Janelle Irwin Taylor
Republican U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has secured re-election to Florida’s 13th Congressional District, narrowly avoiding becoming a one-term Representative in a district that favors the GOP.
With 58% precincts reporting, Luna secured 54% of the vote, edging out Democratic challenger Whitney Fox, who posted a performance no one would have expected just one year ago.
A poll came out last week showing Republican Luna locked in a dead heat against Fox in Florida’s 13th Congressional District.
Before that, a poll from the same outfit, St. Pete Polls, found Fox actually leading Luna by 4 percentage points. While that poll came as a shock, and had been an outlier, there was no denying things were closer than most would have predicted in an R+6 district.
Likewise, the race came down to a razor’s edge in fundraising.
Fox consistently outraised Luna in each fundraising period this year, and by the end of the third quarter of 2024 had come to within about $5,000 of the incumbent in cash on hand, with Luna entering the fourth quarter with $812,000 compared to $807,000 in the bank for Fox.
She also collected support from entities thought in recent years to have abandoned Florida as any sort of battleground.
Democrats bought into Fox’s candidacy almost entirely. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) placed Fox in its “Red to Blue” program, which aims to support candidates running to unseat incumbent Republicans in races the party sees as winnable. Fox was the only Democrat in Florida to make the program, and is one of only 33 candidates nationwide named to it.
Evidence emerged late in the campaign to suggest that at least some in the GOP were taking the pressure seriously.
The Win It Back PAC, which is affiliated with the conservative Club for Growth, less than two weeks before Election Day, dropped nearly $150,000 on television and digital advertising attacking Fox. The group was actively supporting Luna, including raising funds for her.
And Club for Growth itself had two polls showing Luna with a sizable lead over Fox, with the most recent matching Cook Political Report’s analysis of the race putting it at R+6, at 51% to 45%. A previous Club for Growth poll taken in August found Luna with a 5-point lead.
To be clear, it is not uncommon for partisan organizations to drop cash on races even if there’s a clear front-runner. Campaign conventional wisdom holds that every candidate should run as if they are behind no matter what the polls or fundraising say. That remains true.
But Fox was one of only about a dozen candidates appearing in the top 60 expenditures listed by the Federal Election Commission for Win It Back.
“What that tells me is that Whitney Fox is going to win on Tuesday night,” Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried told Florida Politics reporter Jacob Ogles the week before the election. “Whitney Fox has been a stellar candidate, showing the people of her community exactly what they should expect in a member of Congress after not one, after two hurricanes, she was out there fighting for her constituents before they were even her constituents.”
While Fox no doubt still remained an underdog, despite narrowing the race and garnering national attention for doing so, her performance spoke just as much about national trends as they did Fox’s electoral performance.
It punctuates just how volatile this election cycle has been. Republicans, particularly those who have openly embraced the more extreme views of the Republican Party under former President Donald Trump — as Luna has — have been finding themselves faced with close races even in districts that otherwise might not be competitive.
Luna, for example, won her district just two years ago by about 8 percentage points. There were similarities. Like Fox, Luna’s opponent two years ago, Eric Lynn, was a centrist Democrat and proved to be a strong fundraiser, raising more than $2 million at this point in his race that cycle, with nearly $600,000 left on hand, more than Luna had at that point.
And the district, since 2022, has only gotten redder. Then, Republicans controlled a little more than 37% of the electorate, compared to nearly 32% for Democrats and more than 29% for independents.
Now, Republicans account for nearly 39% of the electorate, with less than 30% Democrats and nearly 29% independents, according to L2 voter data.
With Luna dodging worst-case scenarios for her race, what perhaps remains to be seen is whether Fox tries again in two years, if Democrats go all in to flip the seat on a second try or if avoiding defeat sealed Luna’s presence in a now-red district.
