The News
The star of Tuesday’s primaries is President Donald Trump’s adopted home state, where outgoing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis moved to redraw congressional maps.
With that, DeSantis fired the starting gun for ambitious Republicans to seek new safe-looking seats, simultaneously retiring Tampa- and Orlando-area Democrats who are now competing for Trump-won districts. The remapping also set off two bitter Democratic primaries in South Florida, where pro-Israel Democrats are facing progressive challengers.
Somehow, the strangest race in the state has been unaffected; it’s a competition for a deep-red seat where most of the leading candidates moved in recently from Illinois, New York, or North Carolina.
Elsewhere on the map are races with real implications for the GOP, the Democratic Party’s fight about Israel, and control of the Senate in November.
Florida governor (both parties)
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., was the favorite to replace DeSantis since the moment he entered the race — and even more so after Trump endorsed him. But he never won an endorsement from DeSantis, whose legacy Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, former state House Speaker Paul Renner, and influencer James Fishback are all trying to claim.
Donalds has led in every public poll of the race, and his opponents all have different geographic bases: Collins has the Space Coast, Renner has St. Augustine, and Fishback has the Panhandle. Democrats are already treating Donalds as the presumptive opponent of David Jolly, the Republican-turned-Democrat and former lawmaker who’s poised to claim the Democratic nomination.
Florida Senate (both parties)
Appointed Sen. Ashley Moody won two elections as state attorney general and faces no real contest for a new six-year nomination. Democrats, who haven’t won a seat here since 2012, have a race between Alexander Vindman, a pivotal figure from Trump’s first impeachment, and state Rep. Angie Nixon, an Israel critic endorsed by Rep. Maxwell Frost as well as some House progressives outside the state.
Vindman has raised more than $16 million for his race, benefiting from his image as a Trump fighter; Nixon has raised less than $1 million. This could be a heat check of where progressive votes are coming from in primaries as the state gets more reliably red.
Florida’s 7th District (both parties)
Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., never joined the parade of House members who resigned or ended their reelection bids after investigations into alleged impropriety, though he faces inquiries on both campaign finance and sexual misconduct fronts. He’s facing off against primary challengers, meanwhile, led by Ryan Elijah, a former local Fox anchor endorsed by a few of Mills’ House colleagues. Democrats are considering competing for the seat, which Trump won by 13 points, if Mills wins the primary and their voters nominate former NASA chief of staff Bale Dalton.
Dalton’s main Democratic competition is former Rep. Alan Grayson, a three-term House member who, since leaving Congress, has become a perennial candidate. (He ran here after falling to qualify for the Senate primary.)
Florida’s 19th District (Republican primary)
Donalds is leaving one of the reddest, safest seats in the state, covering Naples and other conservative communities in southwest Florida.
The best-known GOP candidates arrived from somewhere else — including Catalina Lauf, who lost a 2022 House race in Illinois, then relocated, and now has Trump’s endorsement. (Her eight months working for the Commerce Department in his first term is the cornerstone of her light political biography.)
Lauf isn’t even the only former Illinois candidate running for the seat; so is Jim Oberweis, a dairy farm heir and perennial Republican loser of close races. But Lauf got the Trump boost over former Reps. Madison Cawthorn (whom few DC Republicans want to see back in Congress) and Chris Collins.
Florida’s 20th District (Democratic primary)
DeSantis’ gerrymander pushed multiple incumbent Democrats into hard-to-win seats. One of them, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, relocated to one of the four remaining safe seats, a majority-minority district represented by Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick until her resignation.
And despite local fury from Black Democrats, there was no real consolidation among Black candidates. Progressive activist Elijah Manley picked up some left-wing endorsements and raised $1 million, but is viewed skeptically by some activists; he has run for three other offices, including the presidency. Dale Holness, who lost the 2021 primary for the seat to Cherfilus-McCormick, is running again. So is Cherfilus-McCormick herself.
Florida’s 25th District (D primary)
Unlike Wasserman Schultz, Rep. Jared Moskowitz reacted to the new maps by running for reelection in a seat drawn to elect a Republican. That got him a primary with Oliver Larkin, a Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed activist who raised nearly $700,000 for his first-ever campaign and got considerable national attention and endorsements.
On Friday, Larkin campaigned with Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian American member of Congress, who’s clashed with Moskowitz over his support for Israel.
Trump won the Boca Raton-based seat by 9 points in 2024, but Moskowitz has run ahead of the ticket. Larkin fought back on the “electability” argument with his own polling, suggesting that South Florida could support a socialist candidate.
Wyoming’s at-large District (R primary)
Rep. Harriet Hageman is running for Senate, and nine Republicans are running to succeed her in her House seat. Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who won his job with Trump’s endorsement, has had to go without it this time; businessman Steve Friess, son of the late GOP megadonor Foster Friess, loaned his campaign $3 million to compete here.
Alaska Senate (top-four primary)
Alaska’s once again holding elections with the ranked-choice system that Republicans want to overturn this November. In the meantime, both parties expect Sen. Dan Sullivan (the incumbent one, that is) and former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola to get the most first-choice votes on a 15-candidate ballot.
California’s 14th District (runoff)
One of two Democrats will fill this San Francisco Bay Area seat and complete Eric Swalwell’s term: State Sen. Aisha Wahab, who’d be the first Afghan American member of Congress, or transit board director Melissa Hernandez.
Wahab grabbed 43% of the vote in the June primary, to Hernandez’s 17%. She started the race with a bigger political profile in the district, too, but Hernandez got nearly $3 million of help from AIPAC and its PAC affiliates in recent months — without Wahab becoming a progressive cause célèbre. Wahab’s fought back with progressive endorsements and warnings.
When it’s over, Wahab and Hernandez will face each other again in November.
