Ricardo Rangel switches from congressional race to run for his old Florida House seat

Ricardo Rangel

Former Democratic state Rep. Ricardo Rangel has dropped from his campaign to run for Congress and filed to try to win back his old Florida House seat that he lost in a party primary two years ago.

Rangel, of Kissimmee, served in the House representing northern Osceola County in House District 43 from 2012 to 2014 but lost the primary to incumbent state Rep. John Cortes of Kissimmee.

On Friday Rangel filed to take on Cortes again. This time there already is a Democrat forcing a primary so that it will be a three-way race between Cortes, Rangel and Sara Katherine Shaw.

There are no Republicans filed to run in HD 43.

Rangel, who took a job this winter with the Gravis Marketing political strategy and advertising company of Winter Springs, first filed last summer to run for Congress in Congressional District 9, representing Osceola, southern Orange and eastern Polk counties. But his candidacy lagged well behind the Democratic primary front-runners, state Sen. Darren Soto of Orlando and Susannah Randolph of Orlando, and behind two other candidates, Dr. Dena Minning of Orlando and Valleri Crabtree of Kissimmee.

His departure from the race is expected to be a boost for Soto. The district is more than 40 percent Hispanic, and observers had assumed that Rangel and Soto would split much of the vote among Hispanics.

Scott Powers

Scott Powers is an Orlando-based political journalist with 30+ years’ experience, mostly at newspapers such as the Orlando Sentinel and the Columbus Dispatch. He covers local, state and federal politics and space news across much of Central Florida. His career earned numerous journalism awards for stories ranging from the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster to presidential elections to misplaced nuclear waste. He and his wife Connie have three grown children. Besides them, he’s into mystery and suspense books and movies, rock, blues, basketball, baseball, writing unpublished novels, and being amused. Email him at [email protected].



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