Kenneth Davenport takes another shot at HD 35

The presence of a sitting lawmaker in House District 35 didn’t stop Orlando Republican Kenneth Davenport from running in 2020. And as the seat opens again early, he’s decided to run again.

Davenport, a real estate agent and flight attendant, has filed again for the contest, where a Special Election is expected to take place in coming months.

“I’m not a politician,” he said. “I’m just a citizen trying to stand up to make a change.”

Davenport faced state Rep. Fred Hawkins, a St. Cloud Republican, in a GOP Primary last year. Hawkins, running in a newly drawn district in a redistricting year, won the nomination and later the General Election.

But Davenport notably came within 1,200 votes of unseating the lawmaker — he refuses to call Hawkins the incumbent in a race where he’d only represented 15% of voters previously — and was prepared to run for the seat again in 2024.

“I’m proud of the 33% of the vote I won,” Davenport said.

The seat will open sooner than expected. Hawkins just accepted a job as President of South Florida State College, which will soon require his resignation.

Davenport, a former probation officer, is the fourth Republican to file for the seat since news broke of Hawkins’ imminent departure. He said that, looking at the field, he simply has something different to offer.

Having worked the campaign trail less than a year ago, Davenport believes he understands the needs of voters. He wants to run a campaign on nuts-and-bolts issues like stopping the continued rise of property insurance rates. He said to date, he’s seen no positive or negative effect from fixes approved by the Legislature in multiple Special Sessions.

Davenport hopes to build on the organic growth in support he saw over months of campaigning last year. He will bring lessons from that experience, most notably the significance of personal interaction with voters.

Some big hitters already have filed for the seat on the Republican side. That includes two former congressional candidates. Demetries Grimes ran last year in Florida’s 15th Congressional District, losing to now-U.S. Rep. Laurel Lee in the Republican Primary. Scotty Moore last year challenged U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, a Kissimmee Democrat, and performed better than expected in the General Election.

But Davenport isn’t impressed by those who chased bigger prizes.

“I don’t have aspirations to move on and become a Congressman or anything like that. I just want to try and do eight years in this job,” he said.

Meanwhile, Osceola County School Board member Erika Booth is running with the support of House Speaker-designate Daniel Perez and the Florida House Republican Campaign Committee.

But Davenport isn’t swayed by that either. He has always run as a political outsider.

“They (House Republicans) never talked to me. I get that. I’m not part of the in-group,” he said. “If they talked to me, maybe they would feel differently, but I’m not here to make them look bad. They make the decisions that are right for them. But this is politics. If I’m the one who wins, I’m their best friend the next day.”

The district is notably a swing seat, one where Hawkins and Gov. Ron DeSantis won handily in 2022 but where voters in 2020 favored Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump in the Presidential Election. Democrats Rishi Bagga and Thomas Keen have both filed for the seat as well.