Florida special election leaves Republicans anxious
Standing in front of a few dozen supporters in a strip-mall parking lot in Ocala, Florida, Monday evening, Democratic congressional candidate Josh Weil made a prediction. The public school math teacher said that in less than 24 hours, he was going to make history by flipping a solidly Republican congressional seat – helping to wrest control of the House of Representatives from the Republicans."Their 2025 agenda stops here," he promised, railing against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's efforts to slash government services and personnel.Just an hour earlier, in a telephone town hall meeting, Randy Fine, his Republican opponent in Tuesday's special election, had a similar message – although he framed it as a warning, not a promise."Democrats are mad," he said. "They're going to do whatever it takes to grind Donald Trump's agenda to a halt."Voters in the eastern half of central Florida, from Ocala to the towns north of Daytona Beach, head to the polls to fill the seat vacated by Michael Waltz, chosen by Trump to be national security advisor. Waltz recently sparked a media frenzy after inadvertently adding a prominent journalist to a high-level group chat about the US strikes in Yemen. Mike Waltz takes 'full responsibility' for Signal group chat leakWatch: How the Signal group chat fallout unfoldedThat Waltz's job may now be in jeopardy is just one reason Tuesday's contest for one of the 435 House seats is now a national story.The other is that Weil, despite running in a district Trump carried by more than 30 points last November, just might win. And if he does, Democrats would take a big step closer to a majority in the narrowly divided House.Win or lose, the race also could serve as a barometer of voters' motivation as Trump begins his second term – and offer hints at the political landscape ahead of next year's mid-term congressional elections.It is one of two special elections in Florida on Tuesday. The other, in Florida's panhandle region, will determine a replacement for Matt Gaetz, the firebrand congressman Trump originally picked to be attorney general before he withdrew under a cloud of sexual misconduct and ethics allegations. A Republican is widely expected to win there.But that is not the case here. Weil has raised about $10m in campaign donations, dwarfing the $1m brought in by Fine, a Florida state senator.According to a recent public opinion survey, Weil narrowly trails Fine. An internal poll by a respected Republican firm reportedly showed Weil ahead by 3.That's enough to cause more than a little anxiety in Republican ranks."There's no excuse for a Republican not to win this race," said Randy Ross, a Florida-based conservative activist who campaigned there for Trump in 2016 and 2024. "The only excuse that can possibly be had is Republicans weren't excited and didn't get out to vote."Mr Ross added that Republican voters need to understand that Fine will support Trump's agenda in Congress – and Weil will not.To this end, some of the party's heaviest hitters stepped in to help. Last Thursday, Trump joined the Republican candidate in two telephone town hall events. On Monday night, Florida Congressman Byron Donalds and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro held their own event."Donald Trump's agenda is hanging by a thread," Shapiro said. "This is a district that simply cannot fall into Democratic hands."Tech multi-billionaire Musk, a close Trump ally, may be campaigning in person for a hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race, but his political committee directed more than $75,000 to support Fine in recent days. Other conservative groups followed suit, helping Fine level the financial playing field.Wisconsin attorney general sues to block Elon Musk $2m election giveawayFederal judge halts further shuttering of USAIDOf particular concern for the party is that special elections take place during times of lower political engagement and usually involve only the one race in question. They often tilt toward the party with the most enthusiasm, according to Mr Ross. For Republicans, a Democratic show of strength on Tuesday would be troubling."You can't go just on name recognition in a special election," he said. "You've got to drive people out to vote for you."Republican nervousness is a result of simple math in the House of Representatives. With a 218 to 213 majority in the 435 seat chamber, the party cannot afford to lose any winnable elections – let alone ones that should be a slam dunk. While a Weil victory alone wouldn't be enough to flip control of the chamber, two of the currently vacant seats are in safely Democratic districts. If the results of those special elections go as expected, Democrats would be on the verge of control.That could explain why the president announced on Friday he was withdrawing his pick of New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to be US ambassador to the United Nations, despite her having all but formally vacated her office. A Weil victory on Tuesday would mean the Republicans could not afford to lose a New York election to replace Stefanik.Even before Tuesday's balloting, both Democrats and Republicans jockeyed to frame the results in the best light for their party.Conservatives downplayed the national implications of the race and placed blame on Fine, who has been accused of running a lacklustre campaign and taking victory for granted."It's a reflection of the candidate that's running the race, " Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said of Fine's apparent underperformance.Meanwhile, Democrats are declaring a victory – at least, the moral variety."These are races that should not, under ordinary circumstances, be on anyone's political radar," Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said last Monday. "The American people are not buying what the Republicans are selling."That sentiment was echoed by many of Weil's supporters on Monday night in Ocala, even if the candidate himself told the BBC he would win by eight points."If we lose but come close, moderate Republicans might take notice," said Buddy Oswald, an attorney and educator. If they were worried their party could lose a safe seat, he added, maybe they would feel the heat and be more willing to break with the president.Eight years ago, in the aftermath of Trump's stunning 2016 presidential victory, Democrats sought solace in special election races across the map. They pulled off some stunners, including a Doug Jones Senate victory in deeply conservative Alabama. In other races, such as a bid by Jon Ossoff in a suburban Atlanta district, the Democrat came up just short.Those races presaged a high level of Democratic enthusiasm that led to a wave in the mid-terms the following year, when the party won 39 seats in taking back the House of Representatives and putting a decisive end to Trump's first-term legislative agenda.Republicans, with convincing victories on Tuesday, want to squelch any chance of history repeating itself.Democrats, engaged in a sometimes acrimonious debate over strategy and political priorities, would like Florida to get them back in the win column – or at least give them hope of better days to come.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
