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.
FL HD 35’s margins by year:
2024: D+2.6
2022: R+10.8 (no incumbent, new map)
2020: R+28.6
2018: R+22.8
2016: R+23.58
Blaise Ingoglia held the seat from 2014 through 2022 and won by large margins. Incumbency got him about a R+15% boost, and with no incumbents and new districts the partisan edge normalized. This is the first election since the Dobbs ruling, and the overall swing is about D+13%, even with the same district map. Republicans are still winning in generic ballot polls, but not by much.
Repeating for emphasis that the state house map was redrawn after 2020; the most similar district under the old map was HD-42, which went R by 1% in the 2020 election, but the borders were different around Orlando so it’s an apples-and-oranges comparison.