{"id":205069,"date":"2026-03-25T06:31:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T06:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/205069\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T06:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T06:31:19","slug":"florida-democrats-score-upset-in-tampa-based-state-senate-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/205069\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Democrats score upset in\u00a0Tampa-based state Senate race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Florida Democrats scored an upset in the race to fill a Tampa-based state Senate seat, adding to\u00a0the party\u2019s\u00a0growing number of overperformances and flipped seats\u00a0in recent months, according to Decision Desk HQ.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Democrat Brian Nathan, a Navy veteran and union leader, defeated Republican\u00a0state Rep. Josie\u00a0Tomkow\u00a0to helm Florida Senate District 14, which includes part of Hillsborough County.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (R), now a candidate for governor, held the seat before he was tapped by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to serve as his second in command. <\/p>\n<p>In 2022, Collins\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ballotpedia.org\/Jay_Collins\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">defeated Democrat<\/a>\u00a0Janet Cruz by 9 percentage points, while the entire county narrowly went for President Trump in 2024\u00a0by 3 points.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The surprising victory comes as the Sunshine State held a handful of other special elections for the state Legislature on Tuesday. Democrats were primarily focused on winning Florida House District 87, where Trump votes and his Mar-a-Lago resort is located.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida Democrats scored an upset in the race to fill a Tampa-based state Senate seat, adding to\u00a0the party\u2019s\u00a0growing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-205069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}