Amania Saluste is what election offices call a super voter. If there’s an election, she votes in it. City, county, state, federal. It doesn’t matter.
So when she said on Episode 22 of The Amania Show that she sat out this August’s primary, it landed. “I got issues with my party,” she said. “I got issues with the leadership of my party.” And then, six days before Election Day, she spent the rest of the hour walking through the races that matter and working out, on air, what she’s going to do about it.
Start at home
Amania started where the decisions hit hardest, in Orange County. The mayor’s race is a nonpartisan runoff between Chris Messina and Tiffany Moore Russell. Moore Russell has been clerk of courts for more than 12 years after eight years on the county commission. Messina is a businessman who ran against Jerry Demings in 2022 and came back for another try now that Demings is term-limited.
She held up a local paper that asked a simple question: what does the Orange County mayor actually do? The answer is more than most people think. The mayor works with the commission on how the county grows, how tax dollars get spent and what services you get. That’s your roads, your traffic, your neighborhood, your job. Amania had just sat in gridlock trying to get to a CeCe Winans concert, so she didn’t need convincing.
What she likes about Messina is his push to bring high-tech and aerospace jobs here, and his plan to get young people into trade training so they don’t have to drag student loans around for twenty years. And he’s for smaller government. “We the people can really govern ourselves,” she said. “We only need government for a couple of things.” Government, in her view, is like an AI data center. It always needs more room, more money, more of everything, and it never has enough.
The commission races are worth your attention too. The county added two seats this cycle, and District 7 drew a crowded field before Patricia Rumph and former Orlando City Commissioner Vicki Vargo advanced to the runoff. In District 6, incumbent Mike Scott took about 49 percent in August, just short of the majority he needed, and now faces Lawanna Gelzer again. And the clerk of courts seat Moore Russell is leaving is open, with Democrat Roberta Walton Johnson facing no-party candidate Terrell Thomas.
Early voting in Orange County runs through Sunday, November 1, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.
Eight languages, one ballot
Then Amania found something on the Orange County Supervisor of Elections website that stopped her. Sample ballots are offered in eight languages: English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, Filipino, Hindi, Portuguese, Vietnamese and Simplified Chinese.
Her issue is comprehension. If a voter can’t read the ballot in English, how are they following the debates, the ads and the candidates’ positions, which are all in English? “Everybody under one umbrella,” she said, “the English umbrella, where you understand and comprehend.” And if you open the door to eight, she asked, why not every community in Central Florida? Phil pointed out that Florida went the other direction on driver’s licenses this year, when the state moved all license exams to English only in February. Amania’s take: if you need English to read a yield sign, you need it to read a ballot.
You can disagree with her. Plenty will. Federal law requires Spanish-language ballots in Orange County, and supporters of multilingual ballots argue that citizens who are still learning English shouldn’t lose their vote over it. But it’s a fair question to put in front of voters, and she put it there.
Why she stayed home in August
Here’s the honest part. Amania says nothing moved her to the polls during the primary, and she named the reasons.
The first is the AI data centers. She doesn’t trust any candidate who tells her they’re good for us because we have to beat China. “The AI in all of this is truly going to be the destruction of man,” she said, and the centers keep demanding more land, more power and more of everything.
The second is the war with Iran. Amania has a child in the service. She remembers a man coming down an escalator promising America first, no more fighting other people’s wars. “How long we’ve been in this war with Iran now?” she asked. Eggs aren’t ten dollars anymore, and she gives credit for that. But it still cost her fifty bucks to fill up her truck.
Still, the primary is house business. Now it’s a choice between two parties. “You got to either rally with your party or you stay home,” she said. And she’s heading to the Trump rally at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach on Friday, hoping it lights the fire back up.
The ground game, and the fine print
Senate candidate Angie Nixon’s billboards are all over I-4, in a pink you can’t miss. Amania sat at a light under one and read the fine print, which she says pointed to American Bridge, a Democratic PAC whose stated mission is “holding Republicans accountable” and tracking what it calls extremist Republicans, including their anti-abortion positions.
Amania’s response: if being pro-life makes you an extremist in their eyes, she’ll wear it.
She also has a personal history with Nixon. Amania was in Tallahassee in 2023 when the Legislature debated letting education dollars follow the student to the school the family chooses. Nixon spoke against opening it to every family and pushed an amendment to keep wealthier families out. “I just don’t think we should be subsidizing millionaires or billionaires,” Nixon said at the time. Amania says that was a line in the sand for her. If you’re really for the kids in neighborhoods with struggling schools, she says, this is the thing that gets them out.
A low blow in Ohio
In Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign put out an ad featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, calling Acton a liar. Acton was removed from her mother’s custody as a child after her stepfather was indicted on charges involving abuse of her, and she says she hasn’t spoken to her mother in nearly fifty years. Gov. Mike DeWine, who endorsed Ramaswamy, said it was wrong to run the ad and asked the campaign to take it down. President Trump backed Ramaswamy and called the mother “fair game.”
Amania says she’s on the Vivek train, and she still didn’t flinch. “That was low blow,” she said. The campaign may think it’s sending one message. The public is going to read another one, that you were willing to use what happened to a little girl to win a race.
Checking in on Victor Marx
Amania also checked in on an old friend of the show. Victor Marx, the Republican nominee for governor of Colorado, has never held office and has spent most of his life in ministry. He told reporters the outsider label is exactly why voters like him. Democrat Phil Weiser is considered the favorite. Amania thinks Marx might take it anyway.
The ad that set off a firestorm
In Michigan, a super PAC supporting Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed ran an ad showing a couple putting eggs and bananas back on the shelf because of U.S. spending on Israel. The ad was condemned by Jewish leaders and critics as antisemitic, and El-Sayed’s campaign said it was not affiliated with it. The ad’s $26 billion figure refers to a 2024 package that also included billions in humanitarian aid.
Amania didn’t defend the ad. Her point was about the reaction. The same voices clutching their pearls over this one, she said, had no trouble with an ad built on a woman’s childhood abuse. “To me, it’s alarming that they have no problem with the Vivek ad,” she said. Pick your outrage, but be consistent with it.
Pick up your cross
Amania closed by being straight with her audience. Every cycle is the most important election of our lifetime. Every side promises investigations. She remembers 2024. Lock people up. Release the Epstein files. “Are you still talking about the Epstein files?” she asked. People who pushed hard to get this administration in expected action on the elites, and they’re still waiting.
But if Democrats take the Senate or the House, she expects impeachment talk and investigations to follow. And that’s where she lands.
“I’ve got my issues,” she said. “But I do still believe that they are a better choice than the other.” You put the family business to the side. You pick up your cross. “We bleed red, white and blue.”
Watch the full episode of The Amania Show on YouTube, Rumble, Facebook and X, or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio and Amazon Music. Join the live election night watch party on Tuesday, November 3 at 7 PM. Pick up shirts, mugs and the Truth Seeker collection at AmaniaSaluste.com.
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