{"id":205128,"date":"2026-03-25T07:47:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T07:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/205128\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T07:47:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T07:47:25","slug":"florida-democrats-just-picked-up-a-second-seat-in-tuesdays-special-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/205128\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Democrats just picked up a second seat in Tuesday’s special elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Florida Democrat Brian Nathan (Brian Nathan Facebook)<\/p>\n

In the second massive upset of the night for Florida Democrats, Brian Nathan, a Navy veteran and union official, flipped a state Senate seat that became vacant after Gov. Ron DeSantis tapped its previous occupant to serve as his lieutenant governor.<\/p>\n

Nathan overcame a huge financial disadvantage<\/a> to beat Republican state Rep. Josie Tomkow and win the Tampa-area 14th District. Nathan was leading by a margin of 50.2 to 49.8<\/a> when Tomkow conceded<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the evening, Democrat Emily Gregory won a separate special election<\/a> for a state House seat in Palm Beach County that includes Donald Trump\u2019s seaside lair of Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n

DeSantis himself put the 14th District in peril for the GOP when he elevated Sen. Jay Collins to replace his previous second-in-command last August. Though the district had voted for Donald Trump by a 53-46 margin in 2024, four years earlier, it had gone for Joe Biden 51-47. On Tuesday night, it returned to form.<\/p>\n

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The governor, however, seemed to understand the risk he\u2019d created for his party. DeSantis refused to call a special election, prompting the ACLU to file a lawsuit<\/a> to compel him to take action. He finally scheduled the contest in October, 73 days after he picked Collins.<\/p>\n

In a fitting twist, while observers speculated that the term-limited DeSantis had wanted Collins to succeed him, the relationship between the two Republicans turned \u201cnuclear bad in the blink of an eye,\u201d as NBC reporter Matt Dixon put it<\/a>. (Collins did eventually launch a bid for governor but has polled poorly<\/a> in the GOP primary, often in the single digits.)<\/p>\n

Nathan focused on<\/a> improving public education and addressing soaring property insurance rates, but he also called Tomkow out<\/a> for allegedly not living in the district\u2014a requirement for sitting lawmakers under the state Constitution.<\/p>\n

As in the state House, Florida Republicans hold a two-thirds majority, but with Nathan\u2019s victory, Democrats now need to flip just one more seat to break the GOP\u2019s supermajority in November.<\/p>\n

This is now the second state Senate seat Republicans have lost during Trump\u2019s second term after a governor chose an incumbent senator as their new lieutenant governor. The same thing happened in Iowa in January of last year<\/a>, when Iowa Democrat Mike Zimmer won a deep-red seat held by Chris Cournoyer, who was tapped by Gov. Kim Reynolds to fill a vacancy.<\/p>\n

In addition, Nathan\u2019s win represents the 30th legislative seat that has flipped from red to blue<\/a> since Trump returned to the White House. During that time, Republicans have flipped zero Democratic seats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida Democrat Brian Nathan (Brian Nathan Facebook) In the second massive upset of the night for Florida Democrats,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-205128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205128","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=205128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}