Here are three crucial U.S. House contests for Florida’s primary to keep an eye on until voting day: Tenth Congressional District: In order to challenge the current GOP senator, Orlando Democrat Val Demings is running for the U.S. Senate. Why are there so many Democrats? The Legislature’s approval of the redistricting plan proposed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis rendered this a more Democratic-leaning district while at the same time diluting the African American vote.
There are six Black candidates: state senator Randolph Bracy, activist Maxwell Frost, minister Terence Gray, lawyer Natalie Jackson for civil rights, businessman Jeffrey Boone, and former congresswoman Corrine Brown. Four non-Black candidates, including former US Representative Alan Grayson, are running for office on the Democratic side as well.
As of July, Frost, a 25-year-old former ACLU employee and gun control activist who was detained at Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020, has raised more money than all of his rivals put together ($1.3 million). However, Grayson has been responding to Frost with a number of web and broadcast advertisements.
District 7 of the U.S. House is now represented by moderate Democrat Stephanie Murphy of Winter Park; however, she decided not to seek reelection. With the district’s new boundaries, Republicans are expected to capture the available seat; eight GOP candidates are running.
One of them is state representative Anthony Sabatini from Lake County, an extreme conservative who has had numerous run-ins with Florida’s legislative GOP leaders, calling them “coward, RINO, spineless invertebrate scumbags” in public. Additionally, Cory Mills, an Army combat veteran, gained attention with advertisements that compared Democratic leaders to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
The candidate who has raised the most money so far for the election is Brady Duke, a former Navy SEAL. Duke is emphasising his involvement with the best special forces. Erika Benfield, a former vice mayor of DeBary, Ted Edwards, a former county commissioner for Orange County, Army veteran Al Santos, businessman Scott Sturgill, and Rusty Roberts, a longtime chief of staff to John Mica, a former Republican U.S. Representative who previously held the District 7 seat before Murphy, are also on the GOP side.
Despite being outside of Central Florida, the U.S. House, District 1 contest is relevant to the area. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican and one of the most contentious members of the U.S. House, is facing a formidable primary challenge from Mark Lombardo, a former Marine and FedEx executive who has run a series of advertisements criticising Gaetz for being the subject of a federal investigation into sex trafficking. Gaetz is innocent and says he did nothing wrong.
Joel Greenberg, the former tax collector for Seminole County, was accused of 33 federal offences before pleading guilty to six felonies, including the felony of trafficking a child in sex, identity theft, stalking, wire fraud, making false identification documents, and conspiracy to bribe a public official. Gates’s name kept coming up in connection with Greenberg.
Rebekah Jones, a former employee of the Department of Health, is vying for the Democratic nomination to fill Gaetz’s seat. Jones gained notoriety when she questioned the state’s COVID-19 dashboard and asserted that Florida wasn’t reporting accurate numbers, an allegation that an inspector general’s report found to be unfounded. Jones is up against Peggy Schiller, a Democratic Party activist in the area.
On election night, Crist and Fried present their argument to voters.
On Monday, Congressman Charlie Crist and Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried were making their closing arguments to voters in the race to represent the Democrats against Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in November. On Monday night, Crist had planned to visit his hometown of St. Petersburg as part of his “Hope for Florida” tour.
Fried’s “Something New” tour was also making stops in Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville as it made its way across the state from her home in Miami. DeSantis, who has amassed a campaign fund of more than $100 million and received widespread political attention as a potential 2024 presidential candidate, was the subject of a debate between the two regarding who would be the best opponent.
Fried attacked Crist for having been a Republican in the past and said he was against abortion rights, which Crist refuted. Crist claimed Fried’s comments in their lone debate were an act of “desperation” from a candidate well down in the election.
2.1 million Floridians have cast ballots so far.
Only slightly more Floridians than the slightly more than 2 million Floridians who voted early or by mail in the 2018 primary, the most recent non-presidential election, have cast ballots for the Florida primary as of Monday. As with other non-presidential election years, a low turnout is anticipated.
On Tuesday, Floridians will cast their votes in the state’s primary election, which will determine the Democratic nominee for governor, the candidates for both parties in a number of crucial congressional contests throughout Florida, and the winners of significant local positions such as the mayor of Orange County. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is up against Democratic U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist and Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried.
Voting in Orange County rises before election day
Orange County has more people casting early or mail-in ballots for the Florida Primary than it did for the statewide primary four years ago. 105,655 Orange County voters cast early or mail-in ballots before election day in the 2018 state primary. According to the county elections website on Monday, this year there were 111,801, an increase of 6,146 votes. Only 13.05 per cent of the county’s 856,826 registered voters, nevertheless, elected to cast a ballot prior to Tuesday’s election.
According to Orange County, there were 44,421 early voters and 67,377 people who used mail-in ballots. The greatest percentage of voters that voted early and by mail in Orange was found in Precinct 522 in the Baldwin Park neighbourhood, where 27.09% of voters participated. Precinct 517, located east of downtown Winter Park, came in second with 23.78%, followed by Precinct 637, in the Orlando Country Club neighbourhood, with 24.69%.
Are challenges to mail-in ballots increasing in Orange County?
Today, we anticipate learning more about the task force of Orange County Republicans that has been contesting mail-in ballots at the supervisor of the elections office. Orange County Republicans have established an Elections Integrity Task Force to challenge mail-in votes before they are opened, using a contentious new rule to do so. As of last week, there have been at least 36 challenges and 20 denials for Tuesday’s primary.
information on how to vote on election day
The polls in Florida will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday for the primary election. Voters in Lake, Orange, Osceola, and Seminole counties can use their website to locate precincts and voting places. Voters are required to bring a photo ID with a signature. Voters will receive provisional ballots, which won’t be counted on election day but will be examined later by a canvassing board, if they don’t have identification or if it’s impossible to confirm their identity.
What to look out for in the primary in Florida: AP
On Tuesday, there will also be primaries in New York and Oklahoma in addition to Florida. The following is what the Associated Press advises its readers to watch for during the Florida primary: Florida, which used to be the biggest swing state in the nation, has shifted more Republican in recent years. Trump won it twice, and the GOP’s control of the legislature has given DeSantis a national stage to practise his aggressive brand of culture war politics, which has delighted major GOP contributors and spurred rumours that he’ll run for president.
