Jacob Ogles
U.S. Rep. Cory Mills kept Florida’s 7th Congressional District in the Republican column, defeating Democrat Jennifer Adams.
The New Smyrna Beach Republican is taking 55% of the vote, with most precincts reporting.
Mills flipped the east Central Florida seat red, after redistricting in 2022 turned CD 7 from a Democratic jurisdiction to an easy Republican pickup.
Since that time, Mills has made headlines as often for his work outside of his congressional duties as for his actions in Washington. That included rescuing Americans trapped in Haiti amid unrest there and flying supplies into hurricane-stricken areas in North Carolina and, more recently, in parts of Florida. He has developed relationships with billionaire Elon Musk and social media influencer Benny Johnson to direct philanthropic aid to those areas.
The Glenn Beck-founded Mercury One nonprofit just awarded Mills with its Bonhoeffer Award for that work.
“Such an honor to receive the 2024 Bonhoeffer Award. This award is given to those who’ve demonstrated the courage to act and not only talk,” Mills posted on X. “Through our rescues and evacuations in Afghanistan, Israel, and Haiti, or the disaster responses in North Carolina and Florida, I will never stop helping Americans abandoned or in need.”
But Adams, a business owner in the district, said the incumbent has pushed an extreme agenda in Washington.
“My values represent those of my hometown district where I grew up,” Adams said. “My life has been here, I know the people, what we need to get done, and am raising my family here. Mills doesn’t live here and is Missing in Action — he is a divisive opportunist in it for himself — I’m all about collaboration and common sense solutions — I’m in it for our community, our families, our country and our future.”
But the district has leaned Republican the entire time Mills represented it. Voters in CD 7 supported Donald Trump for President by 6 percentage points in 2020 and nearly 60% backed Gov. Ron DeSantis’ re-election in 2022.
Mills did generate controversy with remarks many heard as conspiracy mongering after an attempted assassination of Trump this year in Pennsylvania.
“The amount of negligence, the amount of mistakes that was made here, I have a very difficult time not leaning myself towards this was intentional, as opposed to fecklessness,” Mills told CNN, prompting extreme pushback.
After the interview, House Speaker Mike Johnson passed over Mills for an appointment to a special committee investigating the Pennsylvania shooting, so the Congressman formed his own rogue committee to look at the matter independently.
Adams, a delegate for the state at the Democratic National Convention, sees the off-hours conduct by Mills as a distraction from an extreme record out of step with a centrist district. That includes the Congressman voting against a deal to fund the government immediately before Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit the state.
“As Florida faces back-to-back hurricanes I was not surprised when I saw our current representative, Cory Mills, voted against funding for FEMA which is desperately needed for hurricane victims and relief efforts,” Adams said.
“Even worse, my opponent immediately went on a photo op tour to capture headlines with the people in the disaster-stricken areas who he voted against funding just before Hurricane Helene hit Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and parts of Tennessee and Virginia.”
The district was represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy less than two years ago, though that was under prior lines when almost 55% of voters backed Democrat Joe Biden for President. After redistricting, many of those voters now live in nearby, safe Democratic jurisdictions.
As of Aug. 20, CD 7 served as home to more than 214,000 registered Republicans and more than 169,000 registered Democrats, with about 182,000 other voters on the rolls as well.
National Democrats haven’t shown much interest in the district, either in this cycle or the last one. While the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted Republican-held seats in Tampa Bay and South Florida, the same attention hasn’t been paid toward defeating Mills.
