BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Florida Democratic lawmaker Joe Casello has died while in office following a heart attack, according to state House officials. He was 73.<\/p>\n
Casello, who was first elected to the Florida House in 2018 from a district in Boynton Beach, was surrounded by his girlfriend and family when he died Friday, the Florida House Democratic Caucus said in a social media post.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe family extends their heartfelt gratitude to all who have offered their love and support during this difficult time,\u201d the caucus said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Casello was a firefighter in Worcester, Massachusetts, for three decades before entering politics in Florida. He served as a Boynton Beach city commissioner before becoming a state lawmaker. He had announced plans to run for a seat on the Palm Beach County Commission in 2026.<\/p>\n
Under Florida law, Gov. Ron DeSantis is required to call a special election or special primary election when a vacancy occurs for a legislative seat because of a death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Florida Democratic lawmaker Joe Casello has died while in office following a heart…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,1070,2822,2808,793,15520,21130,3,3509,111,2819,795,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-23594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-elections","10":"tag-fl-state-wire","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-heart-attack","14":"tag-joe-casello","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-notable-deaths","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-ron-desantis","19":"tag-u-s-news","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}