Florida Special Elections Come Into Focus
March 28, 2025 · 10:54 AM EDT
A special election in Central Florida to fill National Security Advisor Michael Waltz’s congressional seat is attracting a crush of national spending and attention in its final week.
Republicans remain favored to hold Florida’s 6th Congressional District, albeit by a narrower margin than the district’s underlying partisanship would suggest. Elsewhere in the state, Republicans should easily hold the 1st District, previously held by Republican Matt Gaetz and at stake next Tuesday.
In both districts, the Democratic candidates have raised eye-popping sums of money as donors from across the country look for outlets to express their frustration with the Trump administration. But they have also spent a lot to raise a lot, and ruffled feathers with aggressive fundraising tactics.
And both Democratic nominees are aiming to do something no congressional candidate has accomplished since 2018: win a district that voted for the other party’s presidential nominee by 30 points or more.
Florida’s 1st District
The 1st District has received less attention than its neighbor to the south and is not seen as remotely competitive by strategists in either party. The more Republican of the two seats, Trump won it by 37 points last fall, 68-31 percent.
Both candidates — Republican Jimmy Patronis and Democrat Gay Valimont — have appeared on ballots in the district before, with drastically different results. Valimont was the Democratic nominee against Gaetz in 2024, losing to the scandal-tarred incumbent by 22 points, 66-34 percent.
In his two elections as the state’s chief financial officer, Patronis won the 1st by overwhelming margins, 69-31 percent in 2018 and 73-27 percent in 2022. (He won with 59 percent statewide.)
Valimont, the former head of the Florida chapter of gun control group Moms Demand Action, reported raising a hefty $6.5 million through March 12, though she also spent a considerable $4.3 million.
Patronis raised $2.1 million and spent $1.3 million through mid-March as well. Valimont has outspent him on the airwaves considerably, $1.2 million to $417,000, running ads highlighting that he does not live in the district and blaming him for the state’s insurance crisis. Support from two friendly super PACs has helped Patronis close the gap somewhat.
Florida’s 6th District
The race between state Rep. Randy Fine and teacher Josh Weil has become a hot topic in Washington, D.C. over the past week as Republicans fret about Fine’s vulnerabilities, reluctance to fundraise, and lack of campaigning.
The district is strongly Republican, and voted for Trump by 30 points in 2024, 64-34 percent. Waltz won by 33 points. And Fine, whose confrontational style earned him support from Trump but made him an enemy of Gov. Ron DeSantis and other local elected leaders, initially approached the general election as a sure thing, according to GOP sources focused on the race.
He reported raising less than $1 million through March 12, and had less than $100,000 in the bank on that date. While Weil started airing TV ads in the beginning of March, Fine didn’t hit the airwaves until last week, with an ad partially funded by the state Republican Party. “I would have preferred if our candidate had raised money at a faster rate and gotten on TV quicker,” said NRCC chairman Richard Hudson earlier this week.
Weil, who previously waged a longshot bid for the Democratic nomination for Senate in 2022, raised an astounding $9.5 million through March 12; his final haul will likely make him one of the 20 top-fundraising Democrats in House history. But he has burned through nearly all of it, including nearly $3 million on digital fundraising and $600,000 on text messaging (Weil’s fundraising texts have flooded Democratic phones across the country), and reported $1.3 million in the bank on March 12.
Weil’s aggressive fundraising has frustrated some Democrats, such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who objected to Weil’s use of clips of her in his campaign ads implying she supported his candidacy, and DNC vice chairman David Hogg, who called Weil’s fundraising director a grifter.
Despite that, Weil’s fundraising caught Republicans and Democrats by surprise, and led GOP leadership to call out Fine’s lackluster fundraising. It also spurred several supportive super PACs into the race; outside GOP groups have spent $4.4 million to boost Fine, including two PACs that have spent $2.5 million on TV ads in the past week.
The sudden Republican consternation over Fine’s chances likely has three causes, the least pressing of which is concern about the overall outcome of the race. GOP strategists following the contest remain confident Fine will win, and Democrats are highly skeptical of Weil’s chances as well.
But Fine’s lack of campaigning — plus the challenge all Republicans face in consolidating and mobilizing the Trump coalition — has made the race closer than it should be, with private polling indicating Fine is on track for a significantly more narrow win, potentially even one in the single digits. One poll commissioned by the Fine campaign and reported by Axios even found the Republican trailing by 3 points, 44-41 percent, a weaker result for Fine than other Republican and Democratic surveys of the district.
The closer the race is, the more difficult it will be for national Republicans to control the narrative ahead of the 2026 midterm elections as Democrats notch overperformances in special elections around the country. The public hand-wringing over Fine has sent the Republican and his allies a clear message to step up their game and help soften the blow of a strong Democratic showing.
And Republicans may be engaged in the time-honored political tradition of expectations-setting, working to create a narrative that Fine is in danger so they can declare victory when he wins — even if his margin is worryingly narrow. That’s why House Democrats have steered clear of this race entirely, to avoid giving the impression they believe they can win. And this isn’t the first time Republicans have pre-emptively argued the weakness of their own candidate ahead of a special election — the special elections in 2017 saw House Republicans employ similar tactics.
Ultimately, a win by Fine of anything less than 10 points would be in line with other recent special election results and an indicator that Democrats have built an enthusiasm advantage in lower-turnout races. A Weil win would be a massive upset and a feat not seen since Minnesota DFLer Colin Peterson won re-election to his Trump +30 district in 2018; it would be a shot in the arm for Democrats still reeling from their loss in 2024 and a warning sign of things to come for Republicans in 2026.
Even if Fine wins, the unexpected competitiveness of the race has already had repercussions for House Republicans. Earlier this week Trump withdrew his nomination of New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to be U.N. Ambassador amid fears that Democrats would flip her seat in a special election. That district had voted for Trump by 20 points.