Valimont draws attention and donations, but Patronis still has advantage in April 1 election

Republican Jimmy Patronis is having to do something that Matt Gaetz almost never had to do as he campaigns to fill Gaetz’s vacant seat in Congress ahead of the April 1 special – spend money on advertising in a general election.

Democrat Gay Valimont told supporters last week she’s raised $6.7 million to campaign in the seat that has elected a Republican in every election since 1994, and she’s putting that money to use with a blitz of ads on television, billboards and social media.

Patronis has hit back with his own ads, and it’s not hard to find digital billboards around Pensacola with photos of Patronis and President Donald Trump advertising Patronis as “Trump’s pick” for Congress.

The ads will likely pick up in the next week, as early voting begins Saturday and runs through March 29.

There may be some early signs that Patronis has a close race on his hands. Early turnout data from the four counties that comprise District 1 show Republicans with only a 4.9-point advantage with mail-in ballots.

As of Thursday, the supervisors of elections offices in the four counties of Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, and Walton reported approximately 19,213 ballots returned. Of those ballots, 45.91% were from registered Republicans, 41.02% were from registered Democrats, 11.54% were from non-party affiliated voters, and 1.53% were from other minor parties.

No matter the outcome, Valimont has done something no Democrat has been able to do for several election cycles: force the Republican to spend money in the general election campaign.

“She's done a great job with ads,” Ryan Wiggins said. “There's no question about it, and she has required Jimmy Patronis to spend money in this district, which is absolutely shocking in a general (election).”

Wiggins, a lifelong Pensacola resident, knows about the brutal world of political campaigns. She is currently the chief of staff for the Lincoln Project, a political action committee made up of Republicans that have left the party since the rise of Trump and bills itself as a pro-democracy organization dedicated to fighting “Trumpism.” Before joining the Lincoln Project, Wiggins was deeply involved in Republican politics, working for former U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller and in state government under multiple Republican governors. She also ran a political consulting firm that mainly had Republican clients.

Despite the money Valimont has raised, Wiggins said it’s an uphill battle for a Democrat in Northwest Florida.

“She is still very, very, very much the underdog in this race,” Wiggins said.

Patronis has a huge name ID advantage, Wiggins said, running statewide campaigns for Florida Chief Financial Officer twice as well as serving in the Florida House of Representatives.

“He's a known entity among the Republican Party. He didn't start off as a MAGA guy – turned into one, but didn't start off as a MAGA guy,” Wiggins said. “There are people in the Panhandle that I think would think that he's more reasonable, and so I think she's got a tough road ahead of her.”

Conservatives dominate Northwest Florida's congressional district

There’s no doubt that Northwest Florida is a solid red Republican district where Republicans enjoy a nearly 3-to-1 voter registration advantage over Democrats.

In the 2024 election, Valimont lost to Gaetz by 32 percentage points. That election came in the wake of the scandal Gaetz faced for allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, and Gaetz still won 66% of the vote.

Northwest Florida has been Republican since 1994, when long-time Democratic Congressman Earl Hutto retired after 22 years in Congress. The district has been a bastion of conservative politics for even longer as Hutto was known as one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress during his tenure, voting with the Democrats only about half of the time, according to a 1994 New York Times story.

In 1994, Joe Scarborough was the first Republican elected to the district representing Pensacola since 1874 with 61.6% of the vote. Since that election, the worst performance in a general election for the seat by a Republican was Gaetz in 2020 when he still won with 64.6% of the vote.

Gaetz took to X, then known as Twitter, ahead of the 2020 to boast to his opponent Phil Ehr about not running a single advertisement ahead of the general election.

Patronis easily beat a crowded field in the Republican primary in January, thanks largely to an endorsement from Trump, and is aiming to ride that conservative wave of voters to Washington, D.C.

Big fundraising numbers from national outrage

Two months can change a lot of things. Now fears of price increases from Trump’s tariffs have sparked fears of a recession as administration officials warn of the need to “ween our country off” of government spending.

Tariffs and cuts to federal agencies that many Democrats say are in direct violation of federal law have prompted outrage from many Democratic voters across the country. They appear to be funneling that outrage into the campaign coffers of Valimont and other Democratic candidates.

