On Monday, December 1, 2025, We the People Club kicked off the holiday season with guest speaker John Fleming, Candidate for Charlotte County Commissioner. In the invocation, Club President Karina Schmitt referenced the Danish Christian Existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s perspectives on staying authentic, transparent, honest, and serving as taught as well in Scriptures – calling for candidates, regardless of the office they run for, to adhere to these unwritten societal rules of good conduct.
As is protocol when candidates and guests speaks at We the People Club meetings, the rules of engagement were outlined, just to remind everyone that no one gets special treatment, and that any questions that the speaker does not get in the meeting will be emailed to them. They have five days to answer the remaining questions upon which time their responses will be reported on our blog and on social media unfiltered. Equal treatment for all.
In the videos, Part 1 and Part 2, Candidate John Fleming discusses a broad range of topics local voters are concerned about. He started by assuring the people that he presently lives in and has lived in the district he’s running in for at least 12 months before he filed to run in the district. This matter is important not just to some people, but to everyone with an active interest in politics.
Why does the question of where the candidate lives matter fundamentally? Voters are looking for a representative who will represent their interests in their local community. They’re not interested in an opportunist who may have plans to move to the area IF they get elected. They want someone who’s already in their community and has interest in their local area.
Some of the important points, and there are too many to go over in details here but do watch the videos (about 1 hour and 5 minutes total) are:
Getting Petitions: The honest and old-fashioned way is for a candidate to get petitions to get on the ballot, unless they get into the race very late and do not have enough time to do so, in which case they must pay to get on the ballot. But if they have more than six months before the closing to file the petitions, they should rightfully get out there, pound the pavement, and get the petitions.
A lot of people are concerned with candidates who jump onto the Elitist-train and just pay to get on the ballot, much like Michael Bloomberg did in the Presidential election in 2020. Alternatively, the candidate must pay the full fee to get on the ballot. The qualifying fee for a commissioner in Charlotte County is $5,466.78 or 1,552 signed petitions, per the Office of Elections in Charlotte County (information retrieved on 12/3/2025). The SOE charges the candidate $0.10 per petition to verify them, even if they disqualify a petition.
The concern with this practice, while it has some pros as well, is that hypothetically an SOE could toss out excessive number of petitions to make it difficult for a candidate to reach the required number if the SOE or interest parties do not want the candidate to run. Is that the case here? We don’t know, but the extremely high number of disqualified petitions that some candidates report to have had experienced is most assuredly a major red flag that needs to be investigated. The deadline for filing petitions or paying the fee is May 11, 2026.
Normally, about 10% to 12% of the petitions that are submitted are discarded by the Supervisor of Elections (SOE) and their staff for invalidity due to changed signatures, missing information, or the voter might have moved and not updated their voter registration. That is the reason it is very important that you update your voter registration about every other year or so or if any information has changed.
However, in the 2026 election, which Candidate John Fleming is running in, the number appears to be upward 35% for some candidates. About three times more than normal (see the video). What is going on with this? It is mathematically impossible to have this many petitions that do not qualify unless, perhaps, there’s something fishy going on that begs an investigation.
Is it, as Candidate for Charlotte County Commissioner Kim Amontree, who was reelected last year in 2024 to School Board for the third time, that elections are rigged? Amontree has several times and on different occasions stated that “All incumbent elections are rigged.” Perhaps, and this should cause someone to want to investigate this thoroughly, all elections may be rigged and not just incumbent elections. Let’s get some answers. Should you be concerned about this? Yes, of course you should because the voters have the right to fair and fraud-free elections.
The Problem With Leaders Who Are Too Busy to Wholeheartedly Serve: One of the questions We the People (WtP) asked John Fleming was what in his perspective was some of the issues he finds with the incumbent Commissioner Chris Constance. While Constance, who has served for about 17 years, may be a nice person and used to be more dedicated to his office as commissioner, Fleming expressed concerns that Constance appears now in recent years to have drifted from his role as a servant of the people to his private business as a plastic surgeon.
Whether the office one holds is full-time or part-time, the people deserve a representative who is dedicated, accessible, fully vested in the duties they are expected to perform, and understands fully their role as a servant of the people. It’s NEVER the other way around. Additionally, a representative of the people is not to use this position in society to further or promote their own private interest and societal advancements. If that becomes an issue, the elected official must resign and allow someone else who is able to dedicate the necessary and required time and effort to serve the people.
Charlotte County Budget Is Financially Raping Low-Income Residents with High Costs: A major concern for all residents, though especially people on fixed income and low to middle income residents, is the erratic increase in cost of living and utility expenses in the county. It causes many residents to struggle unforgivingly while the wealthy residents (and elected officials) seem to be fine with the mindboggling rates they are charged.
John Fleming discusses this problem in detail and points out that we are experiencing a growth that is unsustainable. For example, in 2020/2021 the Charlotte County Budget was $726 million. Now in 2024/2025 it’s $1.38 BILLION. Yes, billion. That’s a 90% increase, Fleming points out. Meanwhile, the population growth is only 20%, from 187,000 in 2020 to now in 2025 224,000.
Take also into account that 38-40% of the population in Charlotte County, Fleming says, receives Social Security Benefits and cannot afford the increases. It demonstrates that some commissioners lack understanding of how their actions impact the very people they are elected to serve.
Fleming criticizes the commissioners who have supported and caused this increase stating that the county has higher than the national average in utility costs. He questions why some of these costs have not been placed on the shoulders of the developers and builders, as they are the ones who are pushing and profiting from the growth rather than forcing the residents to pay for it?
Where is the money going? And why are residents suddenly brutally attacked with rate increases of this magnitude? Note that some of the increases were scheduled rather closely together. Are the elected officials truly staying authentic, transparent and honest while serving the people or do many become part of the Elite who is in the game to serve themselves?
Fleming digs into the numbers. Watch his research in the video and see below.
Two Videos: We regret to say that for a few seconds the first video stopped and picked up again. Therefore, for this speech with Candidate for Charlotte County Commissioner there are two videos: Part 1 and Part 2. Follow us on YouTube @WethePeopleCC to video all videos from our meetings. Be sure to Subscribe, Share, and Like and above all, we encourage you to view all videos we publish. We believe strongly in transparency and do not support editing videos just to “pretty them up.” This is the raw file (minus any technical issues such as a video pause erroneously). Share the video on social media, such as Facebook, NextDoor, and X etc.
As is protocol, speakers are expected to, as they are informed about upfront, answer all questions either at the meeting or in writing afterwards. In the case of Candidate John Fleming, he answered all the questions at the meeting, so we did not need to send any of them to him. Thank you to John Fleming for answering all the questions.
We encourage you to view the videos of the candidates, compare, contrast, evaluate, analyze their body language, consider what they say and what they omit to say. All of it matters critically when you are to form an educated opinion about who to support and vote for.
If you have any questions for any of the candidates, you can email them to us and we will forward them and publish their answers.
You can reach Candidate John Fleming for support, contact him, volunteering, and donations at www.fleming26.com.
Next Meeting Is on Monday, January 5, 2026. Guest Speaker: Commissioner Stephen R. Deutsch for Reelection.