Republican Randy Fine easily defeated Democrat Josh Weil in the special election for Florida's traditionally solid-red sixth congressional district, election forecasters project, further padding House Republicans’ slim margins during a busy legislative year for Republicans at the start of Donald Trump’s second term. The Associated Press called the race at 7:30 p.m.
In the lead-up to Election Day, Republicans were more worried than initially expected that, given Weil's fundraising edge, the race for National Security Adviser Mike Waltz's old congressional seat would flip to the Democrats. Waltz, who resigned from the seat after being tapped for a plum spot in the Trump administration, had carried the district by 33 points in November. Special elections are typically low-turnout affairs and can be unpredictable, and polls conducted in the days leading up to the contest suggested that the race was too close for comfort for the GOP.
Both parties are expected to parse the election results in Fine’s race. Around 8 p.m., Fine was leading Weil by around ten points — or less than a third of Waltz’s 2024 victory margin.
The closely watched contest was seen as a must-win for Republicans given this year's slim House GOP majority, which alongside Senate Republicans will determine whether President Trump's legislative agenda gets across the finish line this year. Likely to further pad House Republicans' razor-thin margins is the Sunshine State's chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, who is expected to defeat his Democratic opponent in a separate special election to fill Florida’s first congressional district seat, vacated by former Representative Matt Gaetz.
Republicans in Washington are so worried about this year's slim House majority that the White House last week pulled Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) from consideration as Trump's pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., even though she had already hired staff for the role and had spent recent weeks giving a farewell tour in her deep-red district, which she carried by 24 points in November.
Keeping her in Congress means Republicans won't have to worry about a special election to fill her seat. "With a very tight Majority, I don't want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise's seat," Trump wrote in a social media post announcing his decision last week.
Florida isn’t the only state in the electoral spotlight on Tuesday evening. Far more expensive than both Florida contests is the race for Wisconsin supreme court, which will determine the balance of power on the state's highest bench. The contest between conservative Brad Schimel and liberal Susan Crawford has drawn millions in outside spending from billionaire donors, and it has already broken records for the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history.
In all three contests on Tuesday evening, Democrats sought to tie the Republican candidates closely to the White House's cost-cutter in chief, Elon Musk, a polarizing figure over whom Democrats have spent months obsessing to tar Trump by association.
Fine’s special-election victory in Florida’s sixth district comes as a major relief to House GOP leaders, who were awaiting the election results hours after Speaker Mike Johnson's effort to tank a proxy voting proposal died on the House floor. The proxy vote proposal snafu is not a major legislative priority for the Trump administration, but it is seen as a harbinger of congressional GOP leaders' struggles to get the White House's agenda to Trump's desk by the end of the year.
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