Republican Wins Bellwether Florida Special Election

Re­pub­lic­an Dav­id Jolly won a hotly con­tested spe­cial con­gres­sion­al elec­tion in Flor­ida on Tues­day night, earn­ing the right to suc­ceed the late Rep. Bill Young in Con­gress. Jolly cap­it­al­ized on op­pos­i­tion to the pres­id­ent’s health care law to de­feat the Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee, Alex Sink.

Jolly cap­tured over 48 per­cent of the vote and de­feated Sink, who nar­rowly lost the Flor­ida gov­ernor’s race in 2010, by al­most 2 per­cent­age points in Flor­ida’s 13th Dis­trict. Young rep­res­en­ted the Pinel­las County dis­trict for over 40 years be­fore his death in Oc­to­ber. Liber­tari­an Lu­cas Overby ran a dis­tant third, with just un­der 5 per­cent of the vote.

“To­night, one of Nancy Pelosi’s most prized can­did­ates was ul­ti­mately brought down be­cause of her un­waver­ing sup­port for Obama­care, and that should be a loud warn­ing for oth­er Demo­crats run­ning coast to coast,” NR­CC chair­man Greg Walden said in a state­ment.

Jolly pre­vailed des­pite ma­jor demo­graph­ic changes over Young’s four-dec­ade ten­ure that opened a door for a Demo­crat­ic vic­tory. This is the second spe­cial elec­tion in 2014 where Demo­crats have been un­able to as­sert a demo­graph­ic ad­vant­age among ac­tu­al voters in a non­pres­id­en­tial elec­tion year. Pres­id­ent Obama car­ried the 13th Dis­trict in 2008 and 2012, and Sink also won the dis­trict dur­ing her run for gov­ernor in 2010. But trans­lat­ing demo­graphy in­to votes is tricky busi­ness, as Cali­for­nia Demo­crats no­ticed dur­ing San Diego’s may­or­al race earli­er this year, which the Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ate won.

Jolly, who was a lob­by­ist and be­fore that an aide to Young, over­came a sig­ni­fic­ant fin­an­cial dis­ad­vant­age to de­feat Sink, who was well-known from her pre­vi­ous statewide runs. Sink out­spent Jolly about 4-to-1 on the air­waves, ac­cord­ing to NBC News, but Re­pub­lic­an out­side groups in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee, the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce, Amer­ic­an Ac­tion Net­work, and Amer­ic­an Cross­roads helped close the fin­an­cial gap.

In a post-elec­tion state­ment, Demo­crat­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee chair­man Steve Is­rael at­trib­uted Sink’s loss to out­side Re­pub­lic­an money.

“Des­pite those mil­lions from Re­pub­lic­an out­side groups, they un­der­per­formed be­cause the only mes­sage they offered voters — re­peal­ing the [Af­ford­able Care Act] — is out of touch and failed to bring them even close to their his­tor­ic­ally wide mar­gins,” Is­rael said.