ORLANDO, Fla. – Jerry Demings has crafted a legacy in Orlando defined by groundbreaking achievements.

He broke barriers as Orlando’s inaugural Black police chief.

He continued to blaze trails as the first Black sheriff in Orange County.

Demings further cemented his pioneering status by becoming the first Black mayor of Orange County.

Now, he aims to reach yet another historic milestone: becoming Florida’s first Black governor.

Known for his deep voice and slow-paced cadence, the 66-year-old Orlando native is a pragmatic powerhouse politician in Central Florida. Outside of the region, however, he will have a lot of work to do to increase his visibility.

[WATCH: Demings’ gubernatorial announcement]

Lifetime in law enforcement

Demings was one of Orlando’s top cops for years, but that wasn’t his original career path.

Demings graduated from Florida State University with a degree in finance and returned to Orlando to work as an accountant.

In an interview with the Florida Historical Society earlier this year, Demings said he began to think about law enforcement when the federal government started recruiting people to handle white collar crimes.

“While I was pursuing perhaps a career as a federal law enforcement officer, one of the recruiters suggested that I get some local law enforcement experience,” Demings said. “Hence, I listened to the recruiter. I applied to the Orlando Police Department and, I intended, if they would hire me, to only stay one year. The federal government had gone into a hiring freeze. I was optimistic that after the hiring freeze, I would be selected. I had the opportunity where I was selected, but I chose to continue my career with the Orlando Police Department for a multitude of reasons, but I stayed. I was working in my hometown community, and I had the opportunity to move up and rank fairly quickly within the agency.”

Demings went through police academy and worked his way up to OPD deputy chief. Then, in 1998, Mayor Glenda Hood appointed him the city’s first Black police chief.

Demings held that role until 2002, when he became Orange County’s director of public safety under Mayor Richard Crotty.

In 2008, Demings ran his first political campaign for Orange County sheriff. Demings, the Democrat, beat Republican challenger John Tegg with 55% of the vote.

[WATCH: Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings discusses homeland security]

Demings was reelected sheriff in 2012 and 2016, presiding over the agency during investigations that drew national attention, like the Casey Anthony case and the Pulse Nightclub shooting.

During his time as sheriff, Demings expanded agency substations throughout the county. He also supported efforts to install red light cameras at major intersections.

Records show some reduction in crime, particularly property crime, during his time in office.

Power couple

While in OPD, Demings met and married his wife, Val. She would go on to become an Orlando police chief as well, and Orlando’s representative in Congress.

The couple’s power dynamic did not go unnoticed, even nationally.

They have three sons and five grandchildren.

Taking on DeSantis

Demings became Orange County’s first Black mayor in 2018, and was reelected in 2022.

As mayor, Demings’ lo-fi public persona was on full display in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, as he and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer conducted daily updates.

The pandemic was the first in a series of major clashes with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as DeSantis sought to reopen the state and stop vaccine, mask and social distancing mandates.

[WATCH: Orange County mayor signs order to fine businesses for COVID-19 violations (from 2020)]

Demings tried to require all county employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, defying DeSantis.

Demings also accused the governor of not supporting local governments trying to manage testing and vaccination sites.

“We are doing the best that we could do to take care of our residents during this current surge, just like we have been doing throughout this pandemic,” Demings said at the time. “Our residents, all Florida residents, should be outraged and they should ask the question — Now, where’s our state? Where’s our governor? Where is Ron DeSantis now?”

The public conflict between Demings and DeSantis increased this year.

Amid the state’s crackdown on illegal immigration, county governments were forced to sign agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to allow detainees to be held in the local jails until they could be transferred.

[WATCH: Orange County mayor pushes back on Florida attorney general’s demands]

Despite outrage from county commissioners and the immigration community, Demings signed the agreement, citing threats of lost federal funding and DeSantis’ threat to remove defiant officials from office.

Later in the year, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier demanded the county agree to transport detainees to ICE facilities. DeSantis suggested he would have suspended Demings if he didn’t sign the new deal.

Demings accused the state of bullying law enforcement and local governments.

“I find it somewhat ironic, that the 37-year-old attorney general is attacking me personally, attacking our board,” Demings said. “I spent more years on the streets of Florida, patrolling our streets as a law enforcement officer than he’s been alive.”

