In elections on Tuesday, Tom Keen, a Democrat, won a post as state Representative for a central Florida district that previously was represented by a Republican who resigned, marking a flip in partisan control of the seat.
One important note is that significantly fewer votes were cast in this election compared to the preceding election under regular scheduling that sent the Republican member who resigned to the legislature, though there is also a precedent of President Joe Biden winning the area by a small margin. Keen faced a Republican nominee named Erika Booth, a member of the Osceola County School Board, though she was legally required to file her resignation to seek this legislative role. Keen got a little over half the vote, passing 51 percent.
As recapped by Florida Politics, a state political entity called the Florida House Democratic Campaign Committee spent extensively on the now concluded contest, surpassing the spending done by the equivalent entity for Republicans in Florida. Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature in addition to the governorship following the 2022 midterm elections in which Republican Ron DeSantis saw a massive victory exponentially greater (in leading margin-terms) than his win four years prior… though he’s gone on to slow-motion failure in the GOP presidential primary he joined, with Trump leading colossally.
Republicans’ New Hampshire presidential primary amid the party’s broader nominating contest will take place next week, with recent polling done by Suffolk University in collaboration with a pair of news organizations finding DeSantis getting marginal levels of support. He had five percent, placing Trump’s backing by a full half of respondents ten times ahead of the Florida governor. Nikki Haley, a former official in Trump’s own administration, also remains in the running, having received the New Hampshire governor’s endorsement. Vivek Ramaswamy, a pro-Trump businessman, dropped out after Iowa’s recent caucus. Trump had started complaining about Ramaswamy and specifically encouraging people not to vote for him.
