With Election Day finally here, Spectrum Bay News 9’s Mitch Perry has broken down the Top 9 races to keep an eye on.
1. U.S House race in Congressional District 15
This long-held GOP seat was circled as a possible flip by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) this year ever since incumbent Ross Spano acknowledged shortly after winning it in 2018 that he may have violated campaign finance laws, attributing his error to receiving “bad advice.”
But the DCCC had to re-shift their strategy after Lakeland City Commissioner Scott Franklin upset Spano in the Aug. 18 primary election.
Franklin faces former TV News anchor/reporter Alan Cohn, who ran to the left of state Rep. Adam Hattersley in his primary election, and now has to come back towards the middle to win what is still considered a center-right leaning district.
Democrats are buoyed by the district’s demographics (it sits in eastern Hillsborough, western Polk and parts of Lake County). It’s currently listed as 35 percent Republican, 35 percent Democrat and 28 percent non-party-affiliated (NPA).
The last time the national Democratic Party put so much effort into winning the seat was in 2000, when Republican Charles Canady stepped down. Then Democratic House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt came to Tampa to campaign for the Democrat in the race (Mike Stedem), but the seat went to then 26-year-old Adam Putnam.
2. Florida 16th Congressional District Republican incumbent Vern Buchanan v. Democrat Margaret Good
Seemingly every two years Florida Democrats think they have the candidate who can oust Republican Vern Buchanan, who has held this seat (which encompasses Sarasota, Manatee and parts of southern Hillsborough) since 2006. And every two years they come away losers.
Will this year be any different?
Democrats are uniting around Margaret Good, an attorney who made national news in the winter of 2018 when she stunned Republican James Buchanan (Vern’s son) by 7 points in a special election for a Florida House seat. Her election was major news because it was in a Sarasota-based House district that Donald Trump had won by four points in 2016.
Good ran and won the seat again in the fall of 2018, but then announced a year ago that she would not run for reelection, but instead face off against Buchanan in 2020.
The district is listed as 40% Republican, 33% Democratic and 25% non-party-affiliated.
3. Hillsborough County State Attorney between Democratic incumbent Andrew Warren and Republican challenger Mike Perotti
Everything worked perfectly for Andrew Warren in his successful bid to knock off then 16-year-GOP incumbent Mark Ober in the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s race in 2016.
Warren is one of a number of progressive-leaning state/district attorneys around the country who have found success running on a platform of criminal justice reform in recent years. In running against Ober, he was facing an old-school prosecutor who had rarely been challenged since taking office in 2000.
Now Warren is the hunted, being challenged by Republican Mike Perotti, a former colonel and current legal counsel for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. He’s coming hard at Warren, and not just from the political right. He’s talking about diversity in the state attorney’s office and equity in sentencing. He also calls for accountability with law enforcement.
But Warren may be hard to dislodge. He’s raised more than $508,000 in the race, while Perotti has raised a little more than $143,000. And he’s a Democrat, which means something in a county where there are 73,000 more Democrats than Republicans.
4. Pinellas County House District 69 between Democratic incumbent Jennifer Webb and Republican challenger Linda Chaney
Webb flipped an open seat from red to blue in 2018, but the demographics make it no sure thing for a repeat in 2020. The district encompasses St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island, Madeira Beach, Gulfport, and western St. Petersburg. It’s made up of more than 122,000 voters, yet the party breakdown between Republicans and Democrats is almost split down the middle (officially there are 103 more Republicans as of earlier this summer).
Webb is being challenged by former St. Pete Beach Commissioner Linda Chaney, who supported Webb in 2018 but now wants to oust her because she says that Webb has not lived up to her campaign promises.
5. Hillsborough County House District 60 race between Republican incumbent Jackie Toledo and Democrat Julie Jenkins
Hillsborough Democrats have aspired for years to flip this red seat for the past decade, going back to when then-Freshman Dana Young defeated the late Stacy Frank in 2010. Jackie Toledo won a contested GOP primary when the seat was open in 2016, and she held off her Democratic foes (the district encompasses South Tampa, as well as parts of east and west Hillsborough) that year and again in 2018.