At the same time, the state initiated a DOGE audit of the county’s finances, which Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia said revealed the county had overtaxed residents by $190 million.

Demings, however, questioned not only the way the audit was conducted, but also the data Ingoglia was using. Ingoglia also accused county workers of hiding information. An investigation is ongoing.

“This whole process has been tainted at this point, because they’ve already tried and convicted Orange County before they’ve ever completed their investigation,” Demings said. “When that happens, you know this is politically motivated. Something else is motivating that.”

“If the state really cared about us here at the local level, they will sit down and talk to us like decent folk would do, rather than issue subpoenas. They could just simply come and have a conversation with us. No, they wanted to be heavy-handed. They want us to perform before the cameras,“ he also said.

[WATCH: Orange county mayor defends staff in DOGE audit, calls Florida investigation ‘politically motivated’]

Problem solving

Demings has appointed a slew of task forces over the years to try to deal with the county’s major issues, from mental health to citizens safety to affordable housing.

To deal with the latter issue, he launched the Housing for All initiative to try to get more affordable housing built, along with a county trust fund.

According to the county, the initiative created 4,957 affordable units, with $58 million.

At a housing complex groundbreaking ceremony in September, Demings made sure to note the county was doing this without help from Florida.

“The CFO criticized Orange County for its budget and the use of taxpayer dollars, but we could not have created the trust fund if we didn’t pull it from somewhere,” Demings said. “We didn’t get it from the state of Florida; we got zero to assist with those efforts.”

Tangling over transportation, tourism

Solving the transportation funding problem is still something that is eluding Demings.

The county is without a dedicated funding source, with two pricy transit systems in SunRail and LYNX buses.

Demings has proposed a transportation sales tax measure several times.

The measure was postponed in 2020 because of COVID. Voters rejected the measure in 2022. Demings wanted to put it on the ballot in 2024, but it didn’t have support.

Many residents argued that sales taxes shouldn’t be raised while the county continued to collect record tourism development tax dollars.

There’s a growing push to get the state to redirect TDT dollars for services like public transit or affordable housing.

However, Demings has not publicly, actively campaigned to get that change through the Florida Legislature. He also continues to support using the money to expand the Orange County Convention Center, a project that has raised questions about its economic impact.

‘A ladder builder’

[WATCH: One-on-one with Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings (from 2020)]

Jerry L. Demings is the youngest of five children. He and his twin brother, Terry, were born in 1959. His father was a taxicab driver, while his mother was a domestic worker. The two ran a fish market in the afternoons.

Demings said his mother insisted everyone attend services at their African Methodist Episcopal church, which Demings said gave him a strong faith, but also a “center of gravity,” through the church’s ties to the civil rights movement.

“My minister, one of my role models, this gentleman by the name of Doctor George Loveless, Champion Senior, he was college educated. He came in. He had advanced degrees,” Demings said in the interview. “He was quite a theologian, but he was well-connected to the Civil Rights Movement. And because of that, growing up, I had an opportunity to see many of them come to our community. Persons like Julian Bond. Persons like Reverend Ralph Abernathy. Persons like Reverend Jesse Jackson. As an adult, as a young police officer, I got to meet Rosa Parks at my church.”

Demings attended school in the early days of desegregation in Orange County. He was bused to Memorial Junior High, a predominantly white school, where he played football, basketball and ran track, with other students of different backgrounds. But not everyone was welcoming, he said in the interview.

“I can remember going to play a football game in Union Park, East Orange County, and when we finished the game and we boarded the bus, our bus was peppered with rocks and bottles, and the coach said to the boys, put on your helmets and get down, okay. And as the bus was leaving after the game, there were all types of racial epithets that were being said, and it sounded like our bus was really being hit by bullets,” Demings recalled.

He graduated from Jones High School, which gave him lifelong friends and an appreciation for the community.

Demings says Orlando’s early Black leaders paved the way for him to be at the top of the county’s government today.

“My obligation is to create the opportunity for others to climb the ladder. So I’m a ladder builder at this point,” Demings said in his interview with the Florida Historical Society. “And so we need more ladder builders in our community, regardless of whether it’s in corporate America, it’s in Orlando, Florida, in the public sector.”