Democrat Emily Gregory won a special election Tuesday for the Florida state House district that includes President Donald Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago resort, flipping the seat from Republican control, The Associated Press projects.<\/p>\n
Gregory beat Republican Jon Maples, whom Trump endorsed, in the race for a seat that has been vacant since August, when Mike Caruso resigned from the Legislature and was appointed Palm Beach County clerk.<\/p>\n
Gregory had 51% of the vote to 49% for Maples with all precincts reporting.<\/p>\n
Democrats have performed well in special elections<\/a> during Trump\u2019s second term, with the party pointing to those results as a sign of strength ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Florida\u2019s 87th District is the 10th GOP-held state legislative seat Democrats have flipped around the country since Trump took office again last year. Republicans have not flipped any Democratic state legislative seats during that time.<\/p>\n Trump carried this Florida legislative district by about 11 percentage points in 2024, according to The Downballot, a left-leaning political site that tracks special elections. <\/p>\n And winning on Trump\u2019s literal home turf carries special significance for Democrats.<\/p>\n “Democrats can run and win anywhere \u2014 including Donald Trump\u2019s backyard,” Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried said in a joint statement with the Palm Beach County Democratic Party.<\/p>\n Some of the most significant events of Trump\u2019s second term have taken place at Mar-a-Lago<\/a>, including the direction of six major military actions \u2014 most recently the start of the war with Iran.<\/p>\n Trump cast a ballot in the special election<\/a> and backed Maples, a former council member in Lake Clarke Shores, in both the special primary and the special general election, exhorting social media followers to turn out to vote. Gregory, a business owner, was running for office for the first time.<\/p>\n Her campaign keyed in on rising costs and promised that she would focus on the issue if she was elected. Maples touted his business experience and pledged to cut taxes.<\/p>\n The Palm Beach County race was one of three legislative special elections on the ballot around Florida on Tuesday, with a fourth decided by default after the Republican candidate ran unopposed.<\/p>\n One of the races is still too close to call: Democrat Brian Nathan is leading Republican Josie Tomkow by less than half a percentage point with nearly all of the vote counted in a Tampa-area state Senate district previously held by the GOP.<\/p>\n Republican Hilary Holley also held a state House seat in Central Florida for her party.<\/p>\n The special elections are taking place as Trump\u2019s approval rating sits in the high 30s to the low 40s in most public polling, which has influenced elections throughout the U.S.<\/a> over the past year. Americans also have largely taken a dim view of the war<\/a> with Iran in public polling, as it has dominated media coverage of the Trump administration for a month now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Democrat Emily Gregory won a special election Tuesday for the Florida state House district that includes President Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-205189","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\/205189","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=205189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}