Special Election Upset

Last week, during special elections in Florida, Democratic candidates pulled off a stunning upset, winning two seats held by Republicans. This comes amid the backdrop of this year's midterm elections and a special state legislative session set to start April 20th. Lawmakers will address a possible mid-decade redistricting map that they hope will result in Florida adding more Republican seats to the U.S. House. For more on what the special election results could mean going forward, we are joined by WGCU host and reporter Jon Davis Jon, can you tell us about last week's Democratic victories in Florida and why they have garnered so much attention, even beyond the state of Florida? That's right. So Democrats flipped two legislative seats, one in the state House, one in the Senate, in districts that had been solidly Republican. One was Emily Gregory, who won the state House district 87 race. That covers the passing of Palm Beach, Palm Beach County, where, Donald Trump's Mar a Lago estate is. So that's generally why that, has garnered broader attention even outside of Florida, because it's a Democratic win in what's considered Trump's own backyard. Conversely, then we saw, Brian Nathan won a state House seat in the Tampa Bay area. This was a seat that had been held by Republican Jay Collins, who, you know, won that election handily before he left that position to become lieutenant governor. So again, these were both very tight races, and competitive races and pretty surprising, victories for Democrats and upsets for Republicans. Can you tell me a little bit more about these two lawmakers and how they ran their campaigns? Yeah, a lot of similarities between both Emily Gregory and Brian Nathan. Both of them were first time candidates. So political newcomers. Gregory is the owner of a fitness company that works with pregnant and postpartum women. And, Nathan is an electrical workers union leader and Navy veteran. He kind of bills himself as, like, a blue collar Democrat and they both campaigned on kind of kitchen table type issues affordability, property insurance, education, funding, pay for teachers, things along those lines. And importantly, they both tended to avoid any kind of overemphasis on criticism of the president or any kind of national party or Partizan fights in general. They really kind of kept it to what polls have consistently showed have been top issues for voters in Florida, that the state legislature really hasn't been doing much to move the needle on. So, John, how have leaders of the Democrats and the Republican parties reacted to these, these upsets and the fact that we now have two seats that were flipped by Democrats? Democratic party leaders, unsurprisingly, have really been celebrating this. Nikki Fried, the state Democratic Party chair, has called this a major breakthrough and a sign of growing momentum for Democrats in Florida and also kind of using them to, as I said, criticize Republican leadership. And just push the idea that the state is becoming more competitive. And they're calling it evidence that voters are just truly tired of this one party rule that we've had in Florida with Republican Supermajorities in both legislative chambers. Conversely, Republican leaders have been downplaying this. They know. And really, any kind of political science expert will tell you that election results during a Non-presidential year special election voter turnout is going to be very low. It's not necessarily going to be indicative of major changes, in terms of how voters are feeling or how they're going to vote going into the midterms. That governor DeSantis has called for a, special session on redistricting, I believe that set for April 20th. Correct. Do you think the special election results will will make Republicans rethink this redistricting effort? I don't think that it's going to make Republican leaders consider abandoning the idea. They really do want to do whatever they can to adjust district boundaries, to add Republican seats to the U.S. House of Representatives. But it might change the question from how many seats can we gain to how many current seats could we accidentally put at risk? Because now they're looking at districts that maybe they had thought were solidly Republican. But we're seeing from last Tuesday's results maybe more competitive than they thought. And that being said, when this redistricting process is over, I still wouldn't be surprised if whatever lawmakers put out with doesn't face legal challenges. Because you'll remember, back in 2010, Florida voters passed the Fair District Amendments, which enshrine in the state constitution the idea that districts cannot be drawn to favor or display for a particular party or candidate. And that seems to be overtly what they're doing. It's very interesting and we will keep up to date and watching what's going to be going on and back in Tallahassee when they reconvene, hopefully on the budget that we've got to get that, set on the calendar as well. That is still up in the air as well. Thank you so much, John, for the latest. Thanks for joining us.