Maria Zack has repeatedly touted a theory that Italy helped steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump, and remains skeptical that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner, arguing that the question warrants further investigation five years later.
Now Zack is on the ballot herself, in a special primary for the Republican nomination to run for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives in Palm Beach County. And, she said in an interview, she doesn’t have complete confidence that elections in the county can be trusted.
Bill Reicherter, the other Republican competing for the nomination in the 90th state House District, said Zack’s pursuit of supposed Italian involvement in the 2020 election is relevant to the Sept. 30 primary in Delray Beach and Boynton Beach.
“My opponent is a single-issue conspiracy theorist, infamous for her 2020 conspiracy known as Italygate which she peddled nationally claiming the Prime Minister of Italy used military satellites to change votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden,” he said in response to a written questionnaire.
Asked in an interview Wednesday who won, Zack said, “I can’t tell you. I assume it was President Trump, but I can’t tell you until there’s a full investigation with all its affidavits and transparency.”
Zack objected to the way Reicherter characterized her. “To call people names is very ridiculous and very unprofessional,” she said during a joint interview with members of the South Florida Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and a news reporter.
Issues
The two candidates differed on major issues.
PROPERTY TAXES: Reicherter said he’d like to see relief for property taxpayers. Zack said she’d like to see property taxes eliminated.
He echoed the view of many local government officials, who caution that the idea of eliminating property taxes may sound good to some, but without that source of revenue local governments won’t be able to pay for vital services.
Zack said efficiencies would cover the revenue lost from property taxes. On property taxes, and several other issues, she said she has an “audit, affidavit and transparency” program that would solve a range of problems.
Zack also offered an unconventional view of the benefits from eliminating property taxes. She said it would reduce teenage pregnancies — which have already declined precipitously — because family finances would be so improved that one parent could stop working and stay home with the kids.
“We don’t have parents home with the kids, so kids aren’t getting the nurturing and upbringing that they deserve to have. We have teen pregnancies,” she said. “When parents are home with their kids, they know what they’re doing.”
Zack also said she did “research” that showed ending the property tax would result in “an 11% decrease in crime.”
VACCINES: Zack supports plans from Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo to eliminate vaccine mandates.
Zack said ending vaccine mandates is “medically and constitutionally correct.”
Reicherter doesn’t favor such a sweeping view. He said he supports mandated child vaccines that have been around for a long time, such as measles, mumps and polio. “Those vaccinations have been around for years and years, and they’ve proven not to be harmful.”
He doesn’t support mandates for what he termed “new vaccines.”
IMMIGRATION: They disagreed over the Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention center the state established in the Everglades, a signature 2025 effort from DeSantis that has received a stamp of approval from Trump.
“I think it was a political stunt,” Reicherter said. “I don’t really believe it was a well thought out plan, to be honest with you.”
“I don’t want to call it a concentration camp and all that because I don’t like those words,” he added, suggesting there is a better, “more humane way to do these things.”
He said people in the U.S. illegally should be deported if they commit crimes. But others, who have broken no other law, are valued members of the community and help the economy, he said.
In the press release announcing her candidacy, Zack said “Stopping Illegal Immigration — Protect resources and keep communities safe” is a central issue for her.
She said she didn’t know enough about Alligator Alcatraz to offer an opinion. “It’s hard for me to know what are the numbers and what was the purpose,” she said. “I didn’t have enough information, honestly, to make an assessment. I don’t want to give an opinion, but I do want to know more. I want to understand it.”
The contest
The primary to pick a Republican nominee to fill the vacancy left by state Rep. Joe Casello, who died in July, is Sept. 30.
Only one Democrat, Delray Beach Commissioner Rob Long is running, so that party has no primary. The general election is Dec. 9.
District 90 is essentially a Delray Beach-Boynton Beach district bordered by Hypoluxo Road in the north, Military Trail on the west (with a couple of pockets west of Military), the Delray Beach-Boca Raton border on the South and the Atlantic Ocean on the east.
It’s overwhelmingly Democratic. Registered voters are about 40% Democratic, 30% Republican, 27% no party affiliation/independent with the rest in various minor parties.
In the 2024 presidential election, Democrat Kamala Harris won 54.6% of the vote in District 90 and Republican Donald Trump received 44.2%, according to an analysis posted by Democratic data analyst Matthew Isbell.
The candidates
Reicherter and Zack share one characteristic besides party affiliation: neither one of them lives in the district.
Reicherter, 56, grew up and lives in Broward County. He said he had a house in the 90th District when he challenged Casello in the 2024 election.
