In a race seen as a bellwether for Democratic chances in November, Democrat Tom Keen flipped what had been a Republican state House seat in Central Florida in a special election held Tuesday.
Keen, a Navy flight officer who works in the aerospace training and simulation industry, defeated Republican Erika Booth, a teacher and member of the Osceola School Board. Unofficial totals for the District 35 seat had Keen with 51.3% of the vote to Booth’s 48.7%.
“A huge THANK YOU to all our supporters, volunteers, and voters who believed in our vision for a better, brighter District 35,” Keen wrote on social media. “Your dedication, hard work, and votes have brought us to this incredible moment.”
Keen, who made abortion rights and property insurance key issues in the race, got between 65% to 70% of nonpartisan, or NPA, voters to make up for Republicans turning out in larger numbers than Democrats, said Matt Isbell, a Democratic elections analyst.
The first half of the sentence you quoted was also fairly important to the overall message.
You’re point is still important though, but more information is needed to really evaluate the situation. If the district naturally has more repubs, then this is a big win by dems. If there are fewer repubs, then this was a disappointing victory.
According to Florida Today, it’s more or less a three-way tossup between Rs, Ds, and Is. The district is composed of 75% Orange County residents, despite the land area being overwhelmingly the majority of Osceola County, and it runs from the suburbs of Orlando to the suburbs of Titusville, and then south about halfway from Orlando to Miami. There are lots of lakes. It’s one of the districts DeSantis redrew in 2022 as an attempt to further gerrymander an already-gerrymandered state, and is in fact one of the only competitive districts in the state.