Stet NewsWelcome back. For you today, checking in with Jupiter and the county after their fire-rescue split; the state of the county clerk’s race; spotlight on the Frankel-Adeimy campaigns; an Epstein exhibit is on its way to South Florida; and wanted: inner-city tech nerds.
🇺🇸 Midterm update: Early voting continues in Palm Beach County through Sunday. Election Day is one week away.
- More than 212,000 voters in Palm Beach County cast ballots as of Monday, nearly 24% of the 889,577 eligible voters. More than 100,000 were Democrats, 63,000 were Republicans and 47,000 were not affiliated with the two main parties. Slightly more than half of the ballots were cast by mail.
- Statewide, 2.7 million ballots had been cast as of Monday morning, 20% of the 13.7 million registered voters.
🚒 Jupiter’s new fire department
Jupiter committed to paying millions to build fire stations when it decided in 2023 to break away from Palm Beach County Fire Rescue.
Yes, but: The county needed to replace a station in Abacoa that it transferred to Jupiter. It is spending $2 million to buy two homes along Donald Ross Road west of Florida’s Turnpike to convert into a fire station.
Why it matters: The moves are the culmination of a tumultuous three-year transformation that required the town to put up nearly $60 million. Town officials promise the move will end up reducing costs for taxpayers.
The debate: Supporters of the split said the move would lower costs, give Jupiter more control over fire and emergency services and improve response times. Opponents worried about higher costs, losing experienced county crews and changing a system that already worked.
The upfront costs:
- $26 million to build two fire stations.
- $8.5 million for fire trucks and rescue vehicles.
- $25 million for salaries and benefits, equipment, supplies, command staff vehicles and administrative costs.
The town expects savings for property taxpayers to amount to about $42 million over the first five years.
Zoom in: The county gave up Station 16 in Abacoa because Jupiter gave the county the land in 2000 with the condition that it return to Jupiter if the county stopped providing town fire services.
- To fill the coverage void, the county is spending $2 million for two homes on Donald Ross Road. One already has been converted into the new Station 16.
Read the rest of the story about Jupiter’s new fire department, which began operating Oct. 1, at StetNews.org.
— Laurie Mermet
🗳️ Drucker takes on tainted Caruso
The Mike Caruso-Yvette Drucker race for clerk and comptroller had been shaping up as a harbinger of the Republican Party’s ability to win a countywide campaign in historically Democratic Palm Beach County.
Yes, but: Caruso’s arrest Aug. 18 on child molestation charges changed all that.
Catch up quick: Caruso, 68, the Republican who held the job for a year as an appointee of Gov. Ron DeSantis, is not campaigning, even as he refused to withdraw from the race.
- He isn’t giving interviews.
- He has no campaign website.
- He stopped raising money.
Why it matters: The job entails overseeing court filings from traffic tickets to murder cases, providing clerical duties in courts and County Commission meetings and monitoring county spending.
Zoom in: It’s also in the spotlight because the clerk determines the county’s investment strategy. Under Caruso and his predecessor, Democrat Joe Abruzzo, that meant investing in Israeli bonds and drawing the wrath of protesters who object to Israel’s war in Gaza.
- The county claims to be the world’s largest investor in Israeli bonds, with a portfolio topping $1 billion.
What she’s saying: Drucker, 51, a six-year Boca Raton City Council member, said she would consider continuing the county’s investment in Israeli bonds.
- “My job, once I’m elected, is to understand the portfolio, make sure that we’re diversified, and make sure that, if it’s still good, to invest in Israeli funds,” she said. “Right now, with Amendment 3 looming and budgets (of constitutional officers) being cut from the state level, it’s very hard to turn away from a bond that is yielding us such high returns.”
Drucker, the daughter of Cuban immigrants, is refusing to talk about the charges facing her opponent. She has raised $300,000 while Caruso’s money-raising is stuck at $66,825.
Of note: The clerk’s office, like most countywide offices in Palm Beach County, has been under Democratic control for decades. Democrat John B. Dunkle held the post for 33 years before giving way (after a brief transition to an appointed successor) to Democrat Dorothy Wilken in 1992. Democrat Sharon Bock took over in 2004 and held the post until she decided not to run again in 2020, when Joe Abruzzo was elected.
- Abruzzo’s departure in 2025 to become county administrator paved the way for DeSantis to appoint Caruso, a term-limited state House member.