34 minutes ago
- The National
Owen Jones: The UK media has ignored this hugely revealing scandal
And yet Benjamin Netanyahu – the Israeli prime minister subject to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant – has been accused of forging this alliance by the Israeli political class. And yet – once again – the Westminster media has overwhelmingly failed to cover this latest profoundly revealing scandal. Avigdor Lieberman is a far-right opposition leader who once served as Netanyahu's deputy prime minister, foreign minister and defence minister. This week, he publicly announced: 'The Israeli government is giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons, identified with Islamic State, at the direction of the prime minister.' Did Netanyahu come out swinging, accusing his opponent of antisemitism, as he did when another opposition leader, former Israeli general Yair Golan, declared that Israel was killing babies as a hobby? READ MORE: Patrick Harvie: Increased UK defence spending only makes war more likely He did not. Instead, Netanyahu bragged that 'Israel is working to defeat Hamas in various ways, on the recommendation of all heads of the security establishment'. In a video message, he clarified that Israel had 'activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas', shamelessly calling it 'a good thing' which was saving the lives of Israeli soldiers. 'What's wrong with that?' We're talking here about a militia headed by a man named Yasser Abu Shabab. He styles his faction as the 'Anti Terror Service', but it is a criminal gang operating in an area of Rafah firmly under Israeli military control. His own family has not only disowned him, but backed his execution. According to Palestinian analyst Muhammad Shehada, his militia is composed of 300 'drug dealers and criminals.' And here's the important detail. To justify imposing a total siege on Gaza, Israel claimed that Hamas was stealing humanitarian food. Among those pointing out this wasn't true was Cindy McCain, widow of the late hawkish Republican senator John McCain, and now director of the World Food Programme. But we do know that Shabab's Israel-backed gang has been stealing aid. As ever with the Israeli authorities: every accusation is a confession. This is just another plank of Israel's starvation policy. But again, the Western media has overwhelmingly failed to clearly spell out what Israel is actually doing. Having imposed a total siege on Gaza since March 2, Israel set up a US-backed shadow entity named the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to explicitly supplant the UN. It hasn't just been rejected by every aid agency – even the US marine who heads it resigned on the basis it contradicted the basic principles of humanitarianism. The Foundation set three aid checkpoints in the south in an effort to concentrate Gaza's entire population into a confined area – a concentration camp. Too little aid was delivered, much of it unusable given the siege on cooking materials. But in any case, the Israeli military repeatedly fired on starving Palestinians. In the words of Tory MP Kit Malthouse, the UN system had been replaced with a 'shooting range, an abattoir'. But when the Israeli military massacred dozens of starving Palestinians, they deployed their usual strategy: deceive, deflect, deny, distort. Even though the shootings happened in an Israeli military zone, and despite the overwhelming evidence of Israeli lies, the Western media indulged Israeli claims that Hamas was responsible as if they were credible. CNN belatedly published a clear rebuttal of Israeli lies, but attention had already moved on. As ever, the Western media overall fail to allow Israeli responsibility for atrocities to stick. And yet now, even as Yair Lapid – the main opposition leader – states Netanyahu is 'giving weapons to organisations close to ISIS in Gaza', this latest plank of Israel's starvation strategy barely gets any coverage. This is despite Israel's 'Hamas is ISIS' campaign long being used to justify the genocide. This all fits a classic pattern, of course. Israel encouraged the rise of Hamas in the 1980s in order to undermine its public enemy number one at the time, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. More recently, Netanyahu worked with Qatar to transfer money to prop up Hamas – with the hope of dividing the Palestinian nation and movement so an independent state was impossible. Remember too how the West armed and backed the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, playing a crucial role in creating the global Islamist fundamentalist movement. You would think the Western media might take an interest given the precedents. It is true that there is a shift taking place. Israeli spokespeople are suddenly being taken apart on mainstream television. Sky News is demanding the Prime Minister answer if genocide is taking place. But the media narrative still has not clearly shifted to reality – that is, a crime of historic proportions is being facilitated by Western governments, which means questions should be focused on 'how can this crime be stopped, and perpetrators held to justice' rather than 'is Israel doing something very bad here?' The latter is an improvement on where the narrative was stuck for so long – which was essentially 'Israel is waging a war of self-defence', with a side debate about whether the 'response' was 'proportionate'. What is clear is that an understanding is creeping into the political and media elites that a reckoning is coming, where those who facilitated this abomination will be forced to answer for what they did and what they didn't do. Time is running out.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Leaders of the Jan. 6 riot take revenge against US after securing pardon from Trump
