Jacob Ogles
Laurel Lee left her position as Florida’s Secretary of State to run in a divided congressional district last cycle. The Republican in 2022 won handily in Florida’s 15th Congressional District, where voters were more divided in the 2020 presidential race than any other district in Florida.
Now she’s running for a second term and faces Hillsborough County Commissioner Pat Kemp, a Democrat with a longer history winning elections in most of the district.
The Thonotosassa Republican’s campaign says Lee in her first term in the House has already shown prowess on the job, and has earned the trust of leadership at a tumultuous time.
“Congresswoman Lee has shown leadership not only for her home district, but she has also shown leadership on the national stage,” said campaign spokesperson Sarah Bascom.
“She was appointed to the select task force to investigate the attempted assassination of President Trump; was entrusted with serving as the House Impeachment Manager for the impeachment trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; fought against inflationary policy, excessive, wasteful spending, and promoted American energy independence; supported the strongest border bill in a generation; voted for the NDAA to provide vital funding to our domestic military and ensure basic quality of life for our service members; and much more.”
But Kemp said voters in the increasingly metropolitan district have reason to be disappointed in Lee’s first term. That includes a vote by Lee against a deal keeping the government open this year just before two massive hurricanes made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Democrats have slammed members of Florida’s delegation who voted against the deal as effectively voting against funding the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
“We won’t soon forget how MAGA Republicans like Lee voted against FEMA funding — leaving us vulnerable in the face of Hurricane Milton,” Kemp posted on social media in September.
But Kemp also said she sees opportunities for Democrats in the district that weren’t there in 2022, when Lee beat Democrat Alan Cohn by 17 percentage points. Namely, progressives will be mobilized in Florida this year by a measure on the ballot that could restore abortion access in the state.
On paper, there’s reason for Democrats to see the district as competitive, as they did in 2022. Donald Trump in the last Presidential Election beat Democrat Joe Biden by only about 3 percentage points, with Trump taking a lower percentage of the vote in the district than he received statewide.
Republicans hold a registration edge, but a smaller one than in most Republican-controlled districts in the state. CD 15 as of Aug. 20 is home to 171,000 registered Republicans and almost 146,000 Democrats, as well as about 138,000 other voters.
Despite that, House Democrats haven’t identified Lee as a targeted incumbent. While the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee named Whitney Fox, the challenger to U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, to its high-profile Red to Blue program, Kemp hasn’t gained such notice.
And Lee now enjoys a fundraising advantage that comes from incumbency in Washington. Through the end of September, Lee had raised nearly $2.1 million for her re-election directly and had almost $1.6 million in cash on hand across all committees, including her Florida Freedom Fund leadership PAC.
By comparison, Kemp raised north of $455,000 but had less than $222,000 of that left as of the end of September. That’s to campaign in a district spanning multiple media markets.
Additionally, Lee has had a relatively productive freshmen term in the U.S. House. She sponsored the Debbie Smith Act (HR 1105), addressing a backlog of DNA tests nationwide, and Biden has since signed the legislation. She also sponsored the Federal Prison Oversight Act (HR 3019), which has also since been signed, to establish a greater inspections regime for the Bureau of Prisons.
She chairs the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections, a natural for the former head of Florida’s elections. She has also served on the steering committee for the Republican Study Committee (RSC), a conservative caucus focused on policy.
But Kemp has also attacked that effort, saying the RSC effectively was the force behind converting the controversial policies published by the Heritage Foundation and turning them into federal policy.
“She is there to give them that veneer of respectability, but that is Project 2025 in action,” Kemp said.