Read more about Drucker what Caruso’s publicist had to say at StetNews.org.
— Joel Engelhardt and Jessica Abramsky
🗳️ Frankel, Adeimy vie to represent Trump in Congress
Congressional districts have been redrawn at President Donald Trump’s urging, sending most of Florida’s Democratic delegation into Republican territories.
But the new lines decisively benefit only one Democrat in Florida, and she happens to be Trump’s own congressional representative, Lois Frankel, who is being challenged by a Republican in search of her first elected office.
Frankel of West Palm Beach faces Deborah Adeimy, a West Palm Beach financial planner, in District 23, which gained registered Democrats in the redraw.
Why it matters: In what could be very tight midterms, Frankel’s seat, if you count money and experience, could be an easier one to retain in the House.
What they’re saying:
- “I’ve never met my opponent,” Frankel said at a recent voter meet-and-greet, speaking of Adeimy. “I don’t even know who she is. … My real opponent is Donald Trump. He’s wrecking the country.”
- “The Democrat Party is no more,” Adeimy says in a reel on her website. “Call it what you want: liberalism, socialism, wokeism. Everything it touches, it destroys.”
Read more about the candidates’ stances at StetNews.org.
— Anne Geggis
More Stet election coverage:
- Mast, Martin, Cooke vie for U.S. House
- Roth vs. Silvers for state Senate
- Baxter vs. Waldron for County Commission District 6
- Woodward vs. Calabrese for County Commission District 4
- What’s in the proposed $280 million Palm Beach County parks bond
- County library improvements are on the Nov. 3 ballot
📖 Bookmobile back in the land of Trump, Epstein
The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Bookmobile and Reading Room, traversing the country for months, is making its final stop in South Florida, site of the first failed criminal prosecution of Epstein.
The exhibit, here from Nov. 1 to 4, features the 3.5 million documents released by the Justice Department under the Epstein Transparency Act. They are bound into more than 3,400 volumes in the reading room and 440 volumes of micro-printed files, 800 pages each, in the bookmobile.
Organizers have not announced yet where the bookmobile and reading room will be set up — whether it’s West Palm Beach or Fort Lauderdale.
The tour, sponsored by a nonprofit called the Institute for Primary Facts, has featured some speeches by Epstein survivors, whom the DOJ says number about 1,200. Visitors can leave notes on a reflection wall.
Why it matters: Had then-Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer followed the recommendations from the yearlong 2005 Palm Beach Police investigation and had Epstein been convicted, he could have spent decades in prison, raising no controversy about interactions with President Trump and other well-heeled friends.
Driving the news: Organizers say the goal is to prompt release of millions of documents that DOJ says are duplicative and to unredact what organizers say are names of sexual abusers.
What they’re saying: “We are bringing the Epstein files on the road — across dozens of cities and states — to remind Americans everywhere: accountability matters and justice delayed is justice denied,” said David Garrett, executive director for the Institute for Primary Facts.
- “The millions of files in the Reading Room and Bookmobile represent deep institutional failures, years of ‘turning blind eyes’ to Epstein and his enablers, and the pain survivors have carried in isolation for so long,” he said.
How to go: You must sign up here.
To read more about the event and the near-miss that could have put Epstein in prison for decades, go to StetNews.org.
— Holly Baltz
👉 In case you missed it
Project Tango grows
With the sweep of a pen, space for a data center has tripled at the controversial Project Tango site. Stet was the first to report on the county’s administrative action, taken Oct. 7, that approved nearly 700,000 square feet of data center use at the site, up from 200,000 square feet. Read the story here.
The latest on West Palm’s downtown plan
The West Palm Beach City Commission was slated to take up the controversial future vision for downtown Monday night. But it came with a surprise from the planning board, which voted last week to revive consideration of a 25-story height limit. Read more about the surprise and an update on what happened Monday night here.