Five former members of the Proud Boys are looking for a little revenge after getting a pardon from Donald Trump, filing a $100million lawsuit against the Department of Justice. One of the first moves of Donald Trump's second term was to pardon all January 6 defendants which included members of the far right Proud Boys. Former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean and Dominic Pezzola have filed the suit in Orlando federal court. While Tarrio received a pardon, the other four plaintiffs had their sentences commuted. The lawsuit said all four applied for pardons on May 13. They claim their constitutional rights were violated when they were prosecuted for their participation in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The suit seeks unspecified compensatory damages plus 6% interest and $100 million plus interest in punitive damages. 'There was hostages in this country,' Tarrio said during a news conference Friday afternoon. 'It's not about any other country today, and that's why this lawsuit is so important to bring back law and order into our system.' The lawsuit claims the men were arrested with insufficient probable cause and that government agents later 'found' fake incriminating evidence. They also claim they were held for years in pretrial detention, often in solitary confinement. 'The Plaintiffs themselves did not obstruct the proceedings at the Capitol, destroy government property, resist arrest, conspire to impede the police, or participate in civil disorder, nor did they plan for or order anyone else to do so,' the lawsuit said. Tarrio, Biggs, Rehl and Nordean were all convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes for their participation in the Capitol riot that sought to stop Congress from certifying former U.S. President Joe Biden ´s win over President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Pezzola was acquitted on the conspiracy charge but convicted of stealing a police officer's riot shield and using it to smash a window. After returning to office earlier this year, Trump granted pardons to almost all of the more than 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol. The U.S. Justice Department didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Speaking to a media gaggle packed into his White House office the night of the inauguration, Trump said he was pardoning about 1,500 defendants and issuing six commutations. Ex-Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was a guest of honor at the Reagan Tribute at Mar-a-Lago – just two weeks after his prison sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump's executive order Zachary Rehl (pictured left) and Ethan Nordean (pictured right) are two of the plaintiffs in the suit He also directed the attorney general to seek dismissal of about 450 pending criminal cases against Jan. 6 defendants. The pardons fulfill Trump's promise to release supporters who tried to help him overturn his election defeat four years ago. 'These are the hostages,' he said while signing the paperwork in the Oval Office. Trump declared at his indoor parade earlier that day that he will sign pardons for 'a lot of people' who were convicted for the attack on the U.S. Capitol as the crowd cheered enthusiastically. 'We won, we won, but now the work begins,' Trump said to start his remarks at the end of the parade in the packed Capitol One Arena in Washington, DC. Tarrio, one of the biggest names to get a pardon, has since said he plans to run for public office. He was sentenced in September 2023 to serve 22 years in prison after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6 attack – even though he was not present at the Capitol that day. And just two weeks later, Tarrio was among the guests of honor during a Reagan Tribute event at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. Tarrio, who was chairman of the Proud Boys at the time of the Capitol attack, said he would neither 'support' nor 'condemn' the riot. The far-right activist did insist, however, that he did not 'sympathize' with lawmakers who were terrified in their offices that day. At least 37 members of the Proud Boys were arrested, charged or indicted for alleged roles in the Capitol riot by January 2022. By then, Tarrio was no longer a leader of the group. He served as chairman from 2018 to 2021. The House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack subpoenaed Tarrio to testify in November 2021 and in February 2022, he gave a deposition to the committee investigators and two members.
Daily Record
an hour ago
- Daily Record
Donald Trump and Elon Musk feud is very dangerous for the President
The political alliance between Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk has disfigured US politics. Musk helping bankroll Trump's second election victory was an example of money buying power. Being handed a job as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut spending was also wrong on a number of levels. It reeked of a massive favour to a donor and led to the dodgy practice of unaccountable allies of Musk cutting government programmes. But both individuals are ego maniacs and it was only a matter of time before they fell out spectacularly. Musk is unhappy at a Trump tax bill he believes will be financially ruinous. Sniping then led to Musk making the incendiary claim the president's name appears in the notorious Jeffrey Epstein files. Few things are more damaging reputationally than being linked to the late Epstein - just ask Prince Andrew. This developing feud between Trump and his former pal Musk is dangerous for the President. The Tesla co-founder has power and influence, both politically and in the corporate world, and he seems intent on doing damage. A positive step for the world would be if both men cancelled themselves out through their bickering. The US is known as a land of opportunity but we are in a situation where a small number of billionaires wield disproportionate power. People like Musk should be paying more in tax and held to account for the cuts he was allowed to make in government. Trump is already a lame duck president and Americans must look to a time when he is no longer in charge. Weapons in court The proliferation of weapons on our streets is bad enough. But it beggars belief that thousands of blades, guns and bullets have been seized in Scottish courtrooms in the last year as our investigation reveals. The motivation of those who would attempt to enter a court while armed is not clear. Do they think they need protection or is it to dish out retribution? Whatever the reason, it is vital courts are safe places for justice to be carried out without fear for anyone's safety. People should be able to expect to attend court as an employee, witness or accused without being worried about the threat of violence. Those sinister or stupid enough to believe they can carry weapons into a court of law should be left in no doubt their conduct is unacceptable. They should be hammered by the courts they seek to undermine.
