of the Orange County Democratic Party, is hosting a kickoff event at the Renaissance Senior Center Tuesday, March 24, to formally launch his campaign for the Florida House this fall.
The 29-year-old Venezuelan immigrant, raised in Orlando as a teenager, is running for Florida House District 43, currently represented by Democratic state Rep. Johanna López. López, a fellow Democrat and former high school teacher of Santiago’s, has decided to run for a seat on the Orange County Commission instead of running for re-election to the state House. She’s already endorsed her former student, an immigrant rights advocate and former communications director for Orlando’s March for Our Lives chapter, to become her successor.
“I think things have not been working in Florida,” Santiago told Orlando Weekly in an interview about his campaign earlier this year. “And over the last few years, we’ve seen how the [GOP] supermajority in Tallahassee and one-party rule for over the last 30 years has led to policy outcomes that are impacting all of our communities, starting with an affordability crisis that is impacting most Floridians.”
Republican lawmakers outnumber Democrats in the Florida Legislature more than 2 to 1, rendering most of Democrats’ policy priorities dead if they can’t manage to garner the support of Republicans willing to work with them. Under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the rise of the far-right Make America Great Again wing of the GOP, political divides have grown deeper in the state Legislature in recent years, even disrupting working relationships between top Republicans.
Santiago, who’s running for a seat in a Democratic-leaning district, names Florida’s affordability crisis, championing public education and protecting immigrant families in his district as top priorities of his campaign.
He told the Weekly that he’s well aware the Republican majority in the state Legislature is “clearly not aligned” with him on certain issues, such as immigration. But he does believe there’s room for collaboration. “I do think there’s an opportunity to work together on issues that are less, you know, polarizing,” he affirmed, naming issues such as eliminating or reducing tolls on roads and expanding homestead tax exemptions for first-time home-buyers and seniors as examples.
Affordability is an issue at the top of mind for most Floridians this year, according to polling, yet the Florida Legislature this year failed to pass any significant legislation addressing the issue, nor struggles affecting renters and homeowners alike.
State lawmakers’ annual 60-day regular legislative session concluded March 13 without a finalized state budget, meaning Florida lawmakers will have to return to Tallahassee sometime next month to hammer that out. A special session on the issue of property taxes — and outgoing Gov. DeSantis’ proposal to eliminate them — is also likely to be called this year.
Florida House District 43 covers parts of east Orange County and Orlando, spanning from just north of Lake Nona up to Colonial Drive. Since first announcing his campaign for Florida House in January, Santiago has already earned the endorsements of more than two dozen local and state elected officials, including fellow Gen-Z U.S. Congressman Maxwell Frost (D-FL), Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and local Democratic state representatives whom he’d join in the House if elected.
His only current competition in the HD 43 race is Republican Robert Prater.
“Samuel is part of a new generation of leaders who understands that real change comes from showing up, organizing, and never backing down,” said U.S. House Rep. Frost, who previously organized with Santiago through the student-led gun control organization March for Our Lives. The pair first met, however, through an internship with the Boys & Girls Club in high school, according to Frost. “I trust him to stand up for our entire community and push back against extremists in Tallahassee,” Frost said in a statement.
Santiago previously ran for the Florida House in 2020, but lost the Democratic primary election to former Rep. Daisy Morales, securing just under 30 percent of the vote to her nearly 40 percent. Morales later lost her own Democratic primary to sitting Rep. Jennifer “Rita” Harris in 2022. Harris, representing District 44, has endorsed Santiago’s campaign for the neighboring seat.
“Samuel Vilchez Santiago does the work, often when no one is watching, and consistently delivers for the people we serve,” Harris said in a statement. “I trust Samuel, and I am proud to support him for Florida House.”
Santiago told the Weekly, “quite honestly,” that he believes the state government needs to have more voices from the immigrant rights movement, like his own. Fellow immigrant rights advocate Felipe Sousa Lazaballet — a Brazilian immigrant and executive director of the Hope CommUnity Center — is also running for a seat in the Florida House this year as a Democrat.
“My parents escaped political persecution from the Venezuelan authoritarian regime, and when I came here, this community opened up its doors and provided opportunities that I am cognizant would have likely not been available to me anywhere else in the world,” Santiago told the Weekly. “And I worry that in this current environment, had that 13-year-old Samuel come here, those opportunities wouldn’t have been provided to me.”
A graduate of Princeton University who later earned a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Oxford, Santiago said he was “very involved” with the Biden-Harris administration’s designation of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Venezuelans, as well as the humanitarian program for Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Haitians. “And so it is sad to see how in the course of the last year, everything has changed so drastically,” he says.
Despite Republican state leadership’s eagerness to support the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, hundreds of members of the Orlando community have rallied in protest of federal immigration enforcement’s violent tactics under Trump, and against a proposed immigrant detention center in southeast Orlando near Lake Nona. Advocates have also pressured county officials into adopting measures to ensure due process rights for immigrants detained by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement in the local jail and have called on county leaders to end their collaboration with ICE.
“Unless we step up to lead in this critical moment, I don’t know where this country will be in the next few years,” said Santiago.
Santiago’s campaign is holding its official campaign kickoff this Tuesday, March 24, starting at at 6:40 p.m. at the Renaissance Senior Center at 3800 S. Econlockhatchee Trail. The event “will bring together community leaders, supporters, and residents to celebrate the start of the campaign and highlight a vision centered on opportunity,” according to a campaign news release.
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