Drew Wilson
Republican U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo has picked up a challenger in his 2018 re-election campaign in Florida’s 26th Congressional District.
As reported by the Miami Herald, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell has filed to run for the South Florida seat, which the Cook Partisan Voting Index lists as the most Democratic leaning congressional district currently held by a Republican.
The bilingual Democrat ran against Republican state Sen. Anitere Flores in SD 39 last year, and lost by 10 points in what many Florida Democratic Party officials considered a friendly seat, and one in which Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump by double digits.
Democrats have put CD 26 at the top of their list for 2018 pointing to metrics that show it has a 6-point lean in their favor.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won CD 26 by 16 points, but that may be more due to the district’s distaste for Trump than its Democratic lean. During the same cycle, Curbelo defeated former Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia by 12 points.
Mucarsel-Powell, a native Ecuadorian, said she doesn’t plan to focus her campaign on the goings on in the Trump administration, but took an early shot across the bow in an interview with the Miami Herald by pointing out Curbelo “has voted more than 86 percent of the time with Trump.”
“It’s shocking that the people in Washington are trying to strip health care from millions of Americans,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “The person that I’m running against voted for Trumpcare.”
Mucarsel-Powell said she plans to officially announce her candidacy in a Wednesday press conference.
