Scott Powers
Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson is making another run for Congress, this time in the newly drawn Florida’s 10th Congressional District covering northern Orange County.
Grayson on Tuesday announced he is transferring from his almost obscure run for the U.S. Senate to a district that now covers parts of an area that he once represented in Congress.
In CD 10, which stretches across much of northern Orange from Pine Hills to the University of Central Florida, Grayson would enter a Democratic Primary Election field that includes state Sen. Randolph Bracy, activist Maxwell Alejandro Frost, the Rev. Terence Gray, civil rights lawyer Natalie Jackson and others.
There are several Republicans running as well, including Calvin Wimbish and Willie Montague. But the new CD 10 should present a pretty solid Democratic lean, based on the past couple of General Elections.
“There’s a lot of room for improvement in people’s lives. We are fighting inflation to the death. I want lower taxes, lower tolls, and lower rent, and all those things can be accomplished,” Grayson said in a news release issued Tuesday by his campaign. “I have a record of getting good things done. Someone has to fight for the benefit of ordinary people.”
Grayson, a lawyer from Windermere, was once lauded as a leader of congressional Democratic progressives. He was a regular on national cable political talk shows during his three-term tenure, which ended in 2017. He also was reviled by Republicans as one of the nation’s most outspoken and confrontational liberals.
He also maintained he was an effective lawmaker, making strange bedfellow alliances with Republicans to pass practical legislation.
Since then, though, Grayson has been largely unsuccessful in elections, while always keeping his campaign powder dry for another run.
Grayson ran for the Senate in 2016, losing the Democratic Primary. He ran to reclaim his old congressional seat in 2018, losing again in the Primary Election. In 2020 he ran as a write-in candidate in another congressional district, though he said he did so just to press a political point.
Last year, he filed to run in Florida’s then-undefined new congressional district, before switching to a Senate run. That campaign never rose above the “also running” status behind Democratic front-runner U.S. Rep. Val Demings of Orlando.
Demings holds the CD 10 seat Grayson now seeks.
Grayson’s former seat in Florida’s 9th Congressional District once stretched up into northern Orange County, including areas now drawn into CD 10.
All the while, Grayson has kept open federal campaign finance accounts, raising money, keeping consultants and others on hand. At the end of March, his Senate campaign had about $242,000 in the bank.
That would place him third in the CD 10 Democratic Primary money chase. Frost entered April with almost $600,000 on hand, Bracy with about $335,000 and Gray with about $93,000.
