With a crowd of hopefuls seeking to replace him, Osceola County Sheriff Marcos López is launching a reelection bid that may prove as tumultuous as his term in office.

López has attracted attention since his 2020 election for more than being Osceola’s first Hispanic sheriff. While he made good on some of his campaign promises — from expanding Spanish-language services to overseeing the agency’s first real-time crime monitoring center — his administration has been at the center of controversy in its handling of the 2022 killing of Jayden Baez and providing misleading information about botched drug trafficking prosecutions cited in the suspension of Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell.

No surprise then that he drew four challengers in the Democratic primary, most prominently his predecessor Russ Gibson, who was elected Osceola County Sheriff in 2016 but lost to López in the 2020 primary by just 620 votes.

Luis “Tony” Fernandez, a former deputy, will also run again, this time as a Democrat after López cruised to victory in the 2020 general election with two-thirds of the vote while Fernandez ran with no party affiliation.

Gibson announced his comeback bid in January 2023, the first major candidate to do so, and has promised to return student resource deputies to the county’s charter schools after López removed them ahead of the 2021-2022 school year, citing rising costs. Gibson has already taken direct jabs at the incumbent, most recently after López posted the photo of a dead body believed to be 13-year-old Madeline Soto on his campaign page on Instagram.

While the Sheriff’s Office apologized for the posting, López later maintained in an interview with radio station WDBO that the photo was not Soto and accused his critics of using her death for political purposes. A Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into the posting is ongoing.

Fernandez, who accused López’s team of smearing him in the 2020 election, has called for greater transparency in his run for sheriff, along with improving frayed relations with the State Attorney’s Office.

The contest has also attracted two of López’ former employees: Amaryllis Rivera, a one-time supervisor for the Sheriff’s Office’s community services division, and Maj. Wiley Black, who led the criminal investigations division.

Rivera, who began working at the Sheriff’s Office in 2006 while a reservist in the U.S. Air Force, resigned last year to run for sheriff, pledging to improve community relations and clean up the agency’s image following López’s scandals. She would be the first woman elected Osceola sheriff.

Black’s entry has raised eyebrows, as he was one of López’s first picks for his top brass after three decades at the Sheriff’s Office. A decorated cop and military veteran, he was fired around the time a grand jury cleared the deputies who killed Baez but sharply criticized the department’s policies and training. The office has not released records surrounding Black’s removal and López declined to explain it when asked by an Orlando Sentinel reporter earlier this year.

If elected, Black promises to use his experience to, among other things, bring transparency to the agency and further support recruitment efforts.

The winner of the primary will face Donnie Martinez, the sole Republican candidate. A longtime businessman, Martinez has no law enforcement experience beyond being a recent law enforcement academy graduate from Eastern Florida State College. Still, Martinez said he is running to “re-allocate” funds to fight crime without adding additional cost.

Early voting for the primary begins Aug. 5 and continues to Aug. 18. Election day is Aug. 20.