Cochran announces run for District 5 commission seat
Amanda Cochran, who lost a competitive primary bid last year for the District 5 seat on the Lee County Board of County Commissioners held by the late Mike Greenwell, has filed to run in the August Republican primary for the now vacant seat.
A special election will take place among Lee County voters in November 2026 for the seat. The seat has been vacant since Greenwell passed away in October. Gov. Ron DeSantis could fill the seat by appointment or leave it open until the next special election in November of 2026. DeSantis’s office has not yet commented on the pending appointment.
Cochran said she filed an application with the Governor’s appointments office for the seat.
“I’m respectively awaiting that decision but no matter what I am going to run,” Cochran said.
Cochran filed to run in the special election, whether she is appointed or not. She said she wanted to “reinforce to the people in Lee County that I have the same commitment that I did before. I obviously couldn’t have anticipated what happened (Greenwell’s death). I am heartbroken for the Greenwell family.”
In last year’s Republican Party primary, Cochran received 45% of the vote compared to 55% for Greenwell. Cochran said she has no indication yet that she will be appointed but hopes that the results of her campaign last year will be taken into consideration.
“We did some great work for the community, and we made some great strides,” Cochran said. She was the top vote-getter from within District 5.
District 5 covers the northeastern region of Lee County, including Lehigh Acres, Alva, Buckingham, Olga and the outer northeastern section of Fort Myers. All Lee County voters can vote in the election.
Cochran made stopping overdevelopment in the county her top priority in her run last year, and is citing what she terms “unchecked development” in the county in her new run.
Cochran, who manages and co-owns the realty firm RE/MAX River & Ranch, believes the Lee County Board of County Commissioners has been too permissive in allowing zoning changes that go against the county’s comprehensive plan.
She has cited developments in Captiva and Alva, and the Cammaratta Kingston development in Fort Myers (currently the subject of litigation) among the projects where she believes county commissioners have been too agreeable to developers at the expense of the environment and the concerns of county residents.
Her concern is for the “massive disconnect between the people and the government,” she said.
Cochran said she doesn’t consider herself a politician but wants to be a public servant. “Somebody has to do something,” Cochran said.
She has also been a vocal opponent of the School District of Lee County’s $162 million school construction project in Alva. Many in the community of Alva have strenuously objected to the project, which will bus in students from the growing population in Lehigh Acres.
“For the school board to argue that this completely rural area with two lanes in an already proven dangerous road with no funding for widening and no street lights, and no sidewalks is the best place for the students who primarily come from Lehigh Acres is not a good argument.”
Cochran said there is more than 40 acres in Lehigh Acres owned by the school district which could easily absorb a new school.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Cochran said. “You build where the students are.”
Cochran said the school would be out of the way for families in Lehigh Acres.
Cochran cited the cost and the infrastructure demands for basic necessities such as water, as well as the negative toll to the environment that will take place. “It’s (approximately) 100 acres of rural land,” Cochran said.
More importantly, the school will be far away from the students and families it will serve.
“It will be the largest campus they have ever built in the most rural section of Lee County with the least population. Make it make sense,” she said. It’s a phrase that Cochran uses for other projects in the county she sees not adding up.
Cochran sees the project as part of a pattern of elected leaders going against the wishes of the community and not listening to residents.
She has voiced concerns about Camerrata’s Kingston project, where environmental groups have warned that the 10,000 homes planned there could pose an existential threat to the endangered Florida panther population. The Lee County Board of County Commissioners reached an agreement with the developers to allow the project as a settlement over litigation to block a mining project there.
A sixth-generation Lee County resident, Cochran’s focus last year was on a rezoning in North Olga approved by county commissioners for a multi-family development and commercial space on State Road 31, which she alleged was spot zoning.
Cochran has grown concerned about increasing development, traffic and urban sprawl in the rural areas of her district.
“I am concerned about strategically growing anywhere in Lee County,” Cochran said.
During her campaign last year, “I was pretty shocked to talk to so many pockets of our community when I traveled and campaigned, the heart of these issues are the same,” Cochran said. “There is a massive disconnect between the people and the local government and how they dismiss them. I can tell you, that’s why there is a distrust.”