The NPR Politics Podcast - A Look At This Week's Special House Elections In Florida

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Races to fill two vacant seats in Florida's first and sixth congressional districts are getting a lot of attention. Despite Republicans having a long history of success in both, Democrats think they have a chance to keep things close — if not possibly to pull off major upsets. We look at who is running. This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and national correspondent Greg Allen.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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The news may have changed by the time you hear this, but my garden certainly has. Spring has sprung in Detroit. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Oh, that was a lovely timestamp. That's what those little purple flowers are on your lawn, I guess. Crocuses. Oh, that is news to me.

I had to Google it. Yeah. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, we're looking at two special elections to the House of Representatives

that are getting a lot of attention. They're both in Florida voting in both of these races ends tomorrow. And NPR's Greg Allen has been covering them. Hey, Greg. Hello. Thanks for joining us. So these seats opened up when Mike Waltz was picked to be President Trump's National Security Advisor.

And the other seat opened up when Matt Gaetz was originally nominated to be attorney general, but then Gaetz of course withdrew from contention before his confirmation hearings, but that seat remained open. So just paint us a picture here, tell us about these districts. Why don't we start with Mike Waltz's, where in Florida is it and who's running to replace him?

Well, this is on the East coast of Florida, the Atlantic coast, kind of central Florida, just south of St. Augustine, extending down close to Orlando. This was a district, an area that actually, the current governor, Randy Santis, was representing some parts of this back when it was, before it was redrawn.

So you've got two people running for it. One is a personal friend of Donald Trump, I think he would say, Randy Fine of state legislator Who's been around for quite some time very contentious kind of a bombastic? Politician says what he means very conservative one of the first to endorse Trump in the state legislature And so he has Trump's endorsement in return the person running against him is Josh while a public school teacher For Josh while we, he's got some support from Democrats nationally. Of course, we've had the head of the DNC, Ken Martin, here over

the weekend campaigning. He's also received an endorsement from Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, of course. Sanders hasn't been here, but that carries a lot of weight in Florida. Okay, so two very different ends of the spectrum. What about Matt Gaetz's former district? Okay, so two very different ends of the spectrum. What about Matt Gates's former district? Well, that's up in the panhandle near Pensacola. It's an area that has near some military bases. So you've got a lot of veterans retired military up there So it's been very conservative like the district that a while and finer in it's a heavily Republican district Both have been represented by Republicans for many years. I think that both

candidates won in November by the Republicans won by more than 30 points. So that's this this these are red districts for sure. Up there the person running is Gaye Valamont who was beat by Gates by more than 30 points in November. Then of course we know what happened with Gates and running in against her who now who's also has Trump's endorsement is the state's chief financial officer Jimmy Petronas. He's a long time pal up there in the panhandle, his family owns a restaurant well known, I think well liked up there. So that is maybe a tougher lift in some ways for Democrats but both of those are going to be long shot races in which the republicans will be favored. Okay wow there's a lot of factors get into, but I do want to touch on something you said a minute ago,

Greg, which was talking about some of the money, the enormous amount of money that is coming in to both of these races. And Domenico, I want to bring you in here as well, because I know this is something you've been tracking. When it comes to the funding for these two races, I mean, who is spending the most money? Is it really impacting the race in terms of,

obviously, I'm sure a ton of advertisements on television, but how is it really impacting what folks in terms of you know, obviously I'm sure a ton of advertisements on television But how is it really impacting what folks are seeing on the ground? Yeah, I'm sure Greg can speak to what he's seeing on the airwaves, but just in crunching the numbers from here I mean the Democrats in these both of these races have far outspent and out Raised the Republicans in these races and you look at Florida six The Democrat in that race has raised almost ten million dollars, $9.5 million raised, $8.2 million spent. The Republican hasn't even raised a million dollars, which is really a humongous disparity. I think indicative of the fact that this is one of the first races since Trump has gotten into office in a real area where

Democrats are trying to push to, you know, voice their frustration. And it doesn't really mean that Democrats are going to win here, as we know money doesn't always mean that, but the margins are important. I mean, often victory and special elections are measured in the margins. Yeah, absolutely. Greg, what are you seeing? We had the head of the DNC here over the weekend, Ken Martin. And one of the things he said, he was asked repeatedly that his news events, you know, what would victory look like?