Jenkins is a community activist and marketing professional who unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the Tampa City Council in 2011 and 2015.
A recent St. Pete Polls survey showing Jenkins leading in the race stunned some observers, who maintain that it’s a Republican leaning district.
Toledo has raised more than twice as much campaign cash as Jenkins has, showing the power of incumbency (As of Oct. 12, Toledo has raised more than $464,000 in the race compared to Jenkins $185,803).
6. House District 64 Race between Republican Traci Koster and Democrat Jessica Harrington
This open House seat includes portions of both northwestern Hillsborough and northeastern Pinellas counties that had been held by Republican Jamie Grant since 2010. But just before the Aug. 18 primary, Grant announced that he was stepping down from office to instead go to work in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration as the state’s chief information officer.
The Hillsborough and Pinellas Republican Executive Committees then came together to select attorney Traci Koster to serve as the party’s new nominee.
Harrington lost to Grant in 2018, and says she hasn’t stopped campaigning since.
While Koster doesn’t have the name recognition as Grant, the HD 64 seat leans towards the GOP.
7. Hillsborough County Commission District 6 race between Dem. incumbent Pat Kemp and Republican challenger Sandy Murman
The rhetoric in this contest has escalated – as there’s a lot at stake.
Kemp is a progressive who has led the board this year to increase impact and mobility fees for the first time in decades, and that’s pushed the development community to strongly support Murman financially.
Murman has served on the board for the past decade representing South Tampa and the northwest part of the county. She previously served in the Legislature from 1996-2004.
Democrats took control of the Board of County Commissioners after the 2018 election, but the power could revert back to the GOP if they take back this seat as well as the race to succeed Murman in District 1 between Democrat Harry Cohen and Republican Scott Levinson (Gwen Myers is expected to defeat Republican Maura Lanz in the very Democratic-leaning District 3 seat which is also on the ballot).
8. Pinellas County Commission seats 1 and 3
Pinellas Democrats Janet Long and Charlie Justice served in the Legislature together for four years (2006-2010) before they both were elected to the Pinellas County Commission in District-wide seats in 2012. They both won reelection in 2016, and are on the ballot again seeking a third four-year term this fall.
Long is being challenged by Republican Larry Ahern, a former state House representative from Seminole.
Justice is running against Republican Tammy Vasquez, a first-time candidate for office. Vasquez says she began seriously following the county commission’s meetings for the first time after her businesses were forced to shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, and what she saw she didn’t like, compelling her to run against the much-better known Democrat.
Both races look to be competitive, according to a recent survey conducted by St.Pete Polls.
9. Florida Senate District 20 race
Democratic candidate Kathy Lewis and her supporters are critical of the Florida Democratic Party for failing to help her financially in her uphill battle against Zephyrhills Republican Danny Burgess for the state Senate District 20 race.
Republicans lead the Democrats in the state Senate, 23-17. If the Democrats were able to flip three seats in the Legislature’s upper chamber this fall, they would share control with the GOP in the Senate for the first time in nearly three decades.
The demographics make it seem like it could be a pickup for the Dems, as there’s only around 3,000 more Republicans than Democrats in a district with 335,060 people. But Burgess says that the district isn’t as competitive as those numbers might make it appear.
“I think that anybody you talk to who’s from this area would tell you that most of the Democrats in a large area within this community are conservative individuals,” says Burgess, a former state Rep. from Zephyrhills who stepped away from the Legislature to serve as Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Department of Veterans Affairs Director for a year-and-a-half. “I know that my values are more representative of the make-up of this district.”
Lewis was inspired to run for the seat against then-incumbent Tom Lee in 2018 because of her anger and frustration in trying to acquire health care benefits for her disabled daughter. A graduate of Johns Hopkins from her native Baltimore, Lewis says she was chastised by officials within the party because of her criticism about their lack of financial support. She doesn’t regret it one bit.
“I escaped poverty. And when you do that, it leaves you with a particular set of skills. I know how to get things done against insurmountable odds. I know how to do it in a caring and fearless way,” she says.
Nearly half the district is located in eastern Hillsborough County (48%), with 40% from Pasco and 12% in Polk.
