Florida holds primaries for governor, Senate, and Congress, testing party factions and fringe candidates
Florida voters held primary elections Tuesday to choose nominees in races for governor, U.S. Senate, and multiple congressional seats, with the state's closed-primary system limiting participation to registered party members. Trump-backed Rep. Byron Donalds entered the day as the clear Republican gubernatorial favorite in a crowded field, while Democrats faced intraparty contests pitting establishment incumbents against democratic socialist challengers. The primaries also unfolded under a redrawn congressional map and preceded general election contests in Alaska and Wyoming held the same day.
Florida's Republican gubernatorial primary featured Rep. Byron Donalds, endorsed by President Trump, as the heavy favorite in an 11-candidate field to succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis. CNN reported that DeSantis had privately shared concerns about Donalds with Trump and did not endorse his own lieutenant governor, who was also in the race. That absence of a DeSantis endorsement created space for other candidates, including James Fishback, a 31-year-old businessman whose campaign featured remarks calling Donalds a "slave to his donors" and a "DEI Republican."
On the Democratic side, retired Army Lt. Col. Alex Vindman — who testified in Trump's first impeachment trial — faced state Rep. Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist, for the party's Senate nomination to challenge Republican Sen. Ashley Moody. Democrats also contested multiple House primaries in newly redrawn districts, with Rep. Jared Moskowitz facing DSA-endorsed challenger Oliver Larkin in the 25th District and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz running in the redrawn 20th District against a field that included former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who resigned in April amid ethics violations findings, and progressive candidate Elijah Manley.
The Moskowitz-Larkin race drew the most national attention among the Democratic primaries. Larkin, a 33- or 34-year-old veteran of the Sanders 2016 campaign and union organizer, is the only DSA-endorsed House candidate running in a competitive swing district, according to Fox News. He has referred to Israel's governing coalition as a "religious supremacist regime" and supports abolishing the U.S. Senate. Moskowitz, backed by AIPAC and the DCCC, is a vocal supporter of U.S. military assistance to Israel. The Washington Examiner emphasized the antisemitism dimension of the race most heavily, framing Florida's primaries as a broad test of fringe candidates in both parties; Fox News focused primarily on the Democratic socialist challenge to establishment Democrats.