Yeager Holds Her Commission Seat, Harding Wins a Third Term, and Two Pasco School Board Races Go to November

Pasco County voters kept two incumbents in office in Tuesday's Aug. 18 primary and left two school board seats unresolved until November. County Commissioner Lisa Yeager won her Republican primary, school board member Megan Harding won a third term outright, and the two open school board seats, District 1 and District 3, will now be settled in Nov. 3 runoffs.

Countywide, 86,103 ballots were cast out of 400,459 registered voters, a turnout of 21.5%, with all 122 precincts reporting. The numbers posted Tuesday night are unofficial until the county canvassing board certifies them.

Harding keeps her seat, two others still open

Harding, seeking a third term, defeated challenger Michelle Mandarin, a parent who ran against her. That race is finished. The other two are not.

Both open seats came with crowded fields. District 1 drew four candidates after Al Hernandez decided not to run again for the seat that includes parts of Wesley Chapel and Land O' Lakes: Gino Collura, Kimberly Coward, Christopher King and Brian Perras. District 3, the seat Cynthia Armstrong is leaving, drew five: Matt Geiger, Sean O'Flannery, Kirk Phillips, Erin Stroupe and Mollyana Ward. Eleven candidates filed across the three seats in all.

School board races in Florida are nonpartisan and require more than 50% to win in the primary. Nobody cleared that bar in either open race, so the top two vote-getters in each advance to the Nov. 3 general election ballot.

School board seat	Status
District 1 (open)	Runoff Nov. 3
District 3 (open)	Runoff Nov. 3
District 5 (Harding)	Won outright

Worth knowing before November: Pasco elects its school board members and county commissioners countywide. Whatever district number is attached to the seat, every registered voter in the county gets a say in it.

The school board campaigns also pulled Pasco's superintendent into the mix. According to local news reports, Superintendent John Legg endorsed candidates in the open races, backing Collura in District 1 and Ward in District 3, a break from the usual practice of superintendents staying out of board contests.

Yeager wins, but her November opponent won't be printed on the ballot

Yeager defeated first-time candidate Jonathon Deckard, a Marine Corps veteran, New Port Richey resident and former mobile auto repair business owner. Local news reports had her ahead by roughly two to one in early returns Tuesday night. She had also outraised him heavily, reporting $56,350 to Deckard's just under $12,800 as of late June.

Yeager was appointed to the District 4 commission seat by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2024 after Commissioner Gary Bradford died in office. Tuesday's win puts her a step from a first full term. Before the appointment she spent a decade running the Teen Parent Program for Pasco County Schools.

Here is the wrinkle most voters noticed at the polls. Only registered Republicans could vote in that race, because write-in candidate Louie Rodriguez qualified on the final day. A write-in entry closes what would otherwise have been a primary open to every Pasco voter. Rodriguez received no votes Tuesday, and his name will not be printed on the November ballot either. Voters who want him have to write him in.

Local reports note Rodriguez does not live in District 4 and used the same tactic in 2022, filing as a write-in in District 2 and then withdrawing shortly after the primary, which handed that seat to Seth Weightman without a general election. Weightman is on the Nov. 3 ballot this year against Democrat Stephanie Vazquez.

Elsewhere on the Pasco ballot

Two state House primaries sat entirely inside the county. In District 54, Rep. Randy Maggard took 68.1% with 10,335 votes to Michael Pultorak's 4,840. In District 55, Walter Price won with 10,130 votes to Matthew "Skeeter" Abbott's 6,723, a 60-40 split.

Next up is the Nov. 3 general election, with the two school board runoffs, the District 2 commission race and Yeager's write-in contest all on it. Book closing for voter registration and the vote-by-mail request deadline both fall well before then, and details are posted by the Pasco County Supervisor of Elections at pascovotes.gov.

Keep up with local results and county decisions at Pasco County Community Website, and follow along on Facebook. Have a take on the runoffs or the write-in rule that closed the commission primary? Join the conversation in our Community Forum. For more coverage, read our latest government and politics stories and our reporting on Pasco schools.