And he says, well, of course we want to win, but this is a district that Donald Trump won in November by more than 30 points. So anything we do that's that's inside those margins is going to be considered a win for us. So I think he's kind of like lowering expectations because people get excited when it looks like Democrats have a chance to pick up these two red seats. It may happen, you know, with all the money disparity we've talked about, that's important, but as we've seen many races, money doesn't determine the outcome by any means.

No, definitely not determining the outcome and also just the outsize, to your point, both of you, like the outsize attention that this race is getting. It's an off year, it's right after the presidential, you know, there's all this attention and that kind of fuels some of the money, but it doesn't necessarily change the fact that there's a 30 point difference here maybe. Yeah. And to just put this race in context, put the money in context, I mean, the $8.2 million that's spent as of March 12th, by the way, so you know, more than that has been spent through the entire thing, would have put this race in the top 20 of all house races for spending, uh, for

any single person spending, uh, of all of the 2024 congressional race cycle, they had 20 months to do that from January, 2023. This has been only two months and they're spending all of that kind of money. So clearly Democrats at least want to be able to shrink the margins considerably. If it's a 30 point win for the Republican, it's certainly going to be a black eye for Democrats because they spent all this money. But if it's within, you know, 15, 10, 15 points, I mean, they clearly made some inroads here in a district that they really shouldn't have, especially if it's under 10, I would say the

margins are really what's important. And I think to put that in context, the margins over the last 20 years or so, usually when you have special elections, when they all go in one direction, that's the party that winds up winning the house in the next cycle. And with this being the closest house since 1917, these margins are going to really matter both in the house and, and, uh, at the ballot box. This idea is about money. What's changed so much. And the medical talks about this a lot, I think is that, you know, by money, most of this money came in from outside the district. So it money is great, but it doesn't tell you about who's going to come out to vote,

which is always the key factor, which determines wins, especially in an off, off year election, like there's a special election. And so you really don't know what that's going to look like. We've had a couple of polls in Florida. One was commissioned by the website, Florida politics. It shows Josh wild down just by a few points. I think it's four points in that poll. Another poll released done by a Republican pollster, Tony Fabrizio done for an internal polling for Republicans was

released as well. And that showed them down by about the same margin. And both of those are inside the margin of error. So that suggests it's going to be tight. And there's a chance that Democrats could pull this out. Well, and that clearly, I think, probably tells you why President Trump wound up pulling the nomination to UN ambassador for Elise Stefanik in upstate New York, because you see this kind of polling coming in, in districts that are plus 30 for Republicans,

and you know, Trump and Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, don't want to take any chances. All right, we're going to take a quick break and more in a moment. This message comes from Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies, sending or spending money abroad, hidden fees may be taking a cut. With Wyse, you can convert between up to 40 currencies at the mid-market exchange rate. Visit Wyse.com. TNCs apply. This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile might be right for you with plans starting from 15 bucks a month. Shop plans today at mintmobile.com slash switch.

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They offer premium wireless plans for less, and all plans include high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, and nationwide coverage. See for yourself at mintmobile.com slash switch. Welcome back. And Domenico, you know, these districts that we've been talking about, they are reliably Republican districts. At any other time, maybe in a not-post-2024 period, we would probably not be talking about them, because Republicans historically have done really well there. But, you know, these are also the first special elections of Trump's term.

Oftentimes, they can be proxies or just a little bit of a litmus test to see how people are feeling about the current administration. Do you think that's a fair way to interpret the races coming up this week? Yeah, it's the first temperature check of how people are feeling about the Trump presidency and which way the political winds are blowing. Often these off-year elections right after a president is sworn in, it's the first opportunity for the out party to register their frustration. And if their frustration isn't that high, usually it shows that the president is doing a pretty good job or that his policies are pretty popular or at least that the other side's base is not that fired.

