Campaign season has a way of reducing people to slogans. Mailboxes fill with oversized postcards, social media feeds become battlegrounds and candidates are often introduced through the sharpest criticism their opponents can find. For this guide, we decided to create something different: a place where voters could meet the people running for the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners without the noise surrounding them. We interviewed each candidate seeking the District 2 and District 4 seats, asking about the lives they have built, the careers that shaped them, the experiences that inspired them to run and the ideas they would bring to county government. The profiles that follow are not endorsements, nor are they an exhaustive examination of every policy issue facing St. Johns County. They are introductions to the people behind the names on the ballot: where they come from, what they have done and how they describe the work they hope to do.
Although candidates must reside in the district they seek to represent, St. Johns County commissioners are elected countywide, meaning every registered voter may vote in both the District 2 and District 4 races on August 18, 2026.
Grab your coffee and find a quite corner to read their stories. From the courtroom to corporate America, the FBI to the county jail, their experience is vast and versatile.
DISTRICT 2 stretches across much of western and central St. Johns County, encompassing long-established rural communities, agricultural land and some of the county’s fastest-growing residential corridors. It is a district where old St. Johns County increasingly meets new: farms and wooded acreage sit alongside master-planned communities, new schools and expanding commercial centers. The next District 2 commissioner will help shape how the county responds to that transition, particularly as residents contend with traffic, school capacity, infrastructure needs, disappearing open space and the challenge of creating jobs and services close to the neighborhoods where people live.
Heather Brofford moved to St. Johns County in 2011, but it was the way the community embraced her family that convinced her she had found a permanent home. While going through the process of adopting two children through foster care, friends, neighbors and even people they barely knew reached out to make sure the family had what it needed. “When you experience a community like that, you understand what it means to be a part of something,” Brofford said. “We knew then we weren’t going anywhere else.” She has now lived in St. Johns County for 15 years.
Brofford brings more than 21 years of finance and banking experience. Her career has included mortgage services, corporate training, contract negotiation and contract review, as well as work involving budgets, revenue sources and strategic forecasting. She believes those roles taught her more than numbers. They required collaboration, mentoring, trust and the ability to keep people working toward a resolution. Her first formal community-service role grew from her family’s foster-care experience. Brofford served on the advisory board of Fostering Connections, a nonprofit supporting children and young adults in foster care through scholarships, transportation, technology and other practical needs.
In 2024, she was elected to the TrailMark Community Development District board. There, she began scrutinizing proposed expenses and asking why residents were being asked to pay for particular projects. She points to removing proposed costs for pond-bank restoration and street signs from the district’s budget as examples of that attention to detail. Her most meaningful local effort, however, involved the long-delayed traffic signal at TrailMark Drive and Pacetti Road. After serious accidents at the intersection, Brofford began pressing for timelines, meeting with county officials and asking why the existing signal remained inactive. It became operational in June.
“I’m kind of a bulldog,” she said. “I don’t let things go very easily. I want to make sure there’s a resolution to any project I’m working on.” Brofford views the County Commission as a natural progression from the work she is already doing. Her priorities include responsible budgeting, clearer project management, infrastructure and protecting residents’ quality of life. She believes leadership requires honest communication—not only celebrating what can be accomplished, but explaining when an answer is “not right now” and outlining what must happen next. “I care, and I’ve chosen to be here,” Brofford said. “I want everyone to live and stay here so this community can still be as amazing as it is.”
Long before Tim Burres considered running for County Commission, he built a career around a skill that may be especially useful in politics: separating facts from assumptions. Burres spent 25 years with the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, working in patrol, robbery, homicide, training and internal affairs before retiring as a captain. His assignments required him to investigate difficult circumstances, ask uncomfortable questions and make decisions that could affect another person’s career. He said his proudest professional moments were not the promotions he received, but the occasions when employees facing serious allegations specifically asked him to handle their cases. “They would say, ‘Will you please investigate my case? Because I know you’re honest,’” Burres recalled. “I can’t think of any other way to have a highlight of a career other than to have the support of people on their worst day.”
