Jacob Ogles
U.S. Rep. Laurel Lee will return to Washington for a second term after the Thonotosassa Republican defeated Democratic challenger Pat Kemp, a Hillsborough County Commissioner.
Will all precincts reporting, Lee won 56.2% of the vote with early and most vote-by-mail ballots counted.
Lee’s campaign focused on the freshman lawmaker’s record in Washington, and before that as Florida’s Secretary of State.
“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.”
Kemp, for her part, said voters in the increasingly metropolitan district had reason to be disappointed in Lee’s first term. The incumbent’s votes included 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.
Kemp also said she saw opportunities for Democrats in the district that weren’t there in 2022, when Lee beat Democrat Alan Cohn by 17 percentage points. Namely, progressives were mobilized in Florida this year by a measure on the ballot to restore abortion access in the state.
But Republicans held a registration edge, though a smaller one than in most Republican-controlled districts in Florida. 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.
Donald Trump in the last Presidential Election beat Democrat Joe Biden by only about 3 percentage points in the district, with Trump taking a lower percentage of the vote in the district than he received statewide that year.
Despite that, House Democrats never 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 didn’t gain such notice.
And Lee enjoyed a fundraising advantage from incumbency. Through Oct. 16, Lee 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 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.
