Val Demings was born in 1957, one of seven children born to a poor family. Her father worked in orange groves, and her mother was a housekeeper. They lived in Mandarin, a neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida. She graduated from Wolfson High School and then attended Florida State University, graduating with a degree in criminology in 1979.
(Original publish date: July 6, 2016)
After college, Demings worked as a social worker in Jacksonville for 18 months, and in 1983, applied for a job with the Orlando Police Department (OPD). She started her career there patrolling Orlando’s west side, and in 2007 was appointed Chief. She is the first woman to lead the department., and during her tenure as Chief was credited with reducing violent crime in Orlando.
She retired from the position in June 1, 2011, after serving 27 years with the department.
Demings was the first Democrat to announce her intention to run for the seat. It is not her first trip down this lane. She has had her eye on the seat since she campaigned for it and narrowly lost to Republican Daniel Webster in 2012. It was Demings’ first election campaign and her loss to the incumbent Webster was by such a narrow margin (51.7-48.3 percent) that it shook up the leaderships of both parties and firmly established her as a force to be reckoned with.
With the public’s support for her clearly evident, Democratic leaders urged her to run again for the seat in 2014. She chose instead to challenge Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs for for the mayor’s seat, but dropped out of the race for personal reasons. She immediately turned her attention back to 2016 and Webster’s seat.
In mid-August, 2015 she announced, rather forcefully, that “I am running in 2016, and I am going to win.” She has been campaigning like she meant what she said. In the first quarter of this year, she raised an impressive $210,000, more than any of the other candidates.
Two other Democrats are running for the seat– former Democratic party Chair Bob Poe and Florida Attorney Fatima Fahmy. Poe loaned his campaign $1.2 million and raised more than $130,000 in the year’s first quarter. He has little to no name recognition in the district, which is likely to be a minority-access seat. But with three women of color running in the heavily minority district, Poe, a white male, could benefit from a split vote.
Demings says she will fight to protect the progress made by President Obama from radical Republicans, a theme that sounds well with black voters. It goes without saying that her 27 year background fighting crime makes her sensitive to the issue of pubic safety. While Chief, she reduced crime in Orlando by 40%
Demings says she will expand background checks to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists, criminals and the mentally ill.
She promises to work to protect the Affordable Care Act that provides health care to millions of Americans.
Protecting Social Security and Medicare is also high on her list of priorities, as is the creation of jobs offering livable wages.
As Chief, Demings created innovative programs like Operation Positive Direction, a mentoring program that empowers at-risk students through tutoring, community service, and positive incentives. She also launched Operation Free Palms, a project focusing on rejuvenating Orlando’s most crime-ridden housing complex, the Palms Apartments, through increased access to childcare, new playgrounds, a GED program, and job skills training.
Demings says she believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality education “regardless of the color of their skin or the zip-code they live in.” She wants to fight to make sure that all of our young people graduate from high school college-bound or workforce-ready.
She’s not bothered by the fact that Thompson has serious name recognition. She has serious name recognition, too. She has the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the endorsements of national, state and local organizations, and Democratic leaders like House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer.
Students for a New American Politics are actively working as part of her campaign, and several unions have rallied to her cause.
What she lacks in personal legislative experience, she appears to be making up in tenacity and perseverance. She has a highly motivated, well-organized group of volunteers. Demings closed 2015 with about $267,000 in the bank compared to Thompson’s $86,000.
In the only poll we have found, conducted in January of this year, Demings had a commanding 44-22 percent lead over Thompson– one that cut across racial, ethnic and gender lines. The poll, conducted by Public Policy Polling, was commissioned by the Demings campaign “to get an independent and neutral take on the race.”
Public Policy Polling is generally considered to be a neutral, unbiased polling and survey-taking source.
The poll showed Demings winning easily with blacks, whites and Hispanics, but a 6-month old poll is hardly a predictor of an election outcome.
Both candidates are nose to the grindstone as we approach the primary election in August.
All eyes are on the vote split that will happen among the three female candidates, and the remainder that falls to Poe, the only white male candidate in the race.
