28-01-2025
Republicans to pick candidate for vacated Gaetz seat Tuesday
PENSACOLA, Fla. (WKRG) — It's primary day in Northwest Florida as thousands are expected to cast their ballots in a special congressional race. Nearly a dozen Republicans face off on the ballot. The winner becomes the party's nominee to fill the recently vacated Matt Gaetz seat.
It's a crowded field and by tonight we'll have one Republican standing–and because of the political make-up in the district that person will be a heavy favorite to win the seat this April.
Monday workers and volunteers at the Escambia County Supervisor of Elections Office spent the day going through mail-in-ballots and getting trucks loaded up with election gear for the dozens of polling locations around the county. This is a Republican-only primary with the Democratic party candidate already decided.
Supervisor of Elections Robert Bender says last week's historic snow storm cut down their early voting days by nearly half. With extended hours, people eager to beat the snow storm, and a competitive ballot, they had 450 more Republican early voters than they had with last year's Republican presidential preference primary.
'We were closed for three days, but we also expanded our hours by an hour and a half each day. The three days leading up to the storm and then went to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. the two days after the storm and we reopened. Even though the county was closed on Friday. We did have all of our locations open on Friday,' said Bender.
It's going to be a relatively small voter turnout–bender says they're at 10% now and could see up to 18% at the end of the day for Escambia County.
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