Peter Schorsch
Republican Rene Plasencia picked up a Democratic challenger this week in his 2018 House District 50 re-election campaign.
Recent college graduate Kyle Walcott filed for the Orlando seat June 28 and, so far, is the only candidate running against Plasencia, who shifted over to HD 50 in 2016.
In an interview with LobbyTools, Walcott said he plans to campaign on bringing ranked choice voting to Florida. The alternative voting system, also known as “instant runoff,” has voters rank candidates. If no candidate gets a majority, the candidate with the least number of votes is removed from the pool and voters’ second choice is added to the tally.
The Northwestern alumnus said the system would make sure minor party candidates “get a fair shake” in the election process.
Walcott faces an uphill climb if he hopes to knock Plasencia out of office. In addition to a solid head start in fundraising, Plasencia is also in a fairly favorable district.
Though HD 50 has about only about 3,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats, Plasencia won by a whopping 13,000-vote margin in 2016 over Democrat Sean Ashby.
Through the end of May, the incumbent had raised more than $40,000 and had about $27,000 of that money on hand.
Walcott’s first campaign finance report, which will only cover the last few days of June, is due next week.