Burres has spent approximately 54 of his 56 years in St. Johns County. His family returned here when he was 2, and he graduated from St. Augustine High School in 1988, when the county had only two high schools. After graduation, he joined the U.S. Army and served as a helicopter mechanic. A Desert Storm veteran, he deployed the day after Christmas in 1990 and returned the following May. After leaving the military, he joined the Sheriff’s Office in 2000 because he wanted to serve the community where he lived. That long view of St. Johns County shapes his campaign. Burres remembers a smaller county, but he does not argue that newcomers should be shut out. Instead, he believes local leaders failed to create a clear plan once growth accelerated. “We started growing with the shotgun effect,” he said. “Everybody got a building permit that wanted one.
Burres wants the county to focus on infrastructure, fiscal discipline and economic diversification. He supports examining county operations through zero-based budgeting and distinguishing essential needs from discretionary wants. He also wants St. Johns County to recruit businesses offering stable careers and livable wages so residents are not dependent on Jacksonville or neighboring counties for employment. “I’m not doing this for self-recognition,” he said. “I’m doing it because I want the county to be better.”
Will McMullan can remember when reaching the Ponte Vedra and Palm Valley area meant traveling a two-lane road and crossing a drawbridge. He has watched those familiar routes widen, neighborhoods spread and the county of his childhood become one of the fastest-growing places in Florida. McMullan moved to St. Johns County at age 2 and has lived here for nearly his entire life. He grew up in Ponte Vedra, attended local schools and later traveled to Scotland to study at the University of St. Andrews. There, he earned a master’s degree in business management and environmental science and met the woman who would become his wife during his first week of college. He later completed a second master’s degree in international finance. McMullan has built a career in finance, real estate, technology and consumer packaged goods. He now works with major retailers and manufacturers, managing contracts, sales, marketing, supply-chain coordination, distribution and executive relationships.
He has lived in District 2 for more than five years and serves as the district chairman for the St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee. His involvement began as a precinct committeeman, where he organized locally, canvassed neighborhoods and listened to residents.
McMullan sees traffic and crowded schools as symptoms of a larger imbalance. He argues that the county depends too heavily on residential development for tax revenue while failing to attract enough commercial and industrial employers. “We shouldn’t be slicing the pie this way or the other,” he said. “We should be growing the pie so there’s more money to go around for everybody.”
He supports economic development that creates high-paying careers, broadens the tax base and allows young adults raised in St. Johns County to return after college—or never have to leave. He also favors infrastructure built ahead of or alongside development. McMullan does not frame developers as the sole source of the county’s challenges. “Developers have one job, and that’s to develop,” he said. “It’s the county’s job to guide how that development is done.”
His goal is to bring a business-minded, solutions-oriented approach to the commission, one focused not only on identifying familiar problems, but on creating a county where families can continue building their lives.
Before Martin Pyszczymuka became an FBI agent, he imagined a different future for himself. Pyszczymuka attended Rutgers University on a football scholarship, served as a team captain and later received a tryout with the Green Bay Packers. Standing on Lambeau Field, however, he knew injuries had narrowed his path to professional football.
After college, he briefly worked in mortgage lending, but the career did not sit comfortably with him. Pyszczymuka had long been drawn to public service, his father was an FBI agent, and he eventually entered federal law enforcement. He first served as a federal air marshal and later joined the FBI. Assigned to Honolulu, he investigated white-collar crime, fraud and public corruption. He also served on a SWAT team, participating in operations involving violent offenders and national-security threats. Pyszczymuka said his white-collar work required him to dig through financial records, identify inconsistencies and keep asking questions until the larger picture emerged. “It’s about asking the right questions,” he said. “I can easily see through the nonsense and get to a deeper level.”
After approximately seven years in Hawaii, Pyszczymuka moved to St. Johns County, where he has lived for 5 years. He currently lives in Beachwalk, one of the large master-planned communities that has reshaped northern St. Johns County. He does not see living in a newer development as inconsistent with wanting slower, more carefully managed growth. His concern is not that homes are being built, he said, but that roads, schools, water systems and other infrastructure have not consistently been completed first. “Houses are going to get built,” Pyszczymuka said. “We just need to not do it recklessly.”
He points to the roads surrounding Beachwalk as an example of what happens when development moves forward before all of its supporting infrastructure is secured. Pyszczymuka believes developers should be held to their agreements before large numbers of homes are completed, rather than leaving residents and taxpayers responsible for catching up later. His campaign also emphasizes county spending and accountability. A self-described fiscal conservative, he wants to examine contracts, departments and outside funding to determine whether each expense supports an essential public purpose. Pyszczymuka argues that public safety, roads, infrastructure and schools should remain the foundation of local government. He also wants residents to have easier access to information, including a clear record of how commissioners vote.
