As expected, all 27 House incumbents—including 19 Republicans—won Sunshine State Aug. 20 primaries
Former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell will take on Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) in November after both easily won their party nods in Florida’s Aug. 20 primary elections.
Mucarsel-Powell, 53, ousted after one term from her South Florida House seat in 2020 by former Miami-Dade County Mayor and current U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-Fla.), had notched more than 677,000 votes, 69 percent of the Democrat ballot, when the Associated Press (AP) called her race at 8 p.m. to earn her Nov. 5 ballot berth.
Scott, 71, the former two-term Florida governor, easily swept past nominal GOP primary challenges by attorney Keith Gross and actor and small business owner John S. Columbus to advance his campaign for a second six-year Senate stint.
With 76 percent of the vote counted and Scott garnering more than 1 million votes, 84.5 percent of the tally, the AP also called the race at 8 p.m., an hour after polls closed.
Mucarsel-Powell, born in Ecuador and raised in Miami, defeated businessman and former naval aviator Stanley Campbell, former state House candidate Rod Joseph, and former state House Majority Whip Brian Rush in the Democrat Senate primary.
She has made reproductive rights, affordable housing, property insurance reform, and U.S.–Latin America policy keystones of her platform, emphasizing in a state where one in five voters is a Hispanic woman, that she is the only Latina running for statewide office and the U.S. Senate in 2024.
Scott, a U.S. Navy veteran vying to succeed Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as Senate Republican leader if reelected, has been campaigning against Mucarsel-Powell as his presumed “socialist” challenger for months.
A fiscal conservative, he touts his Rescue America Plan’s 12 points, ranging from education to government debt reform to cutting taxes, as his campaign planks. He’s noted while stumping that he, not Mucarsel-Powell, has been endorsed by Florida’s “Ecuadorian leaders.”
Scott enters the final 77-day dash to the general election as the favorite, although polls vary in how much of a frontrunner he is.
An early June Florida Atlantic University survey of 878 likely voters put Scott up by only 2 percent, 45 percent-to-43 percent. A June 24–27 University of North Florida poll of 774 Floridians put Scott up 47 percent-to-43 percent. The most recent, an Aug. 6–8 McLaughlin & Associates’ survey of 800 likely voters. put Scott up 52 percent to 42 percent.
Democrats still say Scott is vulnerable, pointing to an Aug. 7–11 USA Today/Suffolk University/WSVN survey of 500 likely voters that showed Scott “underwater” with poll respondents; 49 percent view him unfavorably while 35 percent see him in a favorable light. While he got favorable ratings by nearly 60 percent of Republican participants, he didn’t fare well with independents, a key voting bloc in the Sunshine State.
Such “underwater” surveys and close races are nothing new for Scott. His 2010 and 2014 gubernatorial elections were slim wins while his 2018 U.S. Senate victory over incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) required a recount.
But Scott has advantages. Unlike a decade ago, when there were more registered Democrats than Republicans in Florida, the voter rolls have flipped.
As of Aug. 14, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 5.3 million to 4.3 million, according to the Florida Secretary of State’s office. The wildcard is the state’s 3.5 million independent voters, which is why Democrats believe the former governor could be vulnerable.
Scott’s other advantage: Money. Specifically, his money. He spent nearly $64 million of his own money in his 2018 race for Senate, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and has raised more than $27 million for his 2024 campaign, about half self-funded.
As expected, incumbents in 27 of Florida’s 28 House seats—including all eight sitting Democrats and 19-of-20 Congressional Republicans—secured general election berths.
The only primary race not featuring a favored incumbent was in Florida’s deep red Congressional District 8 (CD 8), where former Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos easily won his primary in a race called by the AP at 7:11 p.m. to succeed the retiring Rep. Bill Posey’s (R-Fla.).
House Freedom Caucus firebrand Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) defeated former naval aviator and business consultant Aaron Dimmock in his bid for a fifth term—a race that wasn’t close, but was expensive.
Gaetz had notched 26,594 votes, 69.7 percent of the GOP tally in CD 1, where results trickled in far slower than those elsewhere across the state and then appeared at 8:13 p.m. with the incumbent declared the winner by the AP.
Gaetz, endorsed in May by former president and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, will be the overwhelming November favorite against Democrat Gay Valimont in one of the nation’s most Republican-dominated House districts.
But he had to spend more than $5 million because former House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) Freedom Patriots PAC spent more than $3.1 million attacking Gaetz, who led the “group of eight” in ousting McCarthy from his speaker post in October 2023 and, ultimately, from Congress in 2024.
Among other notable intra-party preliminaries, real estate developer and retired U.S. Army colonel Thomas Chalifoux defeated former state House Rep. John Quiñones in their Orlando-area CD 9 GOP primary. The AP called the race at 8:01 p.m. with Chalifoux leading 49.6 percent to 25.7 percent.
He will take on four-term incumbent Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) in November, who did not face a primary challenger. Soto is among 37 Democrat-held incumbents targeted as vulnerable by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
In Clearwater-area CD 13, Whitney Fox won her Democratic primary in a race called by the AP at 7:30 p.m. She will face Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), uncontested in the primary, on Nov. 5.
In South Florida’s CD 27, Miami-Dade School Board member Lucia Baez-Geller defeated former Key Biscayne Mayor Mike Davey in their Democratic primary–one of the closest and latest called on the primary slate–and will challenge Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) this fall.
Luna and Salazar are on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) ‘Districts in Play’ list. Both general elections are projected to be close.
Wyoming and Alaska also staged Aug. 20 primaries. Both states have one statewide congressional district. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo,) is on the Cowboy State’s GOP primary ballot.
The three states are among the last to stage 2024 primaries. Four states remain—Massachusetts on Sept. 3; New Hampshire, Delaware, and Rhode Island on Sept. 10.