Rachelle Litt, Dana Middleton Win Palm Beach Gardens Council

Palm Beach Gardens voters handed two women seats on the City Council Tuesday, keeping an incumbent in place and returning a familiar face to a panel she left just three years ago.

Incumbent Dana Middleton won re-election to her Group 5 seat with 57% of the vote, defeating challenger Damien Murray in a race that was never particularly close. In the Group 3 contest, former Council member Rachelle Litt claimed victory with 45% of the vote, edging out Heather Deitchman and David Levy in a three-way field. Litt will replace termed-out Council member Chelsea Reed.

Because Palm Beach Gardens uses a plurality system, Litt’s 45% was enough to win outright. Under city rules, runoffs only happen in the event of an exact tie, so Litt’s margin over her two opponents sealed the race on election night.

The elections in this affluent northern Palm Beach County city of roughly 65,300 residents turned heavily on two questions that have defined local politics across South Florida this cycle: how fast to grow and who can afford to live here.

Traffic dominated the conversation throughout the campaign. Residents pointed repeatedly to gridlock along PGA Boulevard and Northlake Boulevard, with frustration running especially high as new development pushes west of the Turnpike and further strains roads built for a smaller city. Candidates across both races acknowledged that growth is not going away. The debate centered on whether city leadership has moved quickly enough to make infrastructure keep pace with new construction.

Housing affordability ran alongside that concern. Candidates debated zoning changes, density bonuses and public-private partnerships aimed at expanding workforce housing for teachers, nurses, first responders and younger residents who work in Palm Beach Gardens but increasingly cannot afford to live there.

Governance itself also emerged as a live issue. Several candidates argued that City Manager Ron Ferris wields outsized influence over political decisions and that the Council should push back more forcefully. That critique landed against a backdrop of two decisions that still irritate a portion of the electorate: the city’s move to lease Plant Drive Park for a proposed ice rink complex, and a failed annexation attempt that voters rejected decisively in 2024.

Litt, 70, is a retired pharmacist and pharmaceutical sales representative who served on the Council until 2023, when term limits pushed her out. She made a bid for the state legislature in 2024, running as the Democratic nominee in House District 94, but lost to Republican Rep. Meg Weinberger.

Coming back to City Hall, Litt pitched herself as the candidate with the deepest institutional knowledge, framing her campaign around what she called a “levelheaded, measured, and experienced” approach. During her prior tenure, she backed long-range planning on transportation and workforce housing, making her platform a natural fit for the concerns driving this year’s race.

Middleton, running for re-election in Group 5, benefited from a commanding vote margin that reflected the kind of incumbent advantage that is hard to build without consistent constituent service. Her 57% against Murray’s challenge suggests she enters her next term with a solid political foundation.

The two victories mean Palm Beach Gardens begins its next chapter on growth management with a Council that includes both a tested incumbent and a returning member who has navigated City Hall before. Whether that combination translates into sharper oversight of city management, faster movement on traffic solutions, or concrete progress on workforce housing will depend on what the newly seated Council prioritizes once it gets to work.

For residents who watched the annexation effort collapse and who still drive past Plant Drive Park wondering how the ice rink deal got approved, Tuesday’s results put familiar names back in the room. Whether familiar means better is the question Palm Beach Gardens will spend the next few years answering.