Janelle Irwin Taylor
Whitney Fox has emerged victorious from a crowded field of Democrats in Tuesday’s Primary Election for Florida’s 13th Congressional District.
With 38% precincts reporting and mail ballots in, Fox is the clear winner with 58% of the vote. Sabrina Bousbar followed with 17% and Liz Dahan, was at 13%. Mark Weinkrantz pulled just 7% while John Liccione landed at the back of the pack with 4%.
“I am deeply grateful and humbled by the trust voters have placed in me to be their Democratic nominee for Congress. This victory isn’t mine – it belongs to every parent struggling with rising costs, every senior worried about their healthcare, and every young person fighting for a better future,” Fox said of her victory.
Fox will now head to the General Election where she will face incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna.
It will be a tough fight for Fox, who will enter the General Election battle at both a funding and voter registration disadvantage.
Luna first won the seat in 2022 after redistricting shifted the boundaries to remove a slight Democratic advantage and replace it with a GOP advantage. Cook Political Report lists it as an R+6 district.
But while the outlet lists CD 13 as “likely Republican,” it is one of only three congressional races in Florida classified as competitive. The other two are listed as “likely Democrat” — Florida’s 9th Congressional District represented by Darren Soto and Florida’s 23rd Congressional District represented by Jared Moskowitz. Both are incumbent Democrats not facing Primary challenges.
Fox consistently outraised all of her Primary opponents. Even considering loans to her opponents’ campaigns — of which there have been several — Fox still had a major money advantage in the Primary.
As of the end of the second quarter of 2024, Fox had raised nearly $750,000. She brought in $320,632 in total contributions during the second quarter of 2024, which covers campaign finance activity from April through June.
But she ended the quarter with less than $356,000 still on hand. That’s far from the cash Luna will have to defend her seat. The Republican opponent had raised more than $1.5 million, and retained more than $865,000 at the end of the second quarter.
Still Democrats are hungry for a flip in the Pinellas County-based district, where it’s perhaps the only opportunity for the party to gain a seat in the Florida delegation. That’s evidenced by the sheer volume of support Fox had in the Primary, which showed she was not only viewed as Democrats’ best shot at unseating Luna, but that they were willing to go in on a district seen as tough, but winnable.
And Fox is fired up on the heels of her first political victory.
“Anna Paulina Luna’s extreme agenda puts partisan politics over people and threatens to take away our freedoms. Luna tells struggling families to ‘just move’ if they don’t like her cruel policies. Well, I say it’s time to move Luna out of office,” she said.
Fox recently landed an endorsement from EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, and from Planned Parenthood. Perhaps more importantly, she managed to land a coveted recommendation from the Tampa Bay Times. The paper described her as “a natural on the campaign trail and comfortable in the public eye.” The editorial board wrote that Fox “appears to have the personal fortitude to hold up under what will likely be a withering General Election campaign.”
“We are proud to congratulate Whitney Fox on her primary election win in Florida’s 13th Congressional District,” EMILYs List offered in a statement. “She is a community advocate dedicated to improving the lives of people in the Tampa Bay area and we know she would bring that same tenacity to Congress in order to restore reproductive rights. Defeating anti-abortion extremists like Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is critical and EMILYs List is honored to stand with Whitney in this election.”
Fox also earned an endorsement from former U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, who served in Congress as a pragmatist and often worked across the aisle to bring home policies, resources and other accomplishments for her constituents in a deeply divided congress. In her endorsement, Murphy said Fox was also a pragmatist.
In all, Fox has earned endorsements from well over 50 current and former elected officials, community leaders, advocacy groups and others, including a recent endorsement from U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell of California and another from SEIU Florida.
The full list includes, among others, U.S. Reps. Kathy Castor, Lois Frankel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz; state Rep. Lindsay Cross; state Sen.-elect Carlos Guillermo Smith; former St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman; former state Sen. Janet Cruz; former state Reps. Margaret Good and Adam Hattersley; former congressional candidate Alan Cohn; Pinellas County Commissioner Rene Flowers; Pinellas County School Board member Caprice Edmond; St. Pete City Council members Gina Driscoll, Deborah Figgs-Sanders and Lisset Hanewicz; Oldsmar Vice Mayor Andrew Knapp; Oldsmar City Council member Steve Graber; Gulfport City Council members Paul Ray and April Thanos; former St. Pete Beach Mayor Al Johnson; former Seminole City Council member Jim Olliver; Largo City Commissioner Michael Smith; Dunedin City Commissioner Jeff Gow; Largo City Commissioner Jamie Robinson; and the National Women’s Political Caucus.
In her leadership role at PSTA, Fox worked at the local, state and federal level to identify public transportation solutions, including securing funding for and building innovative programs such as the recently launched SunRunner Bus Rapid Transit service in St. Pete.
Under Fox’s and other PSTA leadership, the agency was named the most outstanding public transportation system in the nation for the three-year period covering 2020-2022.
While Fox had the advantage in the Primary in just about any quantifiable metric, she faced a field of qualified candidates in the Primary.
Dahan, originally from South Florida, worked in communications for 20 years, focusing on business, government and foreign policy.
She most recently worked in Washington, D.C., as a partner at Brunswick, a global firm that provides advisory services on a variety of issues including financial, regulatory, political and social. There, Dahan worked with financial institutions, Fortune 500 companies and others to communicate social values and design sustainability and to chart a path toward environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies.
Dahan also previously worked with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Bank and with former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota.
And Bousbar also has experience working in federal government.
She served as a senior advisor in the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in President Joe Biden’s administration. Bousbar would be the first woman from Generation Z elected to Congress if successful.
While Bousbar trailed the field of Democrats in fundraising, she aggressively touted her ground game, saying in late July that her campaign had made more than 90,000 voter contacts through door-knocking, phone calls and texts, with more than 200 campaign volunteers and 20 campaign fellows.
She also secured some high-profile support, including from former state Rep. Joe Geller, the Latino Victory Fund, and Peter Owen, a candidate who had been seeking the CD 13 nomination but didn’t qualify for the race.
Weinkrantz brought military service to the campaign as a retired U.S. Air Force pilot and, later, a commercial pilot. He’s a big union supporter, and ran on a platform of protecting Medicare and Social Security; helping veterans; restoring reproductive rights; identifying solutions to the affordable housing crisis; supporting the LGBTQ+ community; and building an economy that works for all.
He earned a handful of support from local leaders in politics, including Largo City Commissioner Pat Gerard, former Pinellas County Commissioners Pat Gerard, Susan Latvala and Karen Seel, and former Pinellas County School Board members Terry Krassner and Linda Lerner.
Liccione gained the least traction of the field. He calls himself “the Rebel Democrat Engineer,” a nod to his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and work in the military on helicopter cockpits and their complicated tech systems.
He’s a U.S. Air Force veteran and formerly worked as an intelligence agent for the National Security Agency, according to his website. His campaign platform includes fighting for veterans, keeping students and teachers safe, restoring reproductive freedom, increasing affordability for seniors, protecting shorelines from red tide, and more.
