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And then there were four. What was only a cou- ple weeks ago a two-person, all-GOP contest for a Sarasota County Commission seat has morphed into a full-on race, with Democrat Ray Porter and independent John Minder joining Republicans Lourdes Ramirez and Alan Maio in the competition to replace out- going County Commissioner Nora Patterson. For starters, that means the August primary elections will be closed, i.e., only Republicans will be able to vote for Maio or Ramirez. If neither Porter nor Minder had filed to run, all registered voters in Sarasota County could have participated in the GOP primary. Now, whoever wins that primary will face off against Porter and Minder in the general elec- tion this November. Porter, a former journalist and now the director of communications for the Sarasota Association of Realtors, faces tough odds. Republicans hold a significant voter registra- tion advantage over Democrats in the county: 43 to 31 percent, with 26 percent of voters registered with third parties or with no affil- iation. It's a situation with which Porter is well familiar. In 2008, he ran for a seat on the Charter Review Board, losing by 4 percentage points to Republican Marie Nisco. "It's going to be difficult," Porter acknowl- edges. But he's making a run for it anyway. He spoke with The Sarasota News Leader this week about his campaign. The Sarasota News Leader: What prompted you to run for elected office again? Ray Porter: It's been a six-year process. I first approached the Democratic Party and met Rita Ferrandino [chairwoman of the party] and was talking about running for County Commissioner Jon Thaxton's seat. She looked at me and shook her head and rolled her eyes and said, "You really have no chance." I wound up filing to run for the Charter Review Board in District 5, and that experience was interesting, being my first time trying to run for political office, and your opponent doesn't need to really mount a campaign if she has an "R" next to her name. She didn't show up at any debates. And even after all that, I lost by about 4 percentage points. It wasn't an overall negative experience. I got to meet the future president and celebrated a lot of Democratic victories. And I had many years of experience in jour- nalism. You kind of see things from the inside out. You hear things and you know things that the public never gets the chance to know. You wind up learning a lot about politics, a lot about government, and it tends to turn people cynical. Finally, a switch came on in my brain and said, "You've got to be someone who takes the bull by the horns and tries to change things." DEMOCRATIC COUNTY COMMISSION CANDIDATE KNOWS HE'S IN A TOUGH BATTLE, BUT REMAINS 'CONFIDENT' By Cooper Levey-Baker Associate Editor Sarasota News Leader May 30, 2014 Page 15