Trump allies avoid upsets as GOP retains Florida House seats

Two Florida Republicans won congressional races in special elections on Tuesday, avoiding upset losses that could have narrowed the party’s control of the U.S. House, according to the Associated Press.

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State senator Randy Fine won the seat left open by National Security Advisor Michael Waltz in a largely conservative area that includes Daytona Beach on Florida’s northeast coast.

Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer, will fill the seat previously held by Matt Gaetz in the Florida Panhandle. Gaetz gave up his seat after President Donald Trump announced plans to name him attorney general but then withdrew before being nominated.

Double-digit victories for Patronis and Fine, both endorsed by Trump, suggest that voters in the solidly Republican districts weren’t turned off by the president’s plans to impose sweeping tariffs and his overhaul of the federal government that has resulted in tens of thousands of job losses.

Yet Democratic challengers in both districts were able to roughly cut in half the margins of loss compared to the November general election results. That grants the party a glimmer of hope as it looks to regain the ground it lost in 2024 the midterm elections next year.

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Republicans hold a narrow majority in the U.S. House, and have struggled early in Trump’s second term to pass some major bills over opposition from hard-line conservatives. Losing either of the seats would have reduced an already-slim margin for error, complicating the president’s legislative agenda on taxes, energy and immigration and threatening to further destabilize House Speaker Mike Johnson’s control of the chamber.

Neither district was competitive in November’s general election — Republicans carried both of them with about two-thirds of the vote in November while Trump breezed to a win in Florida. But there was some early concern about Fine’s ability, in particular, to hold on in the district held by Waltz.

Both Fine and Patronis won with about 57% of the vote in their districts, holding roughly a 15-point lead over their Democratic opponents, according to the AP, with nearly all of the vote counted in each district.

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Trump congratulated Fine in a Truth Social post on his win “against a massive CASH AVALANCHE” from Democrats.

Referring to the stakes facing his agenda in the House, Trump last week pulled the nomination of Representative Elise Stefanik of New York to serve as the US ambassador to the United Nations. The president cited House Republicans’ narrow margin as his reason.

Patronis’ time overseeing Florida’s finances was marked by heated culture wars surrounding ESG, or environmental, social and governance investment principles. He pulled $2 billion in state assets from BlackRock and threatened to blacklist Wells Fargo & Company and Bank of America Corp from state funds over the companies’ use of ESG investing. He comes from the spring break capital of Panama City Beach, where his family owns a well-known seafood restaurant called Captain Anderson’s.

Fine is a Republican firebrand known for championing culture war issues like Florida’s so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill. He sponsored the legislation that stripped Walt Disney World’s self-governing status after company leadership spoke out against the bill. He’s currently working in the Florida Senate to revoke in-state tuition for undocumented college students and to lower the age to purchase firearms from 21 to 18.

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