“As a resident of the county, you should be able to log in and find out how they voted,” he said, without searching lengthy meeting minutes or watching hours of video. His case to voters is that the investigative instincts he once used to uncover fraud and public corruption can be applied to county budgets, agreements and decision-making.
DISTRICT 4 follows much of northern St. Johns County’s Atlantic coast and Intracoastal communities, including Ponte Vedra Beach, Palm Valley and portions of Nocatee, before extending south and west toward Palencia and the rapidly changing areas east of Interstate 95. Its residents face a distinctive mix of concerns: beach and dune protection, flooding, drainage, traffic along A1A and Palm Valley Road, preservation of tree canopy and community character, and the effects of development moving steadily toward older neighborhoods. The District 4 commissioner must balance the needs of established coastal communities with the demands created by continued growth across the county’s northern tier.
James Galloway approaches public service much the way he approaches a legal case: gather the information, understand the competing positions and avoid reaching a conclusion before the evidence has been examined. Galloway is a fifth-generation Floridian who grew up in Jacksonville. He earned his undergraduate degree from Florida State University and attended Florida Coastal School of Law before beginning a career that has included civil litigation, family law, appeals, immigration, federal contracts and federal court matters. In 2017, he took what he describes as a frightening professional leap and founded Galloway Law Firm in Ponte Vedra Beach. “It was terrifying, but I took the jump,” he said.
Galloway moved to Summer House in Old Ponte Vedra in 2019 and has lived in St. Johns County for approximately seven years. For the past three years, he has served as president of the community’s homeowners association, representing more than 600 units. That role has exposed him to many of the concerns that also reach the County Commission: budgets, contracts, maintenance, property rights, infrastructure and residents with strongly differing views. His decision to seek office came after becoming a father. With an infant son at home, Galloway began thinking more seriously about the community his family would inherit and how his legal experience might translate into public service.
He believes an attorney’s discipline could be especially useful when reviewing county contracts, zoning applications, development agreements and major expenditures. Galloway said his first step as a commissioner would be to study the county’s largest projects and contracts before forming firm positions. “I don’t want to assume that I know and then start making decisions,” he said. “That only results in confirmation bias.”
Galloway’s approach to growth differs from a blanket “stop” or “slow” message. He believes each project should be examined individually, with careful consideration of roads, drainage, schools, public safety, environmental protections and long-term financial implications. “The best process is very simple,” he said. “Listen, prepare, ask good questions and then make good decisions that protect our quality of life and preserve taxpayer resources.” He also supports attracting clean industry, medical-related businesses and other employers that would diversify the tax base and create economic opportunities.
Galloway describes the leadership he hopes to provide as “safe, steady and professional.” Rather than promising dramatic action before reviewing the details, he presents himself as someone who will prepare carefully, ask precise questions and search for solutions that protect residents without closing the door to responsible growth.
Long before Krista Keating-Joseph entered county government, competition, communication and public service were already recurring themes in her life. Originally from Arizona, Keating-Joseph attended the University of Arizona on an athletic scholarship and became a nationally ranked runner. Her professional life later included work in marketing, television and real estate, careers that required her to communicate with different audiences, understand what motivates people and adapt quickly to new environments.
She moved to St. Johns County in 2015 and was elected to represent District 4 on the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners in 2022. She entered the race as a first-time candidate and defeated the incumbent by 175 votes after centering her campaign on clear-cutting, infrastructure and the pace of residential growth.
The issue became personal during a drive from Ponte Vedra toward Julington Creek, when Keating-Joseph encountered miles of land that had been stripped of its established trees. As she continued toward the tournament, the cleared land seemed to stretch for miles. Keating-Joseph remembers wondering what had happened to the lush Florida landscape around her. That experience led her to question why natural buffers could not be preserved and why large parcels needed to be cleared long before construction began. Four years later, growth management remains central to her work. “We need to think about the people who already live here,” she said. “I feel like there hasn’t been an ear for these people, and I’m trying to be that.”
