Aerospace entrepreneur Tom Keen is headed to the House after flipping a red seat blue.
The Orlando Democrat came out on top in a critical Special Election in House District 35, besting Republican Erika Booth. Democrats had invested heavily in the battleground district hoping to prove the party remains competitive at the start of a Presidential Election year. The victory could have ramifications in the donor class as Sunshine State Democrats proclaim this remains a swing state.
Unofficial final results showed Keen winning 51.3% of the vote with all precincts reporting and only 36 mail-in votes unprocessed.
He now succeeds Rep. Fred Hawkins, a St. Cloud Republican who resigned to take a job as President of South Florida State College.
Keen on the campaign trail argued the Legislature has ignored issues like home insurance rates impacting Floridians day-to-day, instead choosing to focus on Gov. Ron DeSantis' culture wars agenda. He promised to bring real-world issues before the Florida Legislature.
"I fought for our country for 21 years as a Naval Flight Officer," Keen said during the campaign. "I will fight for my fellow neighbors in District 35 when I get to Tallahassee. I filed to run in this race in May 2023 because the residents of District 35 deserve better representation in Tallahassee."
Keen has also campaigned before in the district, but lost the Democratic nomination in 2022 by just 57 votes. In November, he pulled an upset victory in the Democratic Primary, beating two candidates who outraised him. Now he's done it again, besting a Republican who raised substantially more funds, though Keen also enjoyed more help from his political party in the Special Election.
Both parties invested heavily in the election in a swing district. Hawkins won the district in 2022 by 10 percentage points. But two years before that, voters in the district favored Joe Biden in the 2020 Presidential Election by 5 points.
A look at registration rolls shows the race as a true battleground, more so after both parties placed a priority on voter registration and vote-by-mail requests. As of the Dec. 18 registration deadline to vote in this race, the 37,389 registered Democrats barely outnumber 37,155 registered Republicans. Voters with no party affiliation outnumber both groups, with 37,786 registered, though turnout is traditionally low among independents in unusually timed races, and this election appears to be no exception.
Before Election Day, more Democrats had voted than Republicans, though that shifted in mid-afternoon on Election Day.
Booth's campaign, through Jan. 11, collected nearly $323,000 dollars and spent about $260,000 before the final push. Keen's campaign collected significantly less, about $121,000, and deployed $104,000 through the last full week of campaigning.
But the parties have upped spending as well. The Florida House Democratic Campaign Committee spent upward of $541,000 from the Democratic Primary through the Jan. 11 reporting deadline. That's far more than the $207,000 spent in the same time by the Florida House Republican Campaign Committee.
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