North Florida will see a competitive state Senate race this Fall after all, as Democrats look to take back a seat they lost two years ago.
Civil rights lawyer Daryl Parks is launching a campaign to unseat Sen. Corey Simon in Senate District 3, a seat that includes Apalachicola, Tallahassee and Live Oak.
Reportedly, the buzz around Parks' candidacy in the swing seat has been building since February.
On Tuesday, he made it official, framing his campaign as a populist crusade against politics as usual.
"I am proud to announce my campaign to be your next State Senator," Parks said.
"Republican leaders who control the Capitol have flat out turned their backs on hard-working people here in North Florida and across the state. They play political games with massive tax handouts to political insiders and passing unconstitutional book bans, while ignoring real problems families here at home are dealing with every day — like record insurance rate heights, skyrocketing costs for basic healthcare or keeping a roof over their family's head."
A child of a single mother and the first member of his family to go to college, where he worked his way through as a dishwasher, Parks — a well-known civil rights lawyer — vows to "keep politicians out of our private lives and work every day to protect our fundamental freedoms by restoring reproductive rights and ensuring access to IVF and fertility treatments."
The battle to unseat Simon will be preceded, as of now, by a three-way Primary against two underfunded opponents.
Kimblin Eugene Nesmith of Quincy has self-funded $20,000 thus far this cycle, but had roughly $2,800 on hand as of the end of 2023.
Sheria Monique Griffin of Tallahassee raised a little more than $11,000 through the end of last year, and had roughly $7,000 of that on hand.
Simon, a Florida State football legend who is unopposed in the Primary, is a fundraising powerhouse.
The Friends of Corey Simon political committee closed 2023 with more than $577,000 on hand, with $208,150 raised in the final quarter of the year.
His campaign account had more than $266,000 in it at the end of the year, a total bolstered by more than $213,000 raised in the last six months of 2023.
In 2022, a year where Florida Republicans performed well virtually everywhere in the state amid momentum created by Gov. Ron DeSantis' political machine at its zenith, he toppled Democrat Loranne Ausley 53% to 47%.
Assuming Parks can emerge from a crowded Democratic Primary, he is destined to face a formidable challenger, albeit in a seat favorable to Democrats.
As of the most recent book closing report from the Division of Elections, SD 3 had 127,962 Republicans and 153,158 Democrats.
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