Democrat Emily Gregory narrowly won the special election for the district Tuesday night, The Associated Press projects. Trump carried the area in 2024.
Democrat Emily Gregory won a special election Tuesday for the Florida state House district that includes Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, flipping the seat from Republican control, The Associated Press projects.
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.
Gregory had 51% of the vote to 49% for Maples with all precincts reporting.
Democrats have performed well in special elections during Trump’s second term, with the party pointing to those results as a sign of strength ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Florida’s 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.
The dominoes are beginning to fall
She performed 1.6% better than Harris, who also won that district. It’s a bump, but I’d feel a lot more comfortable if wars, ICE raids, expensive healthcare, election rigging and inflation was worth more than a 1.6% bump.
Especially since the party in power usually has lower turnout in off year elections.
It’s important to take into account that this was a special election. These kinds of elections usually have higher GOP turnout than Dems because old racists ain’t got shit else to do.
Not saying I disagree — I mean, my view is that his claims of election rigging alone should really have made Trump not politically-viable for any voter already — but setting that aside, it’s a situation where the resident of not merely the state but also the congressional district is President, and you’d expect that to bump in the positive direction, opposing the negative bump from incumbent President.
Trump’s the kind of huy who will just walk in and kick over the entire domino run and brag about it though.
Which is why I will be so thrilled when he dies. The Nazi defies odds by possessing literally zero redeeming qualities. He’s every single fucking thing wrong with humanity rolled into one Frankenstein’s monster of amorality. He’s the closest thing you can ever get to showing a myth like the anti-Christ is based on a real phenomenon. Which is something I don’t necessarily understand, but it’s basically “if someone is the right kind of evil piece of shit, many people will think they’re God”.
Each one is a battle. The illusion of momentum is dangerous.
And yet people need an iota of hope after ten years of hearing about and talking about the worst president in American history. Someone who truly deserves to be compared to Hitler. Yeah, we’ve (reasonably) been so depressed about this shit we fucking need the tiniest sliver of hope. Is it really that dangerous to have any?
One theory for why Trump won is that he was so ridiculous that a lot of democrats thought there was no way he could win, so they stayed home on election day. I don’t know if that’s true exactly, but I know that democracy requires participation and traditionally the more people who actually vote in an election, the greater likelihood of a democratic win.
So yeah, I stand by my caution against complacency. No election is going to win itself, or win other elections, as implied by the dominoes metaphor. Our country will continue deteriorating until people who care actually fight, for real, in a prolonged, sustainable way. The other side never stops fighting.
I agree. I’m just not sure celebrating one small win counts as complacency.
Edit: according to the angry downvoter, constant rage for 12+ years without any break is the only thing that keeps one from being “complacent”. It sure has helped us so far. We all know that trump won in 2024 not by mobilizing racists and confusing struggling people. Not that, it was because we laughed at some trump memes after he lost in 2020.
I still say he could never win. No one in their right mind would vote for him. Any party that nominated him can only blame themselves for losing. But of course I voted. Always vote.
And he’s been even worse than the unelectable fooli thought he was, so WTF, people. But always vote