Lee County

Two days after Cape Coral's mayor lost his primary he has missed a second public commitment, and it was left to two of his council colleagues to say on the record that he is on vacation

Money & World

The Editorial Team · August 20, 2026

An empty modern council room seen across a light wood dais. A gooseneck microphone and a blank flat screen monitor sit at an unoccupied place in the foreground, with a water glass and a folded paper card beside them, and three more empty places with their own microphones curve away behind. The chairs are black and all of them are empty. There is no person in the frame and no legible lettering, signage, seal or place name of any kind. Illustration of the kind of municipal meeting room where a council sits, not a photograph of this event. — Stock photo. Not the actual scene. *Photo: Werner Pfennig / Pexels*

What it changes

The result has not moved and is not the news here. John Gunter finished third in Tuesday's City of Cape Coral mayoral primary on 14.93 percent, Rick Erickson and Lisa Cohen-Adkinson advanced to November, and this desk covered that the following day. What is new on Thursday is that the mayor's absence from city business is no longer a single missed meeting, and that two of his colleagues have now put an explanation on the record. Gulf Coast News reported on Thursday afternoon that Gunter, having missed Wednesday night's council meeting and left the mayor's seat empty, was also absent from Thursday's St. Jude Dream Home Showcase event in southwest Cape Coral. The outlet reported that its attempts to reach him for comment had been unsuccessful and that councilmembers did not know when he would return to city hall. On the Thursday event specifically, a representative of the City of Cape Coral told the outlet that the mayor's attendance had been cancelled in advance, which is a meaningful qualifier and is worth keeping attached to that particular absence rather than folded into the general picture. Councilmember Joe Kilraine told the outlet the mayor is fine and appeared to be handling personal matters, saying he is just trying to take care of business on the side. Kilraine, who said he has been on the losing end of an election himself, described it as not a real happy time and said the job is to keep things running. Councilmember Laurie Lehmann said city administrative assistants told her on Wednesday that the mayor would not attend Thursday's event, and said she knew he was away on vacation, taking a break because he worked very hard at the polls. Those two accounts are the closest thing to an official explanation that exists at the moment, and they should be read for what they are: two councilmembers relaying their understanding to a television station, one of them explicitly at second hand through city staff. Neither is a statement from the mayor and neither is a statement from the city about the mayor's schedule. The mayor has not spoken publicly since Tuesday. It is worth being plain about the limits of this. A mayor taking time off after losing an election is an ordinary human thing and nothing in the reporting alleges any misconduct, nor did either councilmember suggest any. Cape Coral's mayor is one vote on a nine member body, the council met on Wednesday without him and conducted its business, and no decision is known to have been held up. Readers looking for a scandal here will not find one in the facts on the record. What makes it worth a line in the record is narrower. Gunter is still the mayor of the largest city in Lee County and will be until a successor is sworn in after the November 3 general election, which is a stretch of more than two months covering the back half of hurricane season and the closing stages of a budget year. The mayor of Cape Coral chairs the council and is the office residents and other agencies call in an emergency. So the practical question for a Cape Coral household is not why he is away, which is his own business, but whether the city has said who is covering the office and for how long. As of Thursday afternoon that question had not been answered on the record, and the two councilmembers who did speak said they did not know when he would be back. The charter provides for a mayor pro tem to preside in the mayor's absence, and Tuesday's ballot carried a Cape Coral charter amendment on the mayor pro tem that passed by 27,571 to 9,575. This desk has not read the amended charter text and does not assert what that amendment changed or whether it bears on the present situation. That is a question for the city, and it is the one worth putting to it.

Where we read it: Samantha Carlson at Gulf Coast News. Read their story.

The document: Lee County election night reporting, City of Cape Coral Mayor, August 18, 2026, 26 of 26 precincts reporting.

Two days after Cape Coral's mayor lost his primary he has missed a second public commitment, and it was left to two of his council colleagues to say on the record that he is on vacation

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