He said he lives in Lighthouse Point, having sold his home in Parkland. As of Thursday, records from the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office show he was still registered to vote with a Parkland address.
Zack, 62, lives in Palm Beach, county voter registration records show. She said she grew up and spent her early career in Florida, lived in Georgia, and returned to the state in 2018.
They differed over who has more ties to the district each hopes to represent.
“All my doctors are in the district. My family is in the district. It’s where I go shopping. Unlike my opponent, I actually live in the county,” Zack said. “I love this district.”
Reicherter said he has many contacts there. “Maria talks about she shops there and she does all this other stuff. I’ve been doing business in this district for 30 years, so I have a lot more going on in the district I believe than she does,” he said.
Zack has been a lobbyist in Florida and Georgia, and has been involved over the years working on behalf of conservative candidates.
In Georgia, records show, she lost a 2002 race for state Senate. She lost a candidacy for Georgia state Republican Party chair in 2001, a race for national Republican committeewoman from Georgia in 2016.
Reicherter is the owner of Boca SignWorks, a national company that designs, manufactures and installs signs.
He unsuccessfully ran for Parkland City Commission in 2020, for state Senate in 2022 and for state House in 2024. In June, Reicherter filed paperwork with the state declaring himself a candidate for governor in 2026, but switched to the state House race after Casello died.
Election integrity
The two candidates’ views of the 2020 election, and overall election security, illustrate a divide that’s opened in the Republican Party.
Zack disputed the results of the 2020 election in multiple appearances in its aftermath. One of her electronic campaign fliers shows a picture of her with one of the nation’s most prominent 2020 election deniers, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York.
“It’s hard to know what really happened in the 2020 election,” she said. “I can tell you there were things that seemed extremely wrong.”
Zack isn’t alone. Polling has shown that many Republican voters have come to believe Trump’s oft-repeated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Republican elections officials said there was no widespread fraud that could have changed the results. Federal judges appointed by Trump issued multiple opinions finding there was no basis to the claims of irregularities. U.S. Sen Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the former Senate majority leader who championed everything Trump wanted during his first term, and late Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kansas, who was the only living former Republican presidential candidate who endorsed Trump in 2016, said Biden was the clear, legitimate 2020 winner.
A detailed fact check by news organization Reuters reported that evidence disproved the claims about so-called #ItalyGate theory that asserted there was an Italian conspiracy to meddle in the 2020 election.
“The theory took off,” Reuters reported, when the organization Nations in Action issued a press release on Jan. 6, 2021, about it. Zack is the chair of Nations in Action, and was at the time.
The press release said an employee of an Italian defense, security and aerospace company outlined a scheme that used “computer systems and military satellites located in Pescara, Italy” to interfere in the U.S. election to help Biden.
In the press release, Zack was quoted saying, “Make no mistake, this is a coup d’etat that we will stop in the name of justice and free and fair elections,” Reuters said.
“The supposed evidence,” Reuters found, “contradicts the main claims presented in this theory.”
Zack said she “never accused the prime minister” of election interference, but said the question of interference from Italy remains unresolved. “That situation is still under investigation, and I will tell you I can’t speak too much about it because of things that are occurring,” she said.
Reicherter said Biden was declared the winner. “According to Electoral College, Joe Biden won the election, so I’ll go with Joe Biden,” he said.
Asked if he had any doubt Biden was the legitimate winner, Reicherter said, “Do I have any doubt? That’s what was told to us. That’s what the election came out with, so that’s what I say won.”
Reicherter also said he has faith that Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link would run an honest, fair and accurate election this year. He said he’s toured the Supervisor of Elections headquarters, and seen the safeguards built into voting systems.
Zack said she hasn’t taken a tour and does not share Reicherer’s confidence.
“If there were audits, affidavits and transparency put in place, I would absolutely have a better feeling about the security of the election. A person isn’t always aware of what is taking place and the way criminals work to infiltrate systems,” she said. “Do I feel secure? No, I don’t feel secure. There are many ways to steal elections.”
Voting
Florida is a closed primary state, so only registered Republicans may vote in the district.
Mail ballots must be returned to the Supervisor of Elections Office headquarters by 7 p.m. on primary day, Sept. 30. Postmarks don’t count. It is too late to request a mail ballot.
Early voting at the Elections Office headquarters near West Palm Beach and the South County breanch office in Delray Beach runs from Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025, through Sunday, Sept. 28, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Neighborhood polling places on Sept. 30 are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
More information is available at votepalmbeach.gov or by calling (561) 656-6200.
Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.