The fight for an open seat in Congress from the First Coast has been raising more interest, and money, than Northeast Florida’s other three Congressional contests combined.
That’s because the race’s outcome isn’t obvious.
While political clout and cash advantages nearly guarantee incumbent re-elections in the other races, the fight for House District 6 — the seat Republican Ron DeSantis left to run for governor — is testing Democrats’ hopes for a blue wave to wash away GOP control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Democratic candidate Nancy Soderberg joined former Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum on Monday at what Democrats called a “winning ticket rally” at the University of North Florida.
Once the deputy national security adviser to former President Bill Clinton, she’s running opposite Republican Michael Waltz, a former Green Beret who was a counter-terrorism adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney and was a speaker this week at a DeSantis rally in Jacksonville headlined by Vice President Mike Pence.
On Tuesday, the Cook Political Report reclassified the race between the two as competitive, but said the contest leans toward a Republican victory.
Waltz, who fought in the Afghan war before becoming a businessman whose company tracks money from people involved with terror networks, faulted President Donald Trump before the 2016 election. But Waltz has praised Trump’s work since he’s been in office and said he’s ready to help.
“This president needs reinforcements. You’ve got everybody and their brother fighting against him,” Waltz told a Daytona Beach audience over the summer, a season when he and Soderberg both pushed through three-way party primaries to get to the general election next month.
The rivals’ ideas for the oceanfront district — from around St. Augustine south through Flagler and Volusia counties and west into part of Lake County — hint at their differences.
“The choice really couldn’t be clearer,” said Soderberg, a longtime UNF faculty member.
Talk about jobs and business growth, and Waltz might mention commercial space flight. Demand for space commerce will grow fast, he said, adding there’s a security dimension, too. “Both the Chinese and the Russians are saying they want to eclipse the United States in space,” said Waltz, a former Fox News analyst.
Soderberg talks instead about infrastructure, saying she’d work with Trump if he offered a plan to modernize infrastructure and connect communities. She wants to prioritize repairs to hurricane-battered beach roads and work to restore damaged dunes, saying the projects will protect the shoreline while boosting Florida’s tourism.
Where Waltz praised the tax cuts Trump championed in 2017, Soderberg’s campaign website called them “so concerning” for the economy.
“They will add to our deficit without doing enough to help the middle-class,” the website argued. “The tax cuts also lay the groundwork to cut Social Security and Medicare — the very programs that provide retirement security and will work to ensure that we keep our promise to seniors. We cannot let this happen.”
Waltz said his own business exemplified the benefits of the tax overhaul, noting that it hired several people as soon as the law changed.
One thing the candidates share is the experience of being ridiculed as outsiders.
Both own homes outside the district, but that doesn’t affect their candidacy because the law only requires them to live in Florida.
The district was once a safely Republican seat that Soderberg said has become more competitive in recent years.
Her boosters cheered early this month when a poll said the candidates were basically tied, each supported by 45 percent of likely voters. The company handling that poll is tied to the Democratic Party, however, and the poll was seen by some as partisan.
Money from outside the district helped bump up the budgets for campaigning.
Soderberg’s team logged just under $2.5 million in contributions by the end of September. Waltz’s campaign recorded about $1.1 million in contributions, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Waltz also loaned his campaign seed money. He said some has been repaid, but estimated about $400,000 is still loaned out.
Attention from Democratic leaders likely helped the campaign by Soderberg, who lost a 2012 race for the state Senate in Jacksonville but turned heads running for Congress.
In March, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added her to its Red to Blue program, which targets promising candidates who might expand Democrats’ presence in the House. Her run for the District 6 seat has been backed by a web of allies, and her campaign website boasts endorsements from sources ranging from former President Barack Obama to the mayors of Daytona Beach and Eustis in Lake County.
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