Florida Gop Spends Millions In Push To Save Tallahassee Supermajority

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Even as Republicans encounter tough contests across the country, they are expected to keep their firm grip on the Florida Legislature. But they’re tapping their vast donor network to hold the supermajorities.

Republicans have collected millions in campaign donations from many of Florida’s powerful business interests and megadonors, such as Miami hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin. Griffin alone has donated $8 million this cycle to state GOP legislative leadership funds.

Senate Republicans have spent more than $14 million on television ads to bolster their candidates in a handful of key races in South Florida, Tampa and central Florida according to ad tracking service AdImpact. House Republicans, meanwhile, are trying to convince voters they will take steps to address the state’s affordability crisis if elected. Leadership funds for both sides have spent money to assist candidates with staffing and polling.

Republicans seeking legislative seats are being buffeted by the same forces that are affecting races throughout the country, including gas prices, the war in Iran and economic anxiety. It has translated into independent voters swinging toward Democrats and led to projections that Republicans won’t have the commanding Florida turnout edge they enjoyed in the past two elections including when Gov. Ron DeSantis won reelection by nearly 20 points.

“We’ve got headwinds this cycle,” said incoming House Speaker Sam Garrison, a Republican from Fleming Island. “That’s something we can’t control, but we can control the process we follow to make sure that we give our candidates the best chance to communicate directly to the voters and our candidates are working extraordinarily hard.”

There are 160 seats in the Florida Legislature. Republicans currently hold 26 seats — one shy of a 2/3 supermajority in the 40-member state Senate — after Bryan Avila resigned this summer after being tapped by Rep. Byron Donalds to run for lieutenant governor. DeSantis has not yet scheduled a special election for his replacement.

Democrats hold just 34 seats in the 120-member Florida House and would need to net seven seats to end the supermajority in that chamber. Two seats are currently held by Republicans who switched from the Democratic Party after the 2024 elections. Those seats are viewed as good candidates to flip back.

But there also signs that House seats in the greater Tampa Bay area, Central Florida and South Florida could be up in play — including the seat held by Miami Beach Republican Fabian Basabe, who this past summer lost a civil trial alleging his sexually harassed two former male staffers.He has denied all wrongdoing and is appealing the verdict.

Florida Democrats could win enough races to break the GOP supermajority of the last four years, which has allowed Republicans to easily enact most of their agenda.

While the practical effect would be somewhat limited, the win would give Democrats another way to push back on the assertion that the state has permanently shifted to the GOP.

“We’re working hard in our program to chip away at the supermajority to make sure that people are heard more in this process and bringing some balance to government,” said incoming House Democratic leader and state Rep. Christine Hunschofksy from Parkland.

Both sides have spent hundreds of thousands on ads in the race for House District 87, a seat that includes Mar-a-Lago, the home of President Donald Trump. Democratic state Rep. Emily Gregory flipped that seat during a March special election, and she’s now in a rematch with Republican Jon Maples. Gregory’s victory sparked national attention, and the GOP is eager to take it back.

“That’s no secret that it’s a very important seat to us,” Garrison said. “We think we have a really good candidate in that seat and we’re going to make sure he has the resources to get his message out.”

The message to voters in many of these legislative races has been somewhat consistent. Republicans have attacked Democrats for having ties to socialists or being “radical” and “liberal” or for voting against placing Amendment 3, the state's proposed property tax overhaul, on the November ballot. Some of the ads have asserted that GOP candidates will fight against insurance companies or those pushing development.

Democrats aren’t coming anywhere close to matching the ad volume coming from Republicans, but they are leaning into a campaign message that they are willing to tackle the state’s affordability crisis. Hunschofsky conceded that House Democrats are being outspent significantly but she said her party sought to recruit and then train candidates who are more in tune with economic pressures of Floridians.

“These are just everyday people who didn’t think they would be running for office,” Hunschofsky said. “They looked at the affordability issues and something has to change.”

The battle for the state Senate has been expensive as well, with two Miami GOP seats on the line as well as a spirited contest in Senate District 10, a central Florida district that barely voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. Incumbent state Sen. Jason Brodeur, who has been in the chamber since 2020, is running against Maitland Mayor John Lowndes. While Brodeur has gotten the benefit of an ad featuring an on-camera endorsement from DeSantis, there have also been a flurry of ads assailing Lowndes over his record as mayor and clients he’s represented as an attorney.

Senate Republicans have also spent millions trying to take back Senate District 14, the Tampa-centered seat Democrats flipped in a special election earlier this year. The race features a rematch between Brian Nathan and former state Rep. Josie Tomkow. Nathan has been repeatedly hammered as a “extreme liberal” who “locked arms” with socialists.

Incoming Senate President Jim Boyd did not return a request for comment on the Senate races, and a spokesperson for the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee declined to comment.

State Sen. Tracie Davis, the incoming Senate Democratic leader from Jacksonville, blasted the torrent of negative ads coming from Republicans.

“Instead of running on their records, Republicans have spent millions of dollars trying to spread fear, hate and division because they know they can’t defend their corrupt, failed policies,” said Davis. “Democrats are going to break the supermajority in the Senate because our candidates are living the challenges of the people they’re running to serve unlike the politicians who are doing the bidding of the president or the Big Tech billionaires bankrolling Republican campaigns.”