‘Lifechanging experience’ drives Democrat Therese W. Gamble to challenge Kim Daniels in HD 14

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With just a week before the qualifying deadline, Rep. Kim Daniels has another opponent attempting to unseat her in Jacksonville’s House District 14.

Therese V. Wakefield-Gamble, a 53-year-old entrepreneur and grandmother from the Broward area, is as of now the third Democrat on the ballot for what will be a decisive August Primary. The race will be open to all voters unless a Republican or no-party candidate emerges between now and June 14.

Wakefield-Gamble credits a “life-changing experience” with her entrance into the political sphere.

“For 12 years, I was living with an undiagnosed, unruptured brain aneurysm,” she said.

“My physicians didn’t tell me about it and I learned about it in October 2022 and I had to have, last year, three brain surgeries in 120 days and I did not have a stroke or a heart attack. So I am deeply and truly blessed to still be living. And that lets me know that I have, I still have purpose in this world to do.”

Part of that purpose is ending the tenure of Daniels, an evangelist by trade who has often clashed with the Democratic Party on issues, and who, according to her challenger, hasn’t done nearly enough for the district.

“I looked at her platform and what she was supposed to be running on and then I also reviewed the bills that she proposed and co-signed and there’s a misalignment. It’s not aligning with what she said she was going to run on,” Wakefield-Gamble claimed.

“The constituents voted to put her in that seat to be a good steward over their taxpayer dollars to make sure that those dollars recycle back in the community to address the needs of affordable housing and homelessness and underemployed individuals. And I have not seen any of that from Representative Daniels.”

Wakefield-Gamble, a former teacher, says she’s on track to get a dual doctorate next year in educational leadership and trauma informed practices and social emotional learning from National University, and she sees her educational path as informing what she would do if elected this year.

“I’m going to maximize and use my professional experience and background and my personal story to make sure that the community members in district 14 be able to leverage and benefit all those things from education reform, health care, accessibility, economic growth and development, public safety, and making sure our teachers are considered as intellectual critical trauma first responders, because they have to deal with the behavior of our students and they need to be able to know the signs and the symptoms of what’s going on with our students to be able to prevent bullying and school gun violence,” Wakefield-Gamble said.

Additionally, the candidate prioritizes education reform, AI technology in libraries, offering tools to entrepreneurs and small businesses, funding public safety and first responders — including teachers.

As of now, Wakefield-Gamble is the second challenger to the iconoclastic Daniels, joining Lloyd Caulker, a native of Sierra Leone who says God compelled him to run against the Democratic minister holding the seat since the redistricting of 2022.

Daniels is in the middle of her third term in the House. She was originally elected to serve HD 14 in 2016, was re-elected in 2018, and lost in 2020’s Democratic Primary to current Rep. Angie Nixon. After Nixon was moved to HD 13 during 2022’s redistricting, Daniels won a four-way Primary to return to Tallahassee.

Even if someone closes the Primary in the remaining days, the August Primary likely will decide the race, given that more than 55,000 of the district’s nearly 105,000 registered voters are Democrats. If only Democrats run, the Primary will be open to all voters in HD 14, and the race will be officially decided before Labor Day.