Arreola vs Johnson: NCFL candidates campaign for State House District 22

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) - Two candidates from North Central Florida are running for the Florida House of Representatives District 22 seat.

The position covers Gilchrist, Levy, and parts of Alachua County. State Rep. Chuck Clemons, (R) Newberry occupies the State House District 22 seat, but he is term-limited.

Chad Johnson , a Republican from Chiefland, Levy County, is a former county commissioner.

"[I'm] continuing to look at the things that are the most challenging, inflation, immigration, and insurance," said Johnson. "Then looking at different avenues to approach those and try and get those resolved and make Florida a better place for our constituents."

Johnson says growing communities and tackling issues with insurance are top priorities.

"Our assets continue to depreciate and so the cost of insuring those has gone up. We've also created a lot of challenges in the insurance industry from the standpoint we've lost 23 insurance companies over the last five years," said Johnson.

He says fiscally-constrained counties may require more attention from government leaders.

"Anytime you have what we call unfunded mandates from Tallahassee, mandating that these communities or these counties have to incur costs, it's a bigger challenge for them go out to their citizens and generate the ad valorem tax to offset whatever those mandates are," said Johnson.

Johnson told TV20 he's learning from voters what issues they would like to see resolved.

"We've got a lot of support from the conservative side, but now it's moving into those undecided voters and finding out what they want from a representative and establishing what their needs and wants are, and then addressing those as well," he said.

His opponent is David Arreola , a Democrat from Gainesville.

Arreola is a former city commissioner, who says he likes to campaign by meeting the people and hearing directly from them.

"My style of campaigning is how I like to govern, which is going face to face, talking with people in their cities, in their towns, at their doorstep cause some folks really need that type of outreach," he said. "We've been focusing on that, talking about the property insurance crisis, especially after the hard hits we have taken from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton."

Arreola says improvements to property insurance costs is a priority during his campaign, since Floridians pay the most expensive costs in the country.

"A lot of people are now feeling the pain of not just not having good enough insurance, but in some cases being dropped from their insurance coverage or receiving settlement claims that they didn't ask for that are way less than what their damaged adjustments show," he said.

Arreola is also campaigning for gun safety, especially among children.

"What we have is a problem between responsible gun owners and irresponsible gun owners not having enough conversations, and policy makers not being willing to find bipartisan, common sense solutions," he said.

He told TV20 this race is a "once in a generation opportunity" to flip the seat, occupied by a Republican representative for ten years.

"Florida is a very diverse state. We're not always going to agree on everything, but we should have a government that has to come together and discuss and have debate about ideas, not just party line votes," said Arreola.

Voters will find Johnson and Arreola on the general election ballot November 5.

Early voting begins October 21 for Alachua and Levy Counties. Gilchrist County opens early voting October 24.