🍊The JUICE
🚫 More than 1,800 books have been flagged for removal in Palm Beach County public schools to meet a state directive that shifted the initiative on book bans to schools and librarians. Under the previous approach, which relied on public challenges, Palm Beach County recorded no objections to books over the past two years. (WLRN)
✍🏼 Election officials urge early voters to use a stylus if they find themselves selecting the wrong candidate on touchscreen machines. Make sure the candidate you want is highlighted, they say, before printing out the early voting ballot. (The Palm Beach Post $$$)
➡️ A comprehensive historic review to explain the shift in Florida voter registration giving Republicans an 11% edge heading into the 2026 midterms. (Matthew Isbell’s MCI Maps)
🇺🇸 No U.S. state has ever elected a Black Republican governor. Can Florida? (Florida Trib)
🏗️ West Palm Beach’s Community Redevelopment Agency picked BFC West Palm, an affiliate of New York-based BFC Partners, to redevelop seven properties along Broadway in Northwood. BFC pitched three options. The least dense would construct four, five-story buildings with 242 units plus ground-floor retail. The densest calls for six, seven-story buildings with 470 units plus ground-floor retail. Despite voting Oct. 20, the city had not yet made the proposals public. (South Florida Business Journal $$$)
🛤️ Florida has reinstated $200 million for a proposed public commuter train line connecting downtown Miami to Aventura along the Florida East Coast Railway tracks, a first step to a coastal commuter line that could extend through Palm Beach County. (Axios Miami)
🤝 Related Ross bought the North 40 two-building office property near Yamato Road and Congress Avenue in Boca Raton for $64 million. The deal extends the developer’s holdings in Boca Raton beyond the nearby Boca Raton Innovation Campus it bought last month. (South Florida Business Journal $$$)
🏳️🌈 Lake Worth Beach Commissioner Anthony Segrich is questioning whether the city should continue its low cost rent of downtown space to Compass, the LGBTQ+ community organization that has operated out of a city building since 2007. Commissioners consider Compass’ request for a lease through 2046 tonight. (Lake Worth Beach Independent)
♞ The Knight Foundation announced $5 million in grants last week. Two of the grants will support projects in West Palm Beach.
- Palm Beach Venture Philanthropy will use the grant to help create a shared community space.
- Palo Alto, Calif.-based AI firm Caldera will work with the city to build a public records platform designed to make the government more transparent and reduce the burden on West Palm Beach staff. (Full list of grants, West Palm Beach release)
🎧 “Top of Mind Florida,” the podcast by Michael Williams and Brian Crowley, talks midterm politics with former Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg. They touch on the governor and Senate races and why national Democrats have largely kept their money out of Florida. (Listen now; watch after 4 pm today.)
561NSIDER: 💻 Coding without college
Not every teen wants to go to college, and some can’t afford tuition.
What’s happening: The West Palm Beach Center for Arts & Technology connects high school students and underemployed young adults with training programs that can lead to careers in the culinary arts and construction.
The latest: Now, organizers are launching a free technology course for high school juniors and seniors in the Historic Northwest District, with priority given to students who live there.
The big picture: The West Palm Beach nonprofit formed in 2018 during then-West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio’s administration with financial support from Pittsburgh entrepreneur Bill Strickland.
What they’re saying: “This is an immersive technology program taught by industry professionals,” Executive Director Claudia Kirk Barto said.
Zoom in: The program can accommodate 20 students.
- The curriculum focuses on AI, cybersecurity and coding, the team’s areas of expertise.
- Everything, including laptops and software, is free.
- Tech pros Julius McGee and Bobby Dorlus are leading the program, which is now registering students.
Barto secured grant money from Comcast, the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties and the Children’s Services Council. She welcomes additional investors, grantors, volunteers, mentors and interns.
What’s next: Classes will meet weekly beginning Nov. 11 and run through May.
- The deadline to register is Nov. 9. Students can apply at wpbcat.org.
Keep reading to find out about the center’s other training programs at StetNews.org.
— Janis Fontaine
📧 Making the case
Our biggest fundraiser of the year kicks off Nov. 2.
Driving the news: For the third year, Stet News has been accepted into the NewsMatch year-end campaign.
Why it matters: The national program teams charitable foundations with hundreds of independent newsrooms like Stet. It encourages readers to contribute by matching their individual gifts or pledges up to $1,000.
- It also gives Stet a bonus if we attract new contributors.
State of play: This year, thanks to NewsMatch and generous local donors, gifts made during the campaign will be tripled. We’ll be popping into your inbox a few extra times between now and year’s end, because this match is our biggest fundraiser of the year and your support makes a difference.
Thank you for reading and believing in Stet News.
– Joel, Carolyn and Liz
