The sudden departure of former Vero Beach Mayor Val Zudans from the City Council race last week left five candidates, including incumbents Linda Moore and John Carroll, vying for three seats.
Zudans, who was elected to the council in 2017 and served as mayor from March through November 2019, had filed to run in this year’s November election just ahead of the Aug. 16 qualifying deadline.
Five days after filing, however, he withdrew from the race – not because he didn’t think he could win, but because he saw who else was running and realized there was little chance he would be part of a council majority.
In a lengthy text message sent to Vero Beach 32963 on Friday, Zudans wrote he decided to run because he believes the city is “on the devastatingly wrong track under the current leadership.”
“Looking at who was and wasn’t up for re-election – and their prior votes and public statements – I needed just one new person to work with in order to potentially have a three-vote majority to right the ship,” Zudans explained. “I was hoping someone capable would file before the deadline.
“When, at the Friday deadline, I saw that the best possible candidate to file was (former councilman) Brian Heady, and that the two current incumbents were likely to get re-elected, I chose to not waste two years of my life pounding my head against a wall.”
Zudans’ wife, Tracey, currently sits on the council, but she unsuccessfully challenged District 5 incumbent Laura Moss in the County Commission GOP primary contest last week and will vacate her seat on the dais when her term expires in November.
Joining Heady on the list of contenders are Ken Daige, also a former council member, and political newcomer Aaron Vos, a retired-but-still-working management and technical consultant for the RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon.
Vos, 63, grew up in the Los Angeles area and, after a spending four years in the U.S. Marine Corps and then graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in electrical engineering, he worked for Raytheon – a major defense contractor – for three decades.
He retired in 2017, but he continues to work for the company, which merged with the United Technologies in 2020 and was rebranded as RTX last year, as an independent contractor.
For the past six years, he has been traveling around the country as a troubleshooter.
However, Vos said he has already notified the company of his plans to reduce his workload to a few hours per week. If elected, he said he plans to “dedicate my full attention to helping the city.”
Vos, who moved to Vero Beach in March 2019 and lives in the barrier island’s Castaway Cove community, said he never considered entering politics, but his neighbors urged him to run.
“I’m very interested in what’s going on in the city,” he said, “and with my background and skill set, I believe I can make a noticeable and positive difference.”
Zudans’ tone was more subdued.
In providing specific reasons for his decision to run, he cited several high-profile violent crimes in the beachside business district that have occurred in the past year, including the shooting at Humiston Beach Park in September, a stabbing at Grind and Grape in the wee hours of New Year’s Day, and an armed robbery at Mulligan’s Beach House two weekends ago.
“Nothing even remotely similar to this has happened in the 22 years that Tracey and I raised our family here,” Zudans wrote, blaming the Vero Beach Police Department’s leadership and a City Council that he claims doesn’t hold “anyone accountable.”
Zudans also expressed concern that the council will “massively botch” the major projects it is pursuing, specifically the Three Corners development on the mainland’s waterfront, revitalization of the downtown area, relocation of the city’s water-and-sewer plant off the lagoon, and expansion of the municipal marina.
The four projects, Zudans wrote in his email, “seem to me to be heading down what I think is a terrible path for a city that I love and hate to see diminished.”