Related: City starts over on downtown campus
By Mary Hladky
Save Boca’s endorsed candidates trounced the opposition in the city’s March 10 election, sweeping three City Council races.
Boca Raton voters also soundly defeated the city’s efforts to redevelop its 31.7-acre downtown campus and to build a new police headquarters.
Residents turned out in droves for the most consequential city election in memory, with the 19,000 who cast ballots — roughly 30% of city voters — vastly outpacing the more typical election turnout of about 12,000.
The mayoral race was a nail-biter.
Mike Liebelson, who is not a Save Boca member but opposed the campus redevelopment, at first appeared to defeat City Council member Andy Thomson when the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office posted its first tally of all the city’s precincts.
Thomson, a lawyer first elected to the council in 2018, was the only council member who opposed the redevelopment project.
The third mayoral candidate, Deputy Mayor Fran Nachlas — a retired surgical nurse who was appointed to fill a council vacancy in 2022 after her candidacy was unopposed — favored it.
Liebelson’s apparent 26-vote lead over Thomson disappeared within minutes on election night, when a final update showed Thomson ahead by six votes.
With Thomson’s lead so small — less than one-half of 1% of total votes cast — a machine recount was required.
Voters were left in suspense until Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link conducted that recount on March 13, with Thomson’s lead shrinking to two votes.
That minuscule difference forced yet another recount — a manual one — which gave Thomson his official five-vote victory: 7,572 to 7,567.
“THANK YOU, BOCA RATON,” Thomson told voters online after winning election. “…Today, the residents of Boca Raton have spoken, and I am deeply honored and humbled to serve as your next Mayor.
“The message from voters is clear,” he wrote. “Our city wants experienced leadership that listens. … Now the campaign is over. It is time to come together and get to work for the city we all love.”
While Thomson’s margin of victory was small, he defeated Liebelson in 24 of the city’s 38 voting precincts.
Nachlas, who drew 3,967 votes, won only two precincts.
Concession — and lawsuit
Liebelson considered contesting the election, citing what he believed were anomalies in a final batch of vote-by-mail results that disproportionately favored Thomson.
On March 23, the deadline to contest, he announced that he would not do so because he had accomplished his mission “to help take Boca Raton back from the influence of big developers, support Save Boca, and return the City Council to the people who live here,” he said in a statement.
“As an outsider candidate in my first race, coming this close sent a message,” he wrote. “People are paying attention. They want leadership that puts residents first, and they want real accountability when it comes to growth and development.”
He also has filed a lawsuit against Thomson, in which he restates complaints he made before the election that Thomson’s campaign consultant made false and misleading statements about him in political flyers sent to residents.
The lawsuit, filed on March 3, alleges that Thomson and other defendants in the case acted to “adversely affect his mayoral campaign.”
Thomson succeeds Scott Singer, who was term-limited from another run. A strong supporter of President Donald Trump, Singer now is running for Congress as a Republican and hopes to unseat Democrat Jared Moskowitz to represent Florida’s 23rd Congressional District.
Council races
While the mayor’s race was extremely tight, the other election results were clear-cut.
Incumbent Marc Wigder, a real estate lawyer who now focuses on his companies Greenhouse Property Co. and GreenSmith Builders and was elected in 2023 to Seat B, was trounced by Save Boca founder Jon Pearlman. Pearlman garnered nearly 53% of the vote to Wigder’s nearly 32%.
Also losing out in that race was Meredith Madsen, founder and CEO of Sunshine & Glitter.
“We did it!” Pearlman posted to the Save Boca website after the election. “Thank you for your support and for believing this was possible. Together we Saved Boca!”
Save Boca member Michelle Grau, a certified public accountant, convincingly beat her two opponents for Seat A, receiving nearly 67% of the vote.
Defeated were Christen Ritchey, a family law attorney and former member of the Planning and Zoning Board, and Bernard Korn, a real estate broker and a perennial candidate who has never won election.