Republicans hold a slim 218-213 majority in the House, with four seats currently vacant. Two of the vacant seats were held by the late Reps. Sylvester Turner, D-Texas, who died March 5, and Raul Grijalva, D-Arizona, who died March 13. The other two seats will be decided in Florida's upcoming special elections April 1.

In Florida’s 6th Congressional District, Democrat Josh Weil is try to upset Republican state Sen. Randy Fine, who also has an endorsement from Trump in another April 1 special election to replace former U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz, who was tapped by Trump to become his National Security Advisor. The website Florida Politics reported Wednesday Weil has raised $10 million for the special election.

Valimont told supporters in a Pensacola town hall last week she had raised $6.7 million in her campaign, and on social media Valimont said funds came from more than 200,000 individual donations.

“What I'm telling you and telling people of this district is we can actually change it,” Valimont said to supporters. “We can change the narrative.”

Patronis is using Valimont's fundraising as an argument against her, telling the News Journal on Thursday that her donations are coming from Democrats outside of Florida.

"There's definitely been a plea on behalf of my opponent to donors all over the country to come and help us flip this seat blue, 'And with your help with dollars from California and New York and New Jersey and Illinois and all these other places you're never going to live,' trying to influence a race in Northwest Florida," Patronis told the News Journal on Thursday. "I think the fact of whatever TV (advertisement) being played by one candidate over another, this is what the Democrats are going to do. They're going to spend money because they've got no other race in the country to spend money on other than Congressional District 1 and Congressional District 6. So all of their resources are going (into this race) because they're trying to use this as a referendum on President Trump's leadership."

What remains to be seen is how Trump’s policies are playing in Northwest Florida. The district has the highest number of federal workers in Florida thanks to the area’s large military presence. The district has nearly 20,000 federal workers, which is about 5.6% of the district’s entire workforce, according to data from the Congressional Research Service.

At Valimont's town hall last week, she asked the crowd of about 150 people for a show of hands if they knew someone who worked in the federal government, and nearly every hand in the room went up.

“What's happening right now is hurting real people,” Valimont said.

Valimont also has criticized Patronis for his oversight of the consumer-side of the insurance industry as Florida chief financial officer.

"Republicans don't like the word regulation, but when corporate greed gets out of hand, and it starts to infect the population, you must do something about it," Valimont said. "Jimmy Patronis has had opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to do something about the insurance crisis, and he has not."

Valimont said Patronis has accepted political donations from the insurance industry and supported laws that have made it harder to sue insurance companies.

Patronis said no one in Florida has done more than him to bring insurance relief "at the point of purchase."

"What had happened here in Florida is not unique," Patronis said. "It was happening in all 50 states, but now what's happened in Florida is we had to take some medicine because we had man-made problems that had to be corrected in 2022. And I told people, you're not going to see relief in your insurance premiums overnight. It is going to take somewhere from 12 to 18 months. When we got to about 14 months, you started to see the rate carriers in Florida start to file for rate decreases. That's not happening in Texas, that's not happening in Louisiana, that's not happening in California."

Patronis also said he'd supported other measures to lower rates, such as tax breaks and grants for homeowners who harden their homes to storms, and blames rising construction cost for a large part of the insurance increases.

"There's not a single solution that has come out of Washington with the Democrats in charge that it curved inflation or changed interest rates, which are the two biggest cost drivers of why your premiums have gone up," Patronis said.

Realistic expectations

Valimont hopes to capitalize on potential anger at Trump’s policies, but Wiggins cautioned that no one should read too much into the results of a special election.

“A special election doesn't really tell you a whole lot because it's just about who's paying attention,” Wiggins said.

Turnout will be key, and any observer of the race would have to give that turnout advantage to Republicans, Wiggins said.

“It's a primarily Republican area around here,” Wiggins said. “Those voters are pretty passionate and pretty organized and typically show up. There's not a lot of Democrat infrastructure in Florida, and that is a really big problem too. Gay is doing this, and she's got help from the (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), but she doesn't have what Patronis has locally, and that is the help, the assistance, the infrastructure and the know-how to get people out for these things. So, I'm hopeful for her. I am pulling for her, but I think it's probably a long shot considering what she's up against.”

Wiggins said whether Valimont wins or loses, it is commendable that she is standing up and running for office.

“Change cannot be made until we have more people who have the courage to stand up to it,” Wiggins said.