Freshman Democratic state Rep. Jose Alvarez must overcome a familiar challenger in the August primary for House District 46 if he’s to advance to the November election — where he would face more familiar opponents from 2024.
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Alvarez, D-Kissimmee, will face Robert LeWayne Johnson in the Aug. 18 election. In the 2024 primary Alvarez got 39.4% of the vote while Johnson was second with 25.6% in the four-way race.
The winner will face two opponents who also ran in 2024: Republican Michael Cruz and NPA candidate Ivan Rivera. In the 2024 election, Alvarez won with 57% of the vote followed by Cruz at 39.6%, and Rivera at 3.4%.
The district’s electorate skews heavily to the left: Democrats have 42% of registered voters while Republicans account for about 21%, according to state records. It covers a portion of northwest Osceola that includes Kissimmee, Poinciana and St. Cloud along with a small section of Orange County.
Alvarez, a real estate broker, is a former Kissimmee mayor and city commissioner. During the Biden administration he was appointed regional administrator overseeing the Southeast and Caribbean for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
He said he’s seeking a second term to build on successes in his first as he continues focusing on priorities that include affordable housing, healthcare and public safety.
“Being in the super-minority our bills are not seen as big a priority as others, but it gives you that motivation,” Alvarez said. “We just continue to work on them until we get them accomplished.”
He cited his sponsorship of the Housing for Veterans Bill to reduce homelessness by incentivizing landlords to rent to veterans; a bill funding “vertiports” for electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles, known colloquially as “flying cars”; and a bill adding a recall process to elected community development boards.
He’s raised $77,850 for his campaign, with $5,000 coming in the form of a loan.
Johnson is a decorated military Veteran who retired in 2016 as a senior chief warrant officer from the Judge Advocate Corps. He served 30 years in the U.S. Army and four in the U.S. Air Force. He received a Bronze Star for his heroism during the first Gulf War and said he was injured while a first responder at the scene of the 1991 Iraqi SCUD missile attack that killed 28 U.S. soldiers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
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Since leaving the armed forces, he’s focused his attention on the problem of veterans’ homelessness. He said his decades serving in the military make him a better advocate for those men and women.
“We need to come up with a better plan, and that plan should have been to come up with a proposal to create a veterans’ village with wraparound service,” Johnson said.
He said he went to Tallahassee in 2024 to fight the now-enacted legislation rewriting Florida’s homelessness strategy — which requires local governments to enforce camping bans — and, critics say, criminalizes people with nowhere to sleep.
The latest federal data show Florida has 2,500-3,000 veterans who are homeless — second only to California with over 10,000. Johnson said there are 125-200 veterans experiencing homelessness in Osceola.
Johnson has numerous academic degrees, including a doctorate in public policy and administration from Walden University, a law degree from the Barry University School of Law and a master of business administration from the University of Indianapolis.
“I have the skill set, I have the discipline,” he said. “The people need an individual who is forward thinking, who can write, who can research .. those are the things that I bring to the table.”
He’s raised about $16,200 for his campaign, with all but $250 coming in the form of a loan.
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