In Orlando District 5 election, Cameron Hope sees inspiration in redemption, business

ORLANDO, Fla. – One of Cameron Hope’s first tax service customers saw his business sign on a street corner.

“They were a little skeptical at first,” Hope said. “But they’ve been my clients for 14 years. They’ve referred me a lot of clients.”

On Friday, Hope put a different sign on the customer’s lawn – a sign for his first city commission campaign.

Hope is one of seven candidates running in the special election for Orlando City Council District 5, to fill the vacancy left when Commissioner Regina Hill was suspended.

The District 5 campaign is Hope’s first move into politics. It’s also a milestone in a larger journey – that of a former felon and a returning citizen.

“I think that my history serves as an example for other residents in District 5 that have had a past criminal history and that they can overcome that,” Hope said. “And maybe have a successful business, even run for an office, possibly win a seat in city government and contribute.”

[RELATED: Early voting underway for Orlando City Council District 5 special election. What you need to know]

Hope came to Orange County from Miami in the late 80s. After high school, he worked jobs at places like Walt Disney World and Florida Power and Light, but he soon believed those jobs would not get him where he wanted to be, like the rich parents of friends he’d had in Miami who had their own businesses.

“My father wasn’t there, I didn’t really have male mentors that took me under their tutelage and showed me ways to accumulate wealth and be successful the way that I wanted to be successful,” Hope said. “I just knew that working for someone else, I would never be able to live a certain type of lifestyle.”

Hope admits he began to sell drugs in his Winter Garden community.

“I participated in it for about 18 months, and I used those funds to start businesses,” Hope said.

Hope was well-known in the early 90s as a music promoter, bringing groups like Naughty by Nature and Salt-N-Peppa to Central Florida. He also ran a successful nightclub on International Drive.

Hope says he had stopped his drug activities nine months before he was arrested. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison, a sentence that was reduced to 16 years.

After Florida voters approved Amendment 4 in 2018, Hope was able to get his voting rights back. He voted in 2020.

But Hope sees his situation reflected in communities across the country like the neighborhoods in District 5, where the government crackdown on drugs in the 90s had the downside of taking young men out of communities they could have been contributing to.

“A lot of people like me, we were entrepreneurs at the time, the guys that partook in that activity, they owned barber shops, they owned nightclubs, they owned car detail shops, they owned they own businesses,” Hope said. “And you know, once you took them all out of the community, you didn’t replace the community with anything else. And that’s why most of these communities like Parramore, like Center Street in Winter Garden, and Ivey Lane, they look like deserts now.”

Hope’s belief in business guided him after prison. He opened up a tax service, and now runs First Hope Financial. He started with 15 clients in 2010, and now has about 600 clients a year, he said.

[RELATED: What issues matter to you and will inform your vote in 2024?]

“I like business because what I bring to the table is how I’m going to eat,” Hope said. “How I come out here and put the work in, it’s gonna determine whether I win and so you know, I can’t pay someone to do it. You know, but I like to come out and do it myself and make sure it’s getting done.”

Business is at the core of what Hope wants to see in District 5. He pointed to other Orlando communities like College Park and Lake Nona as examples of prosperous communities with local development.

“You want businesses in the community to hire from the community,” he said. “Without business development, the community is not going to grow… If this works for other districts, why wouldn’t it work for this district? But there are a lot of things in the district that’s holding us back. And we have to look at those things.”

Homelessness is one of those problems, Hope said.

“You go to gas stations, you come out of convenience stores, the 7-Elevens, and things like that, a lot of our homeless are hanging in those areas in panhandling and asking for money. Sometimes that’s not a safe situation, they’ll come up to your car, and things like that. And so when other pedestrians or travelers are passing through, and they want to stop at these businesses, they may wait until they get in another part of town.”

Hope would like to see more money allocated for places for the homeless to get them off the streets. Many of Orange County’s homeless shelters are in Orlando District 5. He also wants more done to get the services homeless people need.

Affordable housing is another issue for Hope, but not in the way you might think. He doesn’t see the issue as one of cheap housing, but one of higher wages.

A News 6 analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey found an estimated 20% of the households in the district were at or below the poverty level in 2022, compared to 14.2% for the entire city.

The median household income was $43,015, compared to $65,354 for the city as a whole.

Again, it all comes back to business.

Hope wants to see more shops and restaurants in the district to combat the food desert issue. He points out that while out one night canvassing, he had to leave the district to find a healthier option for dinner – a Chipotle on Orange Avenue.

“All of these people, they need basic services, they need gas, they need food, they need shelter, they need entertainment, they have to shop, there’s no shopping malls or shopping districts, major shopping districts,” Hope said.

When asked how he wants to see the district develop, he points to Wynwood in Miami.

“When I lived in Miami as a child, Wynwood didn’t have any storefront businesses. You know, it was all graffitied up. There was gang activity. There were drug sales going on over there. There was nothing over there,” Hope said. “You go to Wynwood right now, you go any day of the week at nighttime, it’s a nighttime entertainment district.”

He says to do that, the city needs to focus on businesses and especially events that attract people in the district as much as people outside of it.

“We only have one Black main event that comes to this area, basically, besides concerts, and that’s the classic over at Camping World Stadium. We need more than that… just like we attract the Pro Bowl, EDC and you know, college football, and all of those things, once again, the community is being left out of that planning,” Hope said.

Early voting for the District 5 special election is underway and runs through Sunday. Election Day is Tuesday, May 21.

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