Control of the U.S. House isn’t on the line in Tuesday’s special congressional primaries in Florida, but Republicans are still eager to find replacements for former Reps. Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz to add some breathing room to their slender majority in the chamber.
President Donald Trump looms large in the race, in both Tuesday’s primary and the special general election on April 1. He’s endorsed candidates in both GOP primaries and easily carried both districts in the November election.
Trump has backed state Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis among a crowded 10-person field in Gaetz’s former 1st Congressional District. In Waltz’s 6th Congressional District, he endorsed state Rep. Randy Fine over two other candidates.
Fine represents a Brevard County-based state Senate district located outside the Palm Coast-area seat he hopes to fill.
Gun control activist Gay Valimont is unopposed for the Democratic nomination in the 1st District. She challenged Gaetz for the seat in November, receiving 34% of the vote.
Democrats George Selmont and Josh Weil compete for the nomination in the 6th District. Selmont is an attorney and filmmaker who ran for a neighboring congressional seat in 2018. He received 32% of the vote against GOP Rep. John Rutherford. Weil is a public school educator in Osceola County.
The 1st Congressional District borders Alabama on the Gulf Coast in the westernmost part of the Panhandle. It is home to both Naval Air Station Pensacola and Eglin Air Force Base. The district is among the most reliably Republican areas of the state. The four counties that make up the 1st District have voted for Republican presidential candidates almost continually for the past 60 years.
On the other side of the state, the 6th Congressional District sits on the Atlantic Coast and includes Daytona Beach. Republican presidential candidates have carried all six counties in the district for the last four elections. The Republican winning streak in some of the counties stretches decades before that. Lake County, for instance, hasn’t supported a Democrat for president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1944.
Trump’s support should carry considerable weight in both districts. His weakest performance in either district in last year's general election was in Escambia County in the 1st District, where he received 59% of the vote.
In the November general election, Gaetz and Waltz won reelection with 66% and 67% of the vote, respectively.
Gaetz resigned after Trump nominated him to be U.S. attorney general, but he later withdrew from consideration following ongoing scrutiny over a federal sex trafficking investigation and a House Ethics Committee investigation.
Waltz resigned Monday to become Trump's national security adviser.
As of Friday morning, more than 11,000 ballots had been cast in the 1st District Republican primary, nearly 17,000 in the 6th District Republican primary and nearly 10,000 in the 6th District Democratic primary.
On Tuesday, polls close at 7 p.m. local time, which is 7 p.m. ET in the 6th District and 8 p.m. ET in the 1st District.
Machine recounts in Florida are automatic if the vote margin is 0.5% of the total vote or less. If the machine recount results in a vote margin of 0.25% of the total vote or less, a manual recount of overvotes and undervotes is required.
