Maria Zack scores GOP Primary win in Special Election race for Palm Beach County’s open HD 90 seat

Longtime lobbyist Maria Zack just earned her spot on the Dec. 9 Special Election ballot that will determine who takes the open House District 90^[1] seat to represent a coastal portion of Palm Beach County through 2026.

With all 107 precincts reporting, a complete tally of early votes and a partial count of mail-in ballots, Zack had 53% of the vote to defeat businessman Bill Reicherter in a head-to-head Republican Primary, according to unofficial numbers from the Supervisor of Elections website^[2].

Zack won by a margin of 159 votes.

She now advances to the race’s General Election, where she faces Delray Beach Commissioner Rob Long, a Democrat, and no-party candidate Karen Yeh.

Just 8.6% of HD 90’s 31,208 voters cast ballots.

Unlike some Primary contests, where the difference between candidates is a matter of degrees, there were many factors by which voters could differentiate Tuesday’s two competitors, from their ideological inclinations to one’s affinity for conspiracy theories.

Reicherter, a former member of the Palm Beach County Zoning Board, is no stranger to seeking public office, having fallen short against late state Rep. Joe Casello for the HD 90 seat last year.

Zack also enjoyed political experience in the race, having worked for decades on campaigns and as a government relations specialist in Georgia^[3] before launching a software company in the Sunshine State.

Locally and electorally, Reicherter, a 56-year-old signage company executive and Realtor, may have entered Election Day as the better-known commodity of the two among residents. He runs a local nonprofit, the Reicherter-Tozzi Foundation^[4], which assists underserved communities, and served on numerous local nonprofit Boards, including those of ChildNet, Junior Achievement of South Florida 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^[5] by the time they take office. And it appears Reicherter, a Coral Springs resident, has contemplated a move for some time; he challenged Casello last year, losing by 12 percentage points. In 2022, he ran unsuccessfully against Boca Raton Democratic state Sen. Tina Scott Polsky.

Before switching to the HD 90 contest this year, he was briefly in the crowded 2026 race for Governor^[6].

Zack, 61, has worked in politics since the early 1980s in various capacities, including as President of the Strollo Group^[7], whose clients have included Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, Pfizer and the Greater Atlanta Homebuilders Association, among others.

In her campaign for HD 90, she leaned on her political bona fides, which include her leadership of Atlanta-based Stand for Principle PAC^[8], a political committee that raised and spent nearly $420,000 through 2017 backing U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s failed presidential bid.

Her campaign website^[9] 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^[10] 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^[11] with voting systems company Dominion over his claim that its machines were rigged to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden in 2020.

Zack, too, is a noted 2020 election skeptic who has worked to spread several other unverified claims through her Lantana-based nonprofit, Nations in Action^[12]. Among other things, the organization purported 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 satellites over Italy into voting machines^[13].

Her pinned post on X^[14] references that second, QAnon-affiliated claim, known as “ItalyGate^[15],” and she was credited as a “conspiracy theorist^[16]” in the 2024 film, “Stopping the Steal^[17].”

Despite her objections to the label, which she described to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel^[18] as “very ridiculous and very unprofessional,” Zack has remained 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 could spend additional time at home.

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

In an interview^[19] with the Sun-Sentinel, which later endorsed^[20] him, he cautioned against eliminating property taxes, reasoning they’d leave localities without a sufficient alternative to pay for necessary services.

He also called DeSantis’ soon-to-be-shuttered Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention an ill-conceived “political stunt” and supported keeping Florida’s mandate to vaccinate children against diseases like polio and measles, but opposed requiring residents to take “new vaccines,” like those for COVID.

Reicherter’s campaign site^[21] said that, if elected, he would 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 promised, if she won, to support ridding Florida of property taxes, purging the state of undocumented immigrants and empowering parents in education.

Both vowed 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 while lending his campaign $104,000, the unspent portion of which is refundable.

His donors included Associated Builders and Contractors^[22], whose Florida East Coast chapter endorsed him^[23], 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’d spent close to $32,000.

Reicherter’s other endorsers included 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 who successfully urged state lawmakers^[24] to pass legislation this year banning weather modification^[25] activities in Florida.

Her political committee, Friends of Maria Zack^[26], was formed in August but reported no campaign finance activity by the most recent deadline.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich^[27], whom Zack worked for in Atlanta during the 2012 presidential race, endorsed Zack for HD 90, as did anti-abortion nonprofit Florida Right to Life^[28].

The Special Election for HD 90 was triggered by the July death^[29] of Casello, a Democrat who previously endorsed Long^[30] as his preferred successor.

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.