GOP Primary for HD 90 in Palm Beach County features two very different candidates

Republican voters have two people to choose from on Tuesday in a Special Election^[1] Primary for House District 90^[2], which spans a coastal portion of Palm Beach County.

Unlike some races, where the difference between candidates is a matter of degrees, voters should have a clear choice in this contest depending on their ideological inclinations and affinity for conspiracy theories.

In one corner is businessman Bill Reicherter, a former member of the Palm Beach County Zoning Board and who has mounted yet another run at public office after falling short against late Rep. Joe Casello last year.

He’s facing Maria Zack, a longtime Georgia lobbyist^[3]-turned-software company executive who hopes to make the jump from political operative to elected official before the 2026 Legislative Session commences in full.

The winner of Tuesday’s election will face Delray Beach Commissioner Rob Long, a Democrat, and no-party candidate Karen Yeh, a serial litigant^[4], in a Dec. 9 General Election.

Locally and electorally, Reicherter, a 56-year-old signage company executive and Realtor, should be the better-known commodity. He runs a local nonprofit, the Reicherter-Tozzi Foundation^[5], which assists underserved communities through housing, youth services, historic preservation, veteran support and disaster relief initiatives.

He has also served on numerous local nonprofit Boards, including those of ChildNet, Junior Achievement of South Florida, the FLIGHT Center, Women and Wishes and the YMCA of Broward County — where state records show he’s long lived in a homesteaded property outside HD 90’s bounds.

It isn’t illegal for candidates to run in a district where they don’t live, but they must have moved into the district^[6] by the time they take office. And it appears Reicherter, a Coral Springs resident, has been contemplating a move for some time; he challenged Casello last year, losing by 12 percentage points. In 2022, he ran unsuccessfully against Boca Raton Democratic Sen. Tina Scott Polsky.

Before switching to the HD 90 contest this year, he was briefly in the crowded 2026 race for Governor^[7].

Zack, 61, has worked in lobbying and government relations since the early 1980s in various capacities, including as President of the Strollo Group^[8], whose clients have included Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, Pfizer and the Greater Atlanta Homebuilders Association, among others.

In her campaign for HD 90, she’s leaning on her political bona fides, which include her leadership of Atlanta-based Stand for Principle PAC^[9], which raised and spent nearly $420,000 through 2017 backing U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s failed presidential bid.

State records show that Zack was registered to vote in Broward County between 2018 and 2021, when she moved from Pompano Beach to Palm Beach, where she has since been registered.

Her campaign website^[10] features pictures of her rubbing elbows with numerous GOP notables, from U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and embattled^[11] border czar Tom Homan to late presidential candidate Herman Cain and former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, who this week settled a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit^[12] with voting systems company Dominion over his claim that its machines were rigged to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden in 2020.

Zack herself is a staunch 2020 election skeptic who has worked to spread several other unverified claims through her Lantana-based nonprofit, Nations in Action^[13]. Among other things, the organization purports to have uncovered evidence of “shadow government” conspiracies to “depopulate countries through a COVID attack” and fix the 2020 election by beaming software hacks from foreign satellites over Italy into voting machines^[14].

Her pinned post on X^[15] references that second, QAnon-affiliated claim, known as “ItalyGate^[16],” and she was credited as a “conspiracy theorist^[17]” in the 2024 film, “Stopping the Steal^[18].”

Despite her objections to the label, which she described to the South Florida Sun Sentinel^[19] as “very ridiculous and very unprofessional,” Zack still says she’s unconvinced Biden legitimately won in 2020, telling the outlet she “can’t tell” who won but still assumes it was Trump.

She also insisted that eliminating property taxes in Florida — a proposal backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, CFO Blaise Ingoglia and many GOP lawmakers — would lower the rate of teen pregnancies, since parents would have more money and be able to spend additional time at home, and lead to an “11% decrease in crime,” citing her own research.

Reicherter’s comments on hot-button issues, meanwhile, indicate he’d bring a moderate but conservative voice from South Florida to Tallahassee.

In an interview^[20] with the Sun Sentinel, which later endorsed^[21] him, he cautioned against eliminating property taxes, reasoning they’d leave localities without a sufficient alternative to pay for necessary services, and called DeSantis’ soon-to-be-shuttered Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention center in the Everglades an ill-conceived “political stunt.”

He is also for keeping Florida’s mandate on vaccinating children against diseases like polio and measles, the safety of which he said is long-established, but doesn’t support requiring residents to take “new vaccines,” such as those for COVID.

Reicherter’s campaign site^[22] says that, if elected, he’ll support legislation providing aid to seniors and helping more skilled worker training, stand up for local home rule, protect the environment and local resiliency and back the creation of an “insurance fraud task force.”

Zack promises, if elected, to support ridding Florida of property taxes, purging the state of undocumented immigrants and empowering parents in education.

Both want to strengthen the local economy, support veterans and first responders and help to curb the burden of property taxes, albeit in different ways.

Through Sept. 25, Reicherter reported raising about $5,300 in outside contributions and lending his campaign $104,000, the unspent portion of which is refundable. His donors included Associated Builders and Contractors^[23], whose Florida East Coast chapter endorsed him^[24], and the farming company of former state Rep. Rick Roth, who is also backing him.

By Thursday, less than a week before Election Day, he spent close to $32,000.

Reicherter’s other endorsers include Palm Beach County Commissioner Marci Woodward, Delray Beach Mayor Tom Carney, Boynton Beach Commissioner Thomas Turkin, former Palm Beach City Commissioner Mack McCray and BLU-PAC of Boca Raton.

Zack raised close to $15,300, about 45% of which was self-given. Notable donors included serial entrepreneur Sharon Amezcua and Marla Maples, a former wife of Trump’s who successfully urged state lawmakers^[25] to pass legislation this year banning weather modification^[26] activities in Florida, including cloud-seeding and the use of so-called chemtrails.

Her political committee, Friends of Maria Zack^[27], was formed in August but has reported no campaign finance activity so far.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich^[28], whom Zack worked for in Atlanta during the 2012 presidential race, has endorsed Zack for HD 90, as has anti-abortion nonprofit Florida Right to Life^[29].

The Special Election for HD 90 was triggered by Casello’s death^[30] in July.

HD 90 is a Democratic-leaning district^[31] that spans Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, Golf, Gulf Stream, Briny Breezes and parts of Highland Beach, Manalapan and Ocean Ridge.