In a typical election cycle, Democrats would pay little attention, or money, to Florida’s 1st and 6th Congressional District races.
But with the party eager — maybe even desperate — to prove its viability amid leadership turmoil and a reckoning over its future, that’s not the case in the districts’ two special elections.
Democratic candidates Gay Valimont and Joshua Weil raised over $16 million combined as of mid-March, fueled by hundreds of thousands of small-dollar donors from across the country, for next Tuesday’s races to replace former Reps. Mike Waltz and Matt Gaetz. Waltz is now President Donald Trump’s national security adviser and Gaetz resigned after being tapped as attorney general — a nomination that quickly imploded over long-standing allegations he had sex with a minor.
By comparison, Republican candidates Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine, who were both endorsed by Trump in their Republican primaries, had raised $3.1 million combined as of March 12.
“I would have preferred if our candidate had raised money at a faster rate and gotten on TV quicker. But he’s doing what he needs to do,” National Republican Committee Chairman Richard Hudson told reporters Monday about Fine.
“But he’s on TV now, we’re going to win the seat, I’m not concerned at all,” Hudson said.
Republicans are still expecting to handily win both districts. Trump won the 1st District in November by 37 points and the 6th by 30 points. Democrats haven’t had a competitive congressional race in either district in decades.
Yet the Democratic National Committee is touting a new investment in coordinated campaign efforts, and for weeks have blasted out fundraising emails with headlines like “We Need Your Help in Florida.”
“This investment into the Florida congressional special elections is exactly the type of work we must do to build power on the ground and make clear to voters that there are no off years when the stakes for the American people are so high,” Ken Martin, the chair of the DNC, said in a memo last week unveiling more investment in the races.
“In red, blue, and purple America, voters want a change — including in Florida 1 and Florida 6,” Martin said.
Newly appointed vice chairs David Hogg and Malcolm Kenyatta held a town hall with Weil on Saturday, and Hogg stumped for Valimont earlier this month.
That’s particularly notable after Hogg sent a cease and desist letter to a consultant for the Weil campaign earlier this month, after the consultant put out an ad claiming Hogg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had endorsed him when they hadn’t.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Monday that Weil and Valimont are “almost guaranteed” to significantly overperform.
“Chickens are starting to come home to roost,” Jeffries said. “You’ve seen it in a variety of different special elections at the state and local level over the past several months, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens in Florida.”
The races come at a pivotal moment for the party. Democrats have scrambled over how to most effectively respond to Trump’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce and funding. In town halls across the country, Democratic members of Congress have drawn ire from constituents pushing them to do more.
The races are a first litmus test of Democratic enthusiasm in the second Trump administration. But the testing ground, Florida, is a complicated one for Democrats.
Once considered a must-win swing state, Democrats have been bruised by repeated losses and party infighting. Trump won Florida in 2016 and 2020 by a narrow margin. In 2024, he won it by 13 percentage points against then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
A state ballot measure to codify the right to an abortion failed to meet the required 60% threshold. And despite a last-minute push from Democrats, Republican Sen. Rick Scott handily won reelection over former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
Investing in two heavily majority Republican districts in expensive media markets is a contentious strategy among Democrats.
“Democrats need to quit burning millions of dollars on long-shot federal races only to lose by double digits and instead focus their resources on where they can actually win: the states,” a Democratic strategist told NOTUS. “The party will continue to struggle until it looks down-ticket and invests in a foundation of power at the state and local level.”
On the ground, Weil, the Democratic candidate in Waltz’s former district, is a middle school teacher and is focusing on the Trump administration’s work to eliminate the Department of Education.
“It’s going to be absolutely devastating to our schools here to lose that money,” Weil said. “It’s going to result in school closures, school consolidations, increases in class size, and it’s absolutely something that I felt needed to be messaged because it’s not a partisan issue.”
Weil said he wasn’t concerned about how new polling lows for his party would impact the race.
“Because they’re unhappy with the actions of current leadership does not mean that they’re not inspired and motivated to vote in new Democrats,” Weil said.
“They want new voices that are going to represent them, and not party interests of men who probably should have retired a few years ago,” he said, referring to debates regarding Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Unlike Weil, Valimont ran in the November general election, but told NOTUS her campaign was entirely different this time around.
“Now I get to talk about the issues instead of talking about Matt Gaetz,” Valimont said. “Because no matter what I did the last election to talk to people about health care and education and gun violence prevention and the cost of living, which is what everybody is worried about, I couldn’t talk to anybody about that last election because all they wanted to talk about was Matt Gaetz.”
For Valimont, a major focus is veterans’ access to health care. The district has the second-highest number of veterans in the country, where those needing surgical care often must travel hours to Mississippi and where 23,000 veterans are served by 17 doctors in Pensacola, Florida. She’s said she would work to open a full-service Veterans Affairs hospital in the district.
Fine and Patronis did not respond to a request for comment from NOTUS.
Weil said he’s confident heading into the race’s final stretch, which will capture more national attention and involve more high-profile surrogates. He pointed to the campaign’s weekly tracking polling that showed him “comfortably in the lead.” (The campaign declined to share that polling with NOTUS).
He said the DNC’s investment — that in any other cycle he wouldn’t have received — will make the difference.
“It’s on us to energize our base, to get our message out and to make sure people vote,” Weil said. “With a well-funded and well-coordinated campaign, we can do that.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.