You know, you don't want to over read the results of special elections, but in aggregate they do give you a pretty good sign of things to come. Yeah, it's always interesting to me because it's a both and of you know, how people are feeling about XYZ administration that's currently in power. But there is also that question of like, is the other side amped up enough? And as we know from polling, you know, Donald Trump isn't exactly super, super popular right now, but Democrats aren't really popular right now either.

And so it's sort of an interesting, you know, bifurcated situation. One other thing I wanted to ask about though, as you know, there have been some early warning signs that the White House is pretty worried about the slim majority of Republicans that they have in the House right now. And one of those signs was that President Trump pulled the nomination of New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, you had mentioned this a bit ago, to be ambassador to the United Nations. And you know, that would have created, of course, another vacancy in the House with these tight margins.

How concerned should Republicans be about their tightening margins in the House with these two races tomorrow? Well, I think clearly they're concerned at least enough to want to be able to shore it up. I mean, often when you've won a presidential election, that party's base winds up kind of going dormant a little bit. They hibernate until they get woken up. These are all districts, including the Stefanic district,

that are very heavily Republican. And if those margins are all tight, that's going to dominate the news cycle for a couple of days, at least. And that's certainly not something that news cycle for a couple of days at least. And that's certainly not something that president Trump or the Republicans in Congress are going to want to have to be beating back all of these questions from reporters, people sort of opening their eyes and saying, is this a problem with the Republican Party?

When if you think about a week, week and a half ago, people were talking about the democratic dysfunction, the low approval ratings for the party at historic lows. And that's where either party wants to be is pointing at the other one, not having that spotlight shown on you. Yeah, the thing that I'm also keeping in mind, and Greg, I'd love to get you in on this as well is that, you know, I'm from Virginia, the gubernatorial race in Virginia always takes place the year after a presidential, right? And that, to me, at least used to be one of the first tests because it's like a governor's race

and a pretty purple state, good litmus test. But all of these special elections are popping up pretty soon into Trump's term. Like it's only been two, two and a half months now. And that's kind of giving it a different vibe than say, you know, all the way until November. You know, that's because Trump is aligned with so many of these Republicans in Congress

that he chose him to be in his administration. Yeah, you know, and I want to be in his administration. Yeah. And I want to throw in this Florida angle here, which is that Democrats have been on the ropes here for quite some time. And it seems like every round that comes around, they take it on the chin again. And we've got a history here of hopeful Democrats who are just left by this roadside, who thought they were going to win and they don't. And that's what people say over and over again here is don't get your hopes up here, Democrats.

But the fact that Ken Martin, the DNC chair was here, the fact that outside money's coming in, the DNC threw money here. They always say that the Democrat National Party always says it's gonna devote money to Florida, but as it's tended more red in recent years, they really haven't, you know, because it's a lost cause. So there's a sign here of like,

there's hope finally springing up among Democrats and that maybe we can bring in some outside money. Maybe we can come up with some good candidates. Maybe we can get a win, you know, in a state that's still pretty closely divided. Republicans have a million point lead, but this is a state with more than 23 million residents, you know, so Democrats should be competitive here.

They are not. They think that this might be the beginning of a comeback for them. And that infrastructure is really important to build at a party level, and it takes money to do that, obviously. Obviously, we should also say that money isn't everything in politics. Certainly, we've seen Democrats spend a ton of money in the past couple of presidential elections in a lot of these House races, and they don't always go their way. And the tide

has sort of turned in Democrats' favor when it comes to outside money, but it hasn't turned in its favor when it comes to that being enough to get voters out to the polls to vote for their agenda. I know voters will be voting. That's really the only thing we can measure anything by. We're going to leave it there for today and Greg will be watching the results as they come in tomorrow. Greg Allen, thanks so much for joining us.

You're welcome. I'm Deepa Sivaram. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa. I cover the White House. Oh, I don't... Why did I not say my last name? One second. No, no, but I was going to go just my first name then.

I was like, are we chained or so? This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile might be right for you with plans starting from 15 bucks a month. Shop plans today at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month 5-gigabyte plan required. New customer offer for first three months only. Then full price plan options available.

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