Save Boca member Stacy Sipple, a clinical oncology pharmacist, easily prevailed over her two better-known opponents for Seat D — Robert Weinroth, a former member of the City Council and the County Commission, and Larry Cellon, a former member of the city’s Community Appearance Board and its Planning and Zoning Board.
Sipple received nearly 56% of the vote.
The council is now transformed. Three veteran members — Singer, Nachlas and Wigder — are gone.
Other than Thomson, the only remaining council veteran is Yvette Drucker, who was not up for reelection. She now is the only council member who supported the campus redevelopment plan.
Thomson’s positioning
Early on, Save Boca members were skeptical that Thomson was a true redevelopment opponent because he had ranked developer Related Ross as his first choice to partner with the city on campus redevelopment even though Related Ross’ proposal had the highest density of the four submitted.
The fact that he said that he was endorsing Related Ross as a capable city partner, but not its proposal, didn’t reassure them.
But his consistent opposition, voiced at nearly every City Council meeting, assuaged many doubters.
Thomson reinforced that by supporting a key Save Boca demand — that residents should get to vote on the redevelopment.
Thomson asked officials of developers Terra and Frisbie Group in September if they would agree to condition city approval of the project on a positive vote by residents. They did so, and the rest of the council endorsed that.
Residents got their say on March 10. By an overwhelming margin of nearly 75%, they killed the project.
While the council majority touted the benefits of a public-private partnership with Terra/Frisbie, more recently known as One Boca, Thomson said the project was too dense and had been pushed forward too quickly by other council members to allow for adequate consideration and revision.
He also voiced concerns about how the project was financed and doubts about the accuracy of financial projections showing the city would gain $4 billion in revenue from One Boca’s 99-year lease of 7.8 acres of city land and property value increases.
Pricey race for mayor
The mayoral race was especially notable because of the astounding amount of money the candidates raised for their campaigns, stunning election observers.
Thomson and Nachlas are expected to top a combined $1 million in contributions once the totals raised by their political action committees are reported in April.
Asked why they needed to raise so much, both Thomson and Nachas said only that they needed to get word out about their campaigns.
Liebelson largely self-financed his race, raising $203,390, mostly from loans and donations he made to his campaign as of year’s end. He said in March that his PAC received another $25,000.
Thomson and the new council members were sworn into office on March 31.
They unanimously selected Grau as deputy mayor, Thomson to also serve as chair of the Community Redevelopment Agency and Drucker as CRA vice chair.
“The opportunity to be this city’s next mayor is an incredible blessing, for which I praise and thank God,” Thomson said.
In reference to the divisions among residents that manifested in the election, he said, “The greatest task before us is to help unite the city.” One step to do that, he said, is to remember that “all of us are first and foremost neighbors.”
Pearlman, uncharacteristically wearing a dark suit and a tie instead of his green and bright navy Save Boca T-shirt, also looked forward. “We have been sent a strict mandate by the voters to put them first,” he said. “I take that responsibility seriously. I am honored by that responsibility and I am ready to get to work.”
“This will be the most important job of my career,” Grau said. “It is time to build trust and move forward together.”
Also noting the division, Sipple said, “What divides us pales to what unites us.”
Speaking of her own role as a council member, she said, “I am not here to climb. I am not here to take the next step in a political journey. I am here to serve. ...”
Police HQ defeated
In addition to defeating the redevelopment project, nearly 55% of voters said they did not want to finance the construction of a new police campus on city-owned land near the Spanish River Library.
City officials said the current police headquarters just east of City Hall is dilapidated and far too small to meet current department needs. The cost of the new campus was as much as $190 million.
The city had planned to issue up to $175 million in tax-exempt general obligation bonds for a 30-year term. City property owners would have paid for the new police headquarters through a tax rate increase of 26 cents for each $1,000 of taxable value, an increase of $260 a year for a property with a $1 million taxable value.
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