Keating-Joseph argues that the county should address its backlog of approved development while roads, schools and other public services catch up. She supports stronger tree protections, wider natural buffers and greater scrutiny of projects that could affect surrounding neighborhoods. Her concerns also extend to the county’s agricultural land and water supply. Having lived in Arizona, Keating-Joseph said she understands the importance of protecting limited natural resources. She wants St. Johns County to preserve viable farmland and avoid losing the land that helps feed and sustain the region.
Public service is also deeply connected to her family. Keating-Joseph is a Gold Star mother whose son, U.S. Navy SEAL Charles Keating IV, was killed in Iraq in 2016. She continues to honor him through veterans’ advocacy, a memoir about his life and a series of children’s books inspired by his childhood. She has also volunteered with veterans’ organizations and the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Keating-Joseph said her family’s experiences have helped her relate to people from many backgrounds and strengthened her sense of responsibility as an elected official. “I realize with my one vote on the commission that I represent so many people’s lives,” she said. “I’m honored to have the privilege to do this.” A member of Our Lady Star of the Sea, Keating-Joseph remains active outdoors through running, hiking and paddleboarding. That connection to the landscape reinforces the balance she hopes to protect between continued growth and the natural character that drew residents to St. Johns County in the first place.
“I want to do the right thing,” she said. “I want to be thoughtful and not be swayed by donors.”
For more than three decades, Sam Williams learned to remain calm while other people were experiencing some of the worst moments of their lives. Williams joined the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office in 1990 and worked his way from deputy sheriff to patrol sergeant, detective sergeant, district commander and chief of patrol. He spent his final five years as director of the county jail, overseeing approximately 207 employees, hundreds of inmates and a $22 million budget. That role gave Williams his most intensive experience managing public money and reinforced his belief that government must constantly question the way it spends.
“The only bad answer was, ‘Because it’s the way we’ve always done it,’” he said. “There’s got to be a reason we initially started doing this, and is that still valid?” Williams said he returned approximately $1 million in unused funds to the sheriff’s general fund during each year he directed the jail while also adding employees and improving safety. Changes to staff briefings saved approximately $300,000 annually in overtime, he said, while relocating video visitation into existing county space produced additional recurring savings.
A fourth-generation North Floridian, Williams grew up on the barrier island and has lived in the Ponte Vedra area for 36 years. He and his wife have been married for 33 years, raised two children and recently welcomed their first granddaughter. They have lived in the same home for over 30 years. Williams holds a bachelor’s degree in public administration from Flagler College. His additional leadership training includes the Southern Police Institute, the Police Executive Research Forum and the FBI National Academy, an opportunity extended to a small percentage of law-enforcement professionals. He has also served as a volunteer firefighter and on the boards of his homeowners association, the Betty Griffin Center and the St. Augustine Humane Society.
Williams believes the County Commission needs less public conflict and more willingness to understand competing viewpoints. He compares disagreement to two people standing on opposite sides of the same number: One sees a six while the other sees a nine. “Until we’re willing to walk around and see it from that person’s point of view, you’re never going to find a solution,” he said.He proposes monthly town halls, more direct contact with residents and occasional evening commission meetings so people with traditional work schedules can participate. “The community is our boss,” Williams said. “If the only people you view as your community are the 20 people who show up every other Tuesday, that’s not your community.”
His priorities include conservative budgeting, a data-driven infrastructure plan and development directed toward appropriate locations with roads and services in place. After retiring from law enforcement, Williams said he still had “gas in the tank” and a desire to serve. His campaign is built around the idea that the leadership, budgeting experience and composure developed over a lifetime in St. Johns County can now be put to work in a different public role.
VOTE AUGUST 18TH
All registered St. Johns County voters can vote in the primary election for the District 2 and District 4 County Commission seats—regardless of party affiliation or where they live in the county. These races could be decided in the primary, so make a plan to vote on August 18. The Aug. 18 primary will determine the winners of two St. Johns County Commission seats because only Republican candidates qualified in Districts 2 and 4, creating universal primary contests open to every registered county voter regardless of party affiliation or district. The races come amid a growing divide over development, with candidates and commissioners debating whether the county should resist further growth or focus on building the roads, utilities and infrastructure needed to manage it. The results could shift the balance of power on a commission already divided over clear-cutting, preservation, traffic and the influence of developers.
Residents can confirm their precinct and polling location through the St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections website. www.votesjc.gov
