State Rep. Chip LaMarca is living — temporarily, he said — in Fort Lauderdale’s Coral Ridge neighborhood.
The move by LaMarca and his wife, Eileen, has generated some political chatter that his possible future political plans might involve Fort Lauderdale, not Lighthouse Point, where they’ve lived for more than 25 years.
From there, he was elected to previous stints on the City Commission and the Broward County Commission, and to the Florida House of Representatives, where he currently serves.
The neighborhood where the LaMarcas are renting is in the state House district he represents.
He’s in his last year as a state representative; because of term limits, he will leave office after the 2026 elections.
LaMarca and Eileen LaMarca, who is a member of the Broward College Board of Trustees, appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, relocated while their house undergoes a major renovation. He said he hasn’t changed his voter registration because he expects to be back at home by the next time voting takes place.
Their move set off some political chatter because he’s a potential candidate for Fort Lauderdale mayor in 2028, when Mayor Dean Trantalis can’t run for reelection because of term limits.
He’s acknowledged he’s thought about relocating to Fort Lauderdale and running for mayor. “The options are there, and we’re looking at a couple of things,” he said in a recent interview.
LaMarca, who grew up in Fort Lauderdale, said, “We love the area. We love Lighthouse Point. We love Fort Lauderdale. And I will make a decision at some point.”
He said renting in Fort Lauderdale is a matter of construction, not politics.
He said their Lighthouse Point home is being demolished and rebuilt. “We looked at every option to renovate and it’s a 75-year-old … smaller, older house. We want to build something and make a decision then on what we’re going to do.”
The temporary relocation is “not a prelude” to a political campaign, he said. “We just picked that because it was convenient and the right location for us.”
He said he hasn’t changed his voter registration to Fort Lauderdale because he doesn’t expect to be living in the rental by next year’s elections.
Candidates for Fort Lauderdale mayor don’t run with party labels.
LaMarca is a former chair of the Broward Republican Party, and for most of his time on the County Commission and in the state House has been the only elected Republican in an elected office in Broward County in which the candidates run with party labels.
There is precedent for a well-known state legislator moving to Fort Lauderdale and becoming mayor.
Jack Seiler lived in Wilton Manors and served as a city commissioner and mayor in the 1990s. He then served eight years in the Florida House of Representatives. Seiler moved from Wilton Manors to Fort Lauderdale, where he was elected mayor three times until leaving office because of term limits.
At a Tower Forum luncheon in downtown Fort Lauderdale at which LaMarca and other lawmakers discussed the 2026 legislative session, moderator and former state Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff observed that “we’re coming into an election year, which is always very scary.”
Prevented from running for reelection because of term limits, LaMarca piped up: “Not for me!”
“I know,” Bogdanoff responded. “But you never know what’s next for you, Chip. You never know what’s